Good for Good

Back on the blog because it’s been awhile! 

I moved to Colorado, as you probably know. It has been an interesting few months of learning to live in the tension of grief and joy. Giving up a good thing to grab hold of a good thing. One thing I’m learning is that transition is hard but feels normal to me. Over the last few years I have been to a lot of places that weren’t familiar. I would get into a country and have to learn the culture and the city just enough to get by for a month or two and then I would head home. Which is the difference in this current season. I’m here in Colorado and everything is so new and unfamiliar. I have to use my maps most of the time when I’m in the car. I’m learning a new job and new co-workers. I’m learning new roommates. And the difference is that I’m not leaving here anytime soon. I have to begin to settle and make this place home and that is proving to be the most difficult part. 

Transition is familiar, settling isn’t. 

I like to think I was settled in Georgia but really with all of the coming and going and with the year to year decision of whether or not I was going to take another squad I feel as though I always knew it wasn’t permanent. I wasn’t deeply rooted in the way I feel I can be here. 

And while it didn’t ever seem completely permanent I was still thriving and loving every minute of it. I made deep friendships there and I loved my job. When I made the decision to stop mentoring I was a wreck. When I left Georgia I cried all the way across the country as I drove myself to Colorado. It was a grief that I wasn’t fully expecting but I know means that I left a really good thing with some really good people. I am loving Colorado. Climbing 14ers, riding some of the most beautiful roads I’ve ever seen on a bike, and getting back into a rhythm of running and staying active. I am working at a job that is doing some really incredible things for at-risk youth and growing closer and closer to my co-workers as we do this thing together. For the first month or so I kept saying that I just felt like I was on the field jumping into help a ministry wherever they needed me. The unfamiliarity felt familiar and comfortable. As time is going on and I am having to learn what it actually means to make this place home it’s feeling more and more weird. 

It feels backwards. One would think the transition would be the hardest part but it’s the digging roots into a place that I don’t have an end date for that’s harder. It’s fighting to get into a routine and rhythm and keep it. It’s the choosing to say yes to hanging out with people after work even though I’m so tired knowing that I need community. It’s making myself sit and spend time with the Lord even though that seems to be one of the first things to fall when life feels exhausting. All of it on top of a global pandemic, injustice and an election year makes for quite the whirlwind.

 The Lord always reminds me of when the Israelites entered into the Promised Land. It wasn’t easy. He literally says it’s a place of hills and valleys. And then they had to battle time and time again to conquer the land that was Promised to them, it wasn’t just handed over. That’s where I feel like I am. I’ve walked into this Promised Land and it’s taking some digging and wrestling to conquer it and make it my own. It’s taking a whole lot of grace for myself when I have a week where I don’t crack open my bible or go to the gym. It’s being honest with people about where I’m at and apologizing when my attitude got the best of me. It’s pushing myself just a little bit further than I think I can go whether it be physically, spiritually or emotionally. 

This place will feel like home eventually. And eventually I won’t have this sadness about missing Georgia as much as I currently do. But for now, I shall keep taking one step ahead and enjoying this beautiful place He’s let me move to!