Was it not you who dried up
the sea, the waters of the great deep, who made a road in the depths of the sea
so that the redeemed might cross over? Isaiah 59:10 NIV
This last week I had an experience that
was pleasant and rather thought provoking. My husband and I packed up the kids
and visited a city we lived in nearly two decades ago.
We spent two glorious days relishing the
cooler mountain temperatures and behaving like tourists. We explored some
fantastic art galleries, bought some cute stuff, enjoyed a blues festival and indulged
in some of the best Mexican food we’ve eaten in years.
The trip eventually morphed into a journey
down memory lane. We drove past the Church we attended while we lived there, ate
in some restaurants we used to enjoy, and drove the kids past the tiny house in
the horrible neighborhood we lived in back in the day. The sights, sounds and smells
of our old city brought back a lot of memories.
Silver City, New Mexico was not a place I
wanted to go when we went there twenty years ago. It was a place I knew we
needed to go, but that didn’t mean I had to like it.
Prior to our move I was pretty content
with my life. We lived in an area I loved, went to a Church I was happy in and
had lots of really great friends who were very much like me in every way. Life
felt safe and comfortable and I liked feeling safe and comfortable.
All that aside, our situation was less
than perfect. The kids were small, our marriage was relatively young and my
husband was in a dead-end job. And we were broke. We were too-much-month-at-the-end-of-the-money
and searching-the-sofa-cushions-for-change-the-day-before-payday broke. Our
financial situation colored every other aspect of our lives.
Opportunities were essentially nonexistent
in the town we lived in. So when a job opened up in a little town in New Mexico
we knew in our hearts it was the stepping-stone to the bigger and better things
that we had been praying for.
I would love to tell you that I joyfully leapt
at the opportunity that God graciously provided and embraced the experience with
an open heart and splendid attitude. I won’t tell you that because I refuse to
lie.
I whined
and grumbled like an overindulged six-year-old. I focused entirely on the
negative and took complaining to heights that would have shamed the Israelites
wandering in the desert. Eventually, I did come to accept the changes, but
sadly I failed to really embrace or welcome the experience.
It wasn’t until many years later that I
finally understood how deeply I was impacted by those years. Silver City was a
delightfully diverse little town. For the first time in my life I was exposed
to all kinds of different people from all kinds of different races and
backgrounds. We joined a wonderful Church with a Pastor who was not afraid to
explore tough issues or confront wrong thinking.
The believers we met in that little
community of faith forever changed my understanding of what it means to be a
Christ follower. Their commitment and passion was something I had never really
witnessed before. They challenged me in a million different ways to think about
life and God and faith in ways that I had never considered before.
Growth
and change is nearly always awkward and uncomfortable, and those years were
frequently both. Two decades after the fact I can clearly see that I came away
from that brief period in my life a richer person with a deeper faith and better
understanding of how the world works. I sometimes wonder what I would have
gained if I had embraced the changes fully and sought to grow through the
challenges rather than simply endure them.
As
I mulled this over I was reminded of other places I’ve gone that I did not wish
to go. It’s all too infrequent for me to voluntarily go to the places that are
painful or where I am required to confront the foolishness of my own choices. I
sometimes avoid going to a place where I can forgive my enemies. After all
these years I still resist going to the places where I have been asked to take
on a task or an obligation that feels hard or unpleasant.
God reminded me this past week that change
seldom occurs in the comfortable, easy places. It’s the difficult, painful and uncomfortable
places that bring the greatest prospects for spiritual growth and the
development of maturity and wisdom. I will try to remember this the next time I
find myself in a place that feels safe and comfortable.
The boundary lines have
fallen for me in pleasant places;
surely I have a delightful inheritance~ Psalm 16:6 NIV
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