I have called Dallas home for just about one week now, but it does not feel like home yet. I have nothing against Dallas. In fact, it has felt like I am on a lovely little vacation, traipsing around town discovering quaint coffee shops and trying an exorbitant number of new restaurants, so many that I began to crave a solid home-cooked meal - just like vacation, except it's not. And I wake up and realize that I better start home-cooking those meals because I am home, and there will not be a natural transition back to normal, routine life. The routine starts whenever I create it, and I think a part of me does not want to create it.
Maybe the transition will be smoother if I imagine this to be a form of long-term study abroad. For my own study abroad in Paris a few years ago, I drifted into la la land for a month and lived life to the fullest, paying little attention to my budget because this was a once in a lifetime opportunity. Unfortunately, if I approached this season with the same attitude, I think it would end badly with me in that cardboard box we English majors are destined to inhabit. We are the wanderers, dreamers, learners, and chasers of stories, but we live in a world of deadlines, budgets, and bills. How have I made it thus far, I often wonder. Either I'm a strong survivor or I have a God who likes to shine through my faults and failures.
Of course, I believe it's the latter. I've been there in the meltdown moments that no one else sees, and I know I do not have it in me to muscle through this life. Throughout these months of transition, I have kept returning to this Oswald Chambers devotion:
"Certainty is the mark of the commonsense life - gracious uncertainty is the mark of the spiritual life. To be certain of God means we are uncertain in all our ways, not knowing what tomorrow may bring. This is generally expressed with a sigh of sadness, but it should be an expression of breathless expectation. We are uncertain of the next step, but we are certain of God. As soon as we abandon ourselves to God and do the task He has placed closes to us, He begins to fill our lives with surprises...Leave everything to Him and it will be gloriously and graciously uncertain how He will come in - but you can be certain that He will come."
I have been craving some certainty as of late. Just tell me where I am going to work. Assure me that I will have this certain house. Tell me exactly how I will pay the bills. Will my school and work schedule align? Show me what I will do when I graduate and that this education plan is the best course for me to take. None of these answers came when I wanted them. I'm still waiting on some of them.
"In peace I both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety." (Psalm 4:8)
"I lay down and slept; I woke again, for The Lord sustained me." (Psalm 3:5)
These are the promises I am given. Nothing specific, only the rhythms of my life and the reminder that The Lord is the steady one guiding these rhythms. Will I have more than His presence? I do not know. Will my bed be in a box? No answer. Only, that The Lord is safety and The Lord is sustenance.
So this is the routine. The surprises are coming, the shaping of a new home life that is still so foreign to me. For now, I lie down and sleep. I wake up. The Lord is there and that's all I know. And that is enough.
