Transition

The past few weeks I've been moving.  Literally, from my seminary home back to my childhood home, and soon on to the next thing, but also figuratively.  I'm switching from my book smart self to a more engaged and hands on kind of ministry.  This summer I'll be taking part in Clinical Pastoral Education, or CPE. I'm looking forward to the change.

Moving isn't without difficulty, however friendly the change is.  When I was driving from seminary to my home, all I could think about was this small spot of plaster I had pulled off of the wall in my dorm room. Although they advertise as such, command strips do not always pull off neatly, and while moving out of my room I moved a little piece of wall with me.  Knowing I would be moving back into the same room in the fall, as well as trying desperately to try to avoid some housing fee, I had rearranged my furniture to cover up the offensive spot.  However, as I realized after I was hundreds of miles away, I had forgotten to move my bookshelf to cover it entirely before I left.  It would still be visible to anyone who walked into my room that I had damaged the wall.

This could be a story about the craftiness of seminarians.  But instead, this small spot became the focus for my aggravation about having to move, about having to invest emotion and energy into uprooting my life once again.  If that had been my room, really my room, for even longer than nine months, would I have to worry so much about a tiny chip in the wall?

Moving is tough.  Feeling adrift is difficult.  I've struggled with defining home recently.  Is seminary home?  Or my childhood house?  Or where I'll be living when I do CPE?  Why don't all the people I love just all move to one place and make this easier on me?

Now that I've settled (at least for a short time), I've decided to take a different approach.  How blessed am I to have so many different places to call home!  To leave seminary and recognize that I am sad because I will be leaving friends behind is a gift.  To struggle to move means I have put down deep and sustaining roots.  My home stretches far beyond a single place.

Here's to the next thing, and the God who abides wherever I decide to call home.