On Leaving & Jeremiah 29

Our windows are open tonight.  The warm air that is South Carolina in March is blowing through, and I'm overwhelmed by how much I love this place.

Not specifically this house, although now that my baby is growing up here, I like it a lot more.  I see places where she plays and stairs that she learns to climb on and doorways that she peeks her head out of so much more, and I see overspray on the brick and missing quarter round and sagging crown molding much less.  When we bought this house, my intention was for it to be a three-year house.  Just long enough to get us through the end of my PhD.  I struggled off and on with hating it, for all of the things that it wasn't.  Open floor plan. precisely constructed. modern.  And now, when we're entertaining ideas about leaving it, I find myself curiously attached.

But maybe its not so curious.
I mean, who doesn't love that faux wood paneling in a small kitchen?
I'm really helping this place out if we go to sell it, aren't I?

In a "I will remember you fondly but there's your door and I'll let it slam on the way out" sort of way, not in an "I wanna live here for eva" sort of way.  Make no mistake.  This house, although the memories will be missed, and the great morning and afternoon light it has always gotten will be reminisced about, is leave-able.

But while we're entertaining ideas that would lead to us leaving this house, we're also entertaining ideas that would lead to us leaving this place.  This 70* in March place.  This sweet-tea-or-bust, yes-ma'am-no-sir, fixin' to and 'pert near place.

That's definitely not a "let the door hit chya" type of thing.  Apparently, I am a southern girl.  I wasn't born a southern girl, and only God knows how long I'll get to stay here, but I love it here; I've found my people.  I was made for the southern life.  It explains why I've always loved mason jars so well!  (If you also love mason jars, you should consider the south.  Just sayin'.)

When we moved here S-I-X years ago, it did not feel like home.  Oh, I fought it.  It was new and scary and different and so. far. away. from our families and my nieces and nephews were growing up without me and I didn't know anyone at the grocery store.  I could go to Walmart in my rattiest pajamas without fear of running into someone I knew.  I missed that.  I pined for that.  I walked the sidewalk in front of our first apartment, playing balance beam on the parking blocks, crying on the phone to anyone with an 814 area code who would listen.

I clung to Joshua 29, a letter to the exiles.  I know a lot of people love verse 11, and with good reason.  " 'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord.  Plans to prosper you and not to harm you.  To give you a hope, and a future."  And I agree that that verse can give a lot of comfort.  But I liked to move a few verses back and just hang out with verse 7.  " 'Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you... and pray to the Lord on its behalf.  For in its welfare, you will have welfare.' "

So we sought our city's welfare (using "city" in the loosest of terms).  We joined things and knew people and became known to them.  We developed friendships and volunteered and eventually, after much work and dedication and shopping cart wrangling, we began to see people we knew at the grocery store.  And I read Joshua 29 again, and I saw that verse 5 said to "build houses and live in them.  Plant gardens and eat their produce." and so we did.  Of course, we did it for other reasons, like low mortgage rates and a love for digging potatoes.  But we did it.  We put down roots.  We really invested in this place.

Verse 6 says to "take wives and become fathers of sons and daughters..."  Again, not because we were following the step-by-step instructions, but all the same, we did this.  We began our legacy here.  We are now attached to this place in a way that can never be erased, our names printed on a birth certificate beside the names "Mother" and "Father" with "Greenville, South Carolina" in the location line.  For the rest of her life, when Riley fills out serious government paperwork, it will call back to this place.  The place where we were "exiled".

And now, it might all change again.  I've got a job interview the end of this month, and getting/taking that job would send us packing, to a place closer to home, but not home.  We would start over again.  Tonight, partially because this is big and partially because I'm having a hard time with DST and didn't get much sleep, this potentiality seems like a gaping hole I can't even begin to cross.  Think "The Great Divide" from Land Before Time and you'll be on the right track.  I can't fathom leaving here, beginning again back in verse 7, then verse 5, and 6.

But I do know this: We did what we were supposed to.  Even if we do end up having to leave, even if it means starting over, even if the fact that we have such deep roots means that it will hurt so much more to rip them out, we did what God asked of us, and I'm not sorry.  And if He asks us to do it again, I will.  I don't know how, but I will.  Because He is faithful, even when we've run out of faith, and I know he will lead, as He always has.

I don't talk about this with many people, because we know so few location-indiscriminate types.  You might call them gypsies.  Most of our friends are either back home, where we spent our first 22 years, or here, where we've been for 6, and they each want us with them, which is nice but also hard.  So thanks, invisible internet friends, for letting me talk to you about it.  ;)

<3 M.