At the moment I am on a train rolling north through Illinois.
I love train rides. At the cost of submitting your day to another's time table, you get to cut across forested hills and creek beds hidden from the highway in the otherwise-flat Midwestern farmland. Today I'm feeling especially hipster in my light brown top, side braid and striped red Toms. Add a fountain pen and leather green journal and I'm all set. Today I'm in tune with the part of my heart I left in the Southern Missouri Ozarks...pick-up jam sessions involving banjo and harmonica, cowboy boots and flannel, hay fields and rolling acres of pastureland dotted with sleepy towns with just a touch of drawl. Southern Missouri, where my spirit grew wings.
I just left an all-too-brief visit home. I grew up in a suburban college-town, a different world yet not far from my precious Ozarks. I come from a family with that rare kind of solidarity, where every visit home is an overflow of love and laughter, and every place holds gallons of nostalgia; memories of my childhood and adolescence which formed my faith, my passions, my direction. I'm blessed every time I go home by people with whom I am perfectly safe to share my heart: the good, bad, and the ugly. This last visit included arguing over finer points of the application of faith, of laughing till we cried over stupid Youtube videos, and of cuddling the most beautiful 4-month old this world knows. (Nothing is as delightful or rewarding as being the recipient of my niece's coy smiles!) Every visit home as I drift off to sleep in the same bedroom I slept in as a 6th-grader, and I am overwhelmed with gratitude. My parents, by the grace of God, have passed down a strong and solid legacy of faith. This is the place of my roots.
But now I'm headed North again, into a world I once referred to as my own personal Siberia. Out of what I once thought was a wintery wasteland of suburban life, God lifted up a family for me, a mission and a purpose. This life moves forward with a different kind of joy, one fueled more by the work itself than by the atmosphere. Here the farmer sows the seed between highways and office suits, coffee shops and synagogues, and by His Grace some find good soil. I came face-to-face with God's enduring faithfulness here in a wilderness of business and buildings, and I recognize that there is so much work to do. And that work is good.
Columbia filled up my soul, Bolivar set free my spirit, and now Chicago is nurturing my mind. Without the previous seasons I would be completely unprepared for this new task. If I had stayed in those places that I've come to love so deeply, I'd be missing out on something else so good.
But I guess this is really what I want to say, dear faithful reader (and if you've stuck with me this far, props to you!): Ultimately this is all about chasing God. If I intended to chase after my own happiness or satisfaction, I'd surely have settled in my beloved Ozarks, never far from my roots. But then what benefit would these blessings have been? Having no true outlet, this river would have turned stagnant. Blessings are meant to be shared. Strong foundations are meant to be built upon. I am reminded instead that we all are seeking a higher country, a heavenly one. In a new place I discover the One who made those wide plains; who is more mysterious and beautiful than the Ozarks; who is wilder than my forrested hills; who hand-crafted each person running through Chicago streets. In Him there is no greater Inheritance; without Him, no lasting peace, no vast or joyful freedom, no security or adventure. Aslan, take me up on your back, that we can run further in and further up with each new day.
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