Have Cheap Luggage, Will Travel

I don't really feel like I have a home. You know that place where you can know that you can just be comfortable in and that you can say, "This is home."

We moved around quite a bit when I was growing up. I lived in 7 different houses in two states before I turned 18. The house that I spent most of my junior and high school time in was sold when my parents divorced when I was in college. Since then both of my parents have lived in several different places and will probably not stay very long in the one that they live in right now. In fact, my Dad basically flips houses for a living.

So, I consider the apartment that I am currently living in my home. The problem is that something always comes up and I seem to move every year. To make it worse, most of the time when I move it also includes a roommate change.

I really hate the moving time because it is a reminder again that I have no home. I leave my pictures up on the wall until the last possible moment before moving. Until I started writing this, I didn't realize how hung up I am on it.

Anyway, I am in the process of moving again but am actually homeless right now as my lease doesn't start until the 1st. So, my sense of instability is in hyper mode right now hence the reason for this blog.

Instability - I guess that is really it. As I creep up on 30, I guess I am really craving some stability. That is probably why I have been thinking about marriage so much lately and evaluating all the guys I meet against the "could I marry him" yardstick. And yes, that means that if you are a guy and I have talked to you in the last year, I have already evaluated if I could marry you or not. :) Like marriage is an inoculation against instability, but in my single mind it sounds pretty good.

My craving for stability is something like I haven't eaten all day and I just have to eat something which kinda scares me. In those moments when you are starving and just have to eat something no matter what it is, McDonald's even sounds good.

Instability. Cravings. Ramblings. As I ride back "home" on a plane alone, these thoughts cloud my mind. Hopefully I will have something new to worry and ramble on about soon.

Love you guys.

Disclaimer to my mother This is not a slam against your parenting. I knew that you might think that and I thought I would nip it before it was an issue. :)

Every wonder why you always meet 20 year olds that have all the answers to life and 30 year olds that feel like life has a leg up on them? I think it is because the older that you get the more you realize that you have no idea what you are doing.

Well, here I am fully admitting that I have no idea what I am doing and that the life I have is not the life I planned. I never thought that by the time I was closing in on 30 that I would not be married, still living pay check to pay check and not have a 5 year plan. So were did I go wrong? Let's see if we can figure it out.

I can't help but laugh when I think back to my little 18 year self setting out with huge plans and knowing that the college world that I was entering into was in for the shock of its life when it got a hold of me. Well, turns out that they were doing fine before I showed up and after I spent 7 years there, turns out that they are also just fine without me. So I learned my first lesson - The world doesn't need me.

Okay, how about a job? That is a smaller mountain to tackle than the world. When I got my first job out of college, I remember thinking that they had no idea what was in for them (even though I had already learned lesson number one.) I made a huge impact right away and eventually when that ended, turns out that they are still in business. Who knew? Lesson number two - Work does not need me.

So if my jobs don't need me, than maybe I can find a person that needs me. This also is good for a laugh or some pity if you think about it. I met a very nice guy who had a fine life without me and after 6 years that ended, turns out that we are just fine without each other. Life goes on. Lesson number three People don't need me.

I think my problem has been that I have been waiting on something else to depend on me to define my existence when the Lord was just waiting around for me to depend on him to define my existence. We talked this week in church about Ecclesiastes 1 (below) and I think it is the reason for my thoughts.

"Vanity of vanities! All is vanity." What advantage does man have in all his work which he does under the sun? A generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. That which has been is that which will be, and that which has been done is that which will be done. So there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one might say, "See this, it is new"? Already it has existed for ages which were before us.

I think what I am saying is piddling around in the vanities of life (since everything outside of the Lord is really a vanity) and not really leaning on God is where I went wrong. So - I am a 28 year old, un-married, un-wealthy person who has no idea what she is doing and I think that is a good place to be.

Lately, I have been volunteering through with my church in downtown Dallas by partnering with a church that has literally transformed the crime rate in their area by buying buildings that used to be crack houses and turning them into ministries like half way houses and pregnancy centers. All this with a staff of 2 people. Very cool stuff.

When I have gone down there to volunteer, I have meet people that are incredibly receptive to hearing about Christianity and people that are much nicer to strangers that I ever am. Interacting with these people has really changed me personally and I have become addicted to serving because it is somewhat of a high. Everyday I see that the Lord is after balance in my life because I recently saw that my service for the Lord isn’t always going to be such a fairy tale.

In my latest trip to volunteer for the downtown church, we were painting some houses in the neighborhood that the pastor had started making relationships with. The houses were old and we had to scrape several layers of paint off before we could put some new paint on them. The girl I was working with was up on a ladder which was broken so I had to stand underneath it to brace it. We got to a spot that apparently birds loved to roost on because it was caked with bird poop. So she had to scrape off the bird poop and since I was bracing the ladder, it was coming down on me. As I was getting showered with little flecks of dried bird poop, I thought what a different experience this was for me as opposed to the other times.

The true heart of local missions is finding a way to really connect with somebody on a regular basis to be Jesus to them and the best person in this situation to be that for the people in these houses was not me but the pastor of that church. My service was allowing him to become closer to the lost in his neighborhood.

So service can change you but it isn’t all about you. It took a shower of dried bird poop to teach me that.