Restless Upon Returning

Yes, I am getting things a little out of order, but so it goes. Here are some thoughts from the moment and we will return to reflections on Africa shortly.

Back in Virginia feels like a million miles from everything and yet right in the center of where I ought to be.

Coming back reminds me of all the details yet to be worked out. Even my apartment seems to reflect this. It's perfectly functional exactly the way it is, but there are pieces still missing. So I refinish furniture and buy things to hang on the wall in what I long ago discovered to be a coping mechanism. When I can't sort life out I rearrange and clean and tweak what I can. At least my living space can look like my life has some sort of congruity.

And that's where I am. Sorting. Trying to figure out which pieces do and don't fit. What needs to be reworked, taken away or added. It's the inevitable by-product of change. Let's be honest. We all know I can get too far inside my own head. I get in there and wander around for a while and end up totally lost. Whenever I start to write more than normal you can safely bet that's what is going on. I'm wandering around again and trying to write my way out of it.

Goodbyes have the strange effect of producing restlessness. I hate them. HATE them. There have been too many in the past few weeks. What's strange is that I actually enjoy change. I like the freshness, the promise of adventure and having something new to discover. If only there were a way to solve the age-old cliche dilemma and have my cake and eat it too.

But life is full of goodbyes. That's the way it works, right? You can't cling to all that is new and old at one time or your hands get too full and you end up holding nothing at all.

I read a story today about missionary James Calvert. He went as a missionary to the cannibals of Fiji and while on the way the captain of the ship he and his coworkers traveled on tried to convince him to abandon the mission and return home. "You will lose your life," the captain said, " and the lives of those with you if you go among such savages." Undaunted, Calvert replied, "We died before we came here."

I can't help thinking that is exactly the point. We are always dying to something. What matters is choosing the right thing to die to. I love the beautiful simplicity of that. When you own nothing, there is nothing to hold you back from fulfilling the calling placed before you. This is exactly where God wants us to find ourselves, totally, completely, irrevocably dead. He reminds us that to die to ourselves is to live to Christ. It's why we nail ourselves to the cross daily in order to understand all the fullness of life. In other words, to be unafraid to say goodbye is to be wonderfully free to say hello.

Funny how much sense this doesn't make until you come on the other side of it. But from this side of the shore it makes perfect sense to have taken that route. This restlessness is nothing more than learning to put a little more of myself to death so that new growth can spring forth.