Home is Where the Heart Is
One of the many beautiful things about growing up as a TCK (Third Culture Kid) is I am quick to call most anything “home.” This can be confusing for other people. I remember the first time J.J. and I traveled together. It was getting late and I was tired so I told him “let’s go home” implying: “let’s go back to our hotel.” He immediately assumed I wasn’t enjoying our vacation and wanted to go back to Albuquerque, which was the furthest from the truth! I am quick to call “home” wherever I lay my head, even if just for one night. Needless to say, that means I have a lot of homes scattered all of the world.
All that said, it’s good to be home. While we miss the beautiful city of Cape Town and we miss our friends, it’s been so good to be back in Albuquerque this past month. We’ve loved catching up with friends and family, eating New Mexican food, and getting re-settled in the cutest-house-you-ever-did-see. J.J. has jumped head-first into work and is enjoying being a part of the Desert Fuels team again.
For my part, I am “temporarily-retired” and am doing my best to stay busy during the day. It has been a sweet time where I get to spend a long, extended time in the morning with God and then take care of errands or honey-do’s around the house. I get to make ridiculously delicious things for dinner and walk to pick J.J. up from the bus stop when he gets off work. I get to go to the zoo with some of my nieces and nephews and meet my parents for a coffee date mid-morning. I’m sure I’ll head back to work soon but until then I am loving this gift of time that I’ve been given.
Every morning God has sweet & kind words of encouragement for me. He’s reminded me that I find my worth by who HE says I am, not what I do. He has shown me through the story of Jonah that he will never flippantly respond “well you made your bed, now sleep in it” but instead will fiercely pursue and rescue me no matter what I’ve done. From washing dishes, to folding laundry, to weeding our backyard He is there by my side drawing me deeper into His love.
Bloom Where You’re Planted
At this point our backyard is mostly weeds with some dirt and a few intentional trees/bushes. After spending the better part of my morning weeding it remains mostly weeds with some dirt and a few intentional trees/bushes. As I kneeled in the dirt I whispered to our still very dead bushes that it’s almost spring and they should think about blooming soon but then in the same breath I cursed the stubbornness and plethora of weeds. Wondering why God made weeds so easy to grow and so difficult to pull, I realized there was probably a very Biblical lesson in all of this.
In Genesis 3 God tells man that he’ll be weeding gardens for the rest of his days because of his sin. I don’t think that was just the first curse that came to God’s mind when Adam sinned. I think he very intentionally picked a picture that compared weeds we find in the dirt to sin in our lives. I didn’t have to water the weeds. I didn’t have to whisper positive thoughts for them to grow. I didn’t even have to actively plant them. If I turn my back on my yard, as I did for the past year, weeds will take over and steal the water from and strangle the life out of the fruit bearing plants.
Sin works in much the same way – sin grows when we aren’t daily taking it to God and nailing it on the cross. If you let God deal with your sin the minute it rears its ugly head, it’s so easy to pull out. But if you ignore it, run away from God and pretend like you don’t see it, the sin spreads and the roots can grow so deep that it’s near impossible to pull out. Luckily, this is where the analogy breaks down. There were weeds with such deep roots that I did not have the finger strength to pull them out. However, when we approach God with humility and repentance, no sin is too deep for God to remove. He even makes us whole where the sin’s root left a hole!
Genesis 3:17-19
To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’
“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”
If You Take Big Paces You Leave Big Spaces. ~ Burmese Proverb
The pace of my life during this time is a lot slower than what I’m used to. While I am looking forward to when I will have a more productive and structured day at an office, I am also making sure to savor the sweet parts of this season. What a blessing to get to take care of things around the house so we don’t have to worry about them when J.J. gets home! And how lovely to get to share experiences with those I love most and haven’t gotten to see very much, if at all, over the past year. I’m so thankful that God has given me this gift of time and am excited to see what He reveals to me tomorrow!
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