Coming and Going

A Hobbit's Tale.

The near past and the near future involve me staying for extended periods of time in different cities. From Madison to Green Bay, from Champaign, IL to St. Paul, MN, it feels like my life is constantly being uprooted. I crave stability. I love knowing that wherever I am, there is a house, my home, waiting for me. In my imagination, this home looks like a cozy cottage with a fire in the fireplace in the middle of the woods surrounded by foot upon foot of snow.

I love both solitude and security. This constant coming and going and going and coming has me all mixed up and off balance. Unfortunately, it doesn't help my state of mind knowing that this place of stability for the next nine months will be...Virginia. A place to which I've never been. On top of that, we don't currently have an apartment leased. So it's a hypothetical place at the moment. Oh dear.

While I will enjoy finally having a place to stay for longer than five weeks at a time, I have been struggling to look forward to living for a year in a place I have never been and didn't actively choose to go. I wasn't able to sit down and make a list of all the reasons moving to Virginia would be good. I was sent out. I wasn't asked to choose one school from five at which I would like to serve. I was sent out to Virginia. If, for some crazy reason, Virginia is terrible and the worst place in the USA, I'm stuck there for nine months. Not that I'm anticipating this to happen, but I tend to plan for the worst.

I knew that this was what it meant to be a missionary. I knew when I applied to FOCUS that I would be asked to serve wherever the need was greatest. I passively chose Virginia. I had hoped the greatest need for me was in Wisconsin, or even Minnesota, but it wasn't. I am needed in Virginia. So off I go, to the "Great Unknown."

But not today. Today I look to tomorrow. And tomorrow I look to the day after that. Today I'm in Green Bay, Wisconsin. And tomorrow I will be too.