The Joy in Losing Roots

When I looked at all my belongings packed up in the back of my dad’s truck one month ago, I remember feeling a numbing, unbelieving tidal wave of shock coming towards me. As I drove behind him along the stretch of 5 freeway back home, I didn’t cry. I didn’t lose it. I just felt…dead. Like San Diego was this weird life force I couldn’t find anywhere else, a place of comfort and sunshine and kindness I would never be able to have again.

We got to Huntington, and in one blurry day I unpacked everything I owned, all 15 boxes of clothes and photographs and books and final papers.

Yes, I had allowed myself to become rooted for the first time of my life.

Yes, I was now being torn from the ground.

For the entirety of my young-adult life, I had vowed I would never let myself get comfortable, I would never have to deal with painful goodbyes—and I had failed miserably the moment I ran alongside the Scripps trails overlooking La Jolla shores, the Thursday night I walked into Upper Room. But as I put my boxes of nostalgia in their new space, I certainly wasn’t going to allow myself to feel the aftershocks of my rebellion.

But memories don’t disappear with the speed of ripping off a band-aid. Life doesn’t work that way. Your brain doesn’t purge itself in catharsis, your heart doesn’t let go of the happiest years it’s had. And for a while I was left wondering if all of that, the debilitating comfort and routine I found 100 miles south of here was a pursuit worthwhile.

Almost everyday this past year I made my way down to Bird Rock, and I’d thank God endlessly in my journal for having me come here. How did I end up in a place of such incomparable beauty, filled with such incredible people? It was certainly not by my own accord, as my selfish and narcissistic tendencies should’ve landed me anywhere but here. Nevertheless, I am grateful that I never—not for a single, fleeting moment—took advantage of life in La Jolla.

I’m trying to do the same in Orange County, but it’s not the same. My family is here, which is the area’s overwhelming redeeming quality. Crystal Cove is still here, which evokes memories of my long afternoons under the Windansea sun. However, I can’t seem to get past everything else. Walking around in South Coast Plaza, trying to find some cheap cargo pants for Thailand, all I could feel was a constant, clamoring desire to escape. The perfectly sculpted women with their off-the-runway Tory Burch purses and collagen-plumped lips. The two-hundred dollar blouses, clicking of Louboutin heels on Italian ivory marble floors, children scuttling alongside their moms with frappaccinos in their little hands. This place is truly a bizarre anomaly, a city filled empty mansions on the sea, of lifeless people, of loveless relationships and disproportionate incomes.

But I couldn’t be more thankful to have been uprooted here.

Because here I am, being constantly reminded of allowing God to move us where we glorify Him most. In my near-perfect life in San Diego I was able to enjoy the fruits of a place that upheld both a rich, diverse culture with wonderful, love-driven people. I could easily see myself settling down there, getting married in Balboa and taking my kids to Mission Bay in the summer. I could lose sight of the rest of the world there, and find utter contentment in a 372 square-mile bubble.

But at this moment in my life, that is not the person He has shaped me to be.

I was not built for settling. I was not meant for roots. I was made for exploring, wandering, serving in places far and unknown and unreached. Tomorrow, God is taking me to a place I’ve dreamed of for years, and I get to love, serve, and grow in the way He has prepared my life for. I may not get to root myself anywhere, but I get to plant seeds everywhere. I may not call one place home, but God gives me new members of my family every place he leads me to.

God’s gift to me of singleness, of rootlessness, is a wonderful thing. It has taken me too long to really grasp it. But throughout this process of understanding I have been brought back to one of my favorite passages. In Matthew 6 Jesus reminds us not to get caught up in petty worries, in the self-gratifying pursuits of this world, and to follow Him always. “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well, (Matthew 6:33)”, Christ commands us.

I am certainly no source of wisdom, and I have little lasting advice to give anyone; but I do encourage all of you to question where you’re at, to be willing for God to take you places you are completely out of your element in.

Do you live where you live because it is most comfortable, or because it is where you most glorify God’s kingdom?

Is God calling you to uproot, to spread His love in new places?

Is He asking you to leave a relationship to focus your attention fully on Him?

Are you on the path you’ve chosen for yourself, or the path that God has planned for you?

Earlier this past winter, a friend took me to Del Mar at sunset, where she told me that God loved me more than I could imagine—and while I couldn’t see it every moment, He had a plan for me that was more fulfilling than one I could make for myself. Months later, I wish I could tell her how right she was; that the life I would’ve picked for myself six months ago wouldn’t allow me to fully enjoy the extent of His love right now. There is a great joy in losing yourself; there is eternal life in our Father’s will and desire for us. God loves you. And if uprooting yourself is what needs to happen to experience that, then I strongly suggest grabbing your shovel and digging to China. Or in some cases, Thailand.

Graduation, June-gloom, and Making Things New

Sitting backwards on a train, staring at the hazy horizon of marine layer. The endless stretch of palms and beach grass look out of place in this listless weather, the straight line of tracks seems to take us to some alternate reality in which meteorological normatives have been ruptured by a long-past nuclear apocalypse.

Floating radioactive ash, covering the windows of this Coastal Express, filling my brain with a vexing mix of doubts and glee, loss and new-fangled quests.

Like the palm trees sprinting away from me, I am out of place. Kicked out of the bubble, away from the boundaries of comfort and routine.

A forty-fifty-something middle-level exec is sitting across from me, and he’s throwing trail mix into his mouth and going on about a recent acquisition in his company, and his leather man-bag looks like it’s going to explode from the graphs and portfolios crammed in its pockets. “It’ll be interesting to see what happens with this new examiner in charge…” he goes on, and on, and he uses the word “stuff” in every sentence, which is ironic because he’s talking to his cohort with peanuts and m&ms stuffed in his mouth. I wonder if he even notices the nuclear apocalypse outside, if he can see that underneath eyeliner and lip gloss, the passenger across from him is having an existential crisis. I don’t think he does, because when I glance at him he gives me a sheepish half-smile.

Yeah, I’m really out of place. I’m done. Finished. Everything that I’ve ever known: wake up, school, lunch, work, eat dinner with Liz and crash in the nook of my twin bed is now morphing into wake up, find job, find job, find job, cry self to sleep as the sinking feeling of responsibility and reality and inadequacy find its way into the stems of my every thought. I wish the world wasn’t so honest with us newly grads, I wish they would have told us all that we’d find our dream careers as soon as we stepped foot off the commencement stage, that everything would be ok and that life as we knew it wasn’t coming to a

halting,
screeching
stop.

I may be overtly dramatic and absurd, but reading yahoo news articles every-other day that tell me nursing and accounting are the only two sectors with jobs in the whole universe, that my International Relations degree is just a fifty-thousand dollar piece of paper,

It’s not super encouraging.

But it’s ok. I’ll be ok. Because I know that Southern California gets June(to July)-gloom, but come August, come September, the rays of warm light penetrate everything, and the world of beaches and surfers and happy, sun-kissed people is put back to order.

It’s during those months where the days last forever and the nights are sleepy and warm that I’m reminded that restoration can be a cyclical process. We have days, weeks, months where our lives feel out-of-focus, where all of our plans and goals and dreams seem to be lost in some fog-covered horizon. There are times where we feel that all that was supposed to come to fruition, all that we were expecting gets crushed by a broken reality.

And for a second, we forget hope.

I think about what Jesus’ disciples felt like when he was beaten, shamed, crucified.
They must have felt like their entire existence was torn into a billion miniscule pieces.
Like how San Diego feels in June, only amplified by an infinite number.

This wasn’t supposed to happen.
It wasn’t supposed to pan out like this.
He was supposed to victoriously conquer this broken place,
He was supposed to bring His kingdom.

For those next few days, they must have faced a gloomy, abysmal future. They must have been broken-hearted that their hope for a new and better realm seemed lost. They must have felt out of place.

But then He conquered death.

Then August came, then the sun found its way out of the misty-skies, then Jesus rose from the grave. Living, breathing, tangible restoration was pulled from the ashes and brought back to life.

There will be June gloom here on the coast of California, there will be snow in Minnesota in winter, there will be amber, rusty colored leaves in Central Park mid-October. But everything in nature experiences a restoration, and the Earth points to that: summer still comes. The grass grows back, the world comes out of hibernation, the harvest still arrives. You will have bad days. Or weeks. Or seasons. You will have periods of complete and total insecurity, where the unknown consumes everything you were previously sure of.

But everything Jesus did, all the miracles he performed, his victory over death all point to God’s desire for restoration in ourselves, and on this Earth. So today, tomorrow, and throughout these next few months of unfamiliar territory, I just have to remind myself, continuously

That Jesus makes all things new.

Love, Where is Your Fire?

So this was originally just supposed to be a blog about my upcoming mission trip to Thailand, but I realized

it's only a short time there,
and I have a lot of other stuff to say.
(Plus, I'm going to Europe, China, and India as well; it wouldn't be fair to leave them out of the mix.)

So, here's to writing, and moving, and graduating, and new beginnings, and fiery, unquenchable, all-consuming love.



But finals first.