As a writer – or at least a person that attempts to write on occasion – I love words. I am in awe of the fact that one simple sentence can make someone’s heart dance and just as quickly shatter an illusion. I find inspiration in individual words and the way their meaning can undulate like a wave depending on its context.
About a year ago, I wrote a post talking about the meaning of the word “home”. Circumstances in my life had required me to move to a shared house and the definition I had created in my heart and mind for “home” didn’t fit this new circumstance. I was angry and hurt about where life – and God – had led me. While I didn’t blame God for where I was, I did feel confused about why I couldn’t finally rest in the definition of home that I had; why my life had to, yet again, be sent into upheaval like a game of 52 card pickup. I didn’t know where I was going to find the strength to yet again move forward.
Now here I am, a full year later, and the definition of the word “home” has changed again.
I have been lucky enough to find a new place that to lay my head at night and over the past three months, have worked hard to create a space that is an image of me now, not who I have been in the past or who I may be in the future. As lovely as this has been, it has also been a difficult process for me because for nearly 10 years, home always meant the place where my adoring dog was. The actual building or what the building housed didn’t matter. What mattered was that whatever door I walked into, my baby girl was there to greet me.
But now she’s gone.
And now, here I am in beautiful new place – a place she never even stepped a little white-tipped paw in – and I see her everywhere. I yearn for her to be at the door to greet me when I come back from work, I still turn to give her a piece of cheese when I made a sandwich, and I find myself wondering where she is or how her day is when I’m away. Her loss has broken my heart, but it has also done something else.
It has allowed me the chance to redefine what home looks like just for me. For the first time in my life, I am not worrying that someone else is going to dislike my choice of décor or that there isn’t a place to house knickknacks or heirlooms. I am not wondering what things I need to arrange to make it easier for my girl to get around nor do I have to worry about the bunnies that reside outside my door being chased or barked at all day long. No, this was not what I had planned or desired, but it is what God has given me for this time in my life and I have chosen to embrace it.
The thing that I have found as I work through this grief is that I – and I believe all of us – are often not willing to allow the meaning of the words and the importance they hold in our lives to change as they need to in order to adapt to our every growing and changing lives. We like things the way they have always been and spend a good deal of time and energy fighting the changes that come our way to help us grow.
Recently, I have seen this play out clearly and painfully with some friends of mine who are going through some similar “growth opportunities” where they, too, are having to redefine some words for themselves – words like family and love. In some situations, this is because of the blessings of marriage or children, but in some situations, this is because the current definition of what family or love looks like no longer fits the reality of the situation in front of them and they are angry, frustrated, and sad.
I get it. I really do. We go into situations with an idea of what they will look like only to be disappointed with the fact that our expectations weren’t met. We start a new job with an idea that the people we will be working with will be great only to find out that we don’t mesh well with them and struggle. We go into a new friendship thinking our new friend feels the same way we do about issues we feel strongly about only to find out they have very different views and we are forced to decide whether or not we are willing to accept those differences.
Or we get married and believe that marriage looks a certain way and that the person we married will either always be the same or that we will grow and change in the same directions as do they do because, after all, isn’t that what married couples do?
But that isn’t the case. The definitions of the words marriage and love must change with time but just because we accept this intellectually doesn’t mean that we don’t fight hard against the reality of the situation. We fight the need to allow the definitions we have created in our hearts and minds for these words – these relationships – to change with time.
How many times have you heard or said my spouse/friend/significant other isn’t the person they used to be? And how many times, when you’re expressing this thought, are you absolutely devastated or infuriated by that reality? It happens to me all the time and since I’m pretty sure I’m not alone here, I assume it happens to you as well. The way I see it, this happens because we haven’t allowed our definition of who that person is – their role in our lives and the word we have attached to the emotions we have for that person to change. We want them to be who we imagined them to be from the get go. But that can’t ever actually be the case.
All people and all relationships must be able to change and grow and we, as loving, faith-filled people, must grow and change along with them. This doesn’t mean that we necessarily change in the same direction that they do, but it does mean that we allow ourselves to see beyond our own desires and needs and move in a direction that is unfamiliar and perhaps uncomfortable.
Here’s the bottom line.
Life is full of change – good and bad. Our jobs as members of this society and this faith community is to must allow the words that we use to frame experiences and relationships grow and change instead of putting them all in a big, black, margin-indented book and assume that they will forever be the same. God did not create us to live in a vacuum so despite the pain change can cause, we must trust that His plan for those changes is greater than the pain. We must allow those nearest to us to define themselves – their thoughts, needs and desires – as fluidly for us as we want them to allow us to for them. In so doing we allow the individual words used to describe a person and relationship to as unique as they are. Sure, there are only a few words in the English language that express what we refer to as love, but if we are gracious with the people around us, we will see that each use of that same word will reflect the specific qualities of the individual to which it is attached.
So as I spend this summer redefining “home” for myself, I pray that you also can find ways to redefine important words and phrases for yourself with the full understanding that these definitions, too, will change.
Its a cold and dreary day here today which seems appropriate since I’m feeling a little dreary myself. It’s not that there’s really anything wrong, per se, but I am in a place where I need to make a change in my life that I don’t want to make
The New Year is rapidly descending upon us and I know that many of us are more than happy to be rid of 2016. This year has brought such strife – political unrest, death of beloved celebrities, economic woes, and on and on. Ah yes, the New Year has to be better, right?
am in one of those “in-between” times…between jobs, between relationships, between big events, waiting the next new chapter of my life to begin. Waiting can be a challenging thing. As I’ve stated before, it makes me question my decisions and my abilities and I have to admit that recently I have wondered whether I’ve completely missed the opportunity that the Lord has provided me my being too “me”…
little piece of information that I have glossed over dozens of times, but that little piece of information is actually quite important. At this time Jesus is on the road between Samaria and Galilee – literally between a group of people that were considered by the Jewish people to be “the bad guys” – the Samarians – and the people considered to be “the good guys” – the Galileans. The lepers were there because they could not live in their home cities due to their illness. It must have been very distressing. Not only were they each afflicted with this horrible disease, but from the perspective of the men from Galilee, they were forced to live with someone they considered to be their enemy – the man from Samaria. Since there were nine Galileans, I can’t help but wonder how long it took for the “good guys” to allow the one Samaritan to be near them; how long the sole Samaritan had to live in isolation before he was accepted by the others. Regardless, there in that “in-between” place, the outcasts became unified to some degree and they created their own community which no longer cast the Samaritan as an enemy, but only as a person similarly afflicted.
may not have associated with before or not understood now become more a part of our circle if they, too, are in-between. When one sits in an unemployment office or goes to meet with state agencies for assistance, the differences between us melt away. We are all in the same desert waiting for the same drop of water to quench our need.
existence “in-between”. He was changed and, more importantly, he wanted to remain changed.
But we also have the opportunity to learn to experience new blessings and mercies we would not have had in our life before the “in-between”. We have the opportunity to find the “there” there – to find joy, peace and the gifts that God provides us each and every day in places we previously didn’t know existed let alone ever thought we would find ourselves.
I have to give a shout out to my favorite work out community, 
Now I can’t say this definitively, but I am feel fairly certain I am not alone in the way this word affects me. I believe this because we all become defensive when told we are wrong. We find excuses for why something happened or how some event came about or why we believe the way we do. The word “wrong” has become personal definition rather than just being an objective statement of a fact about something external from you and I.
As I walked away from my workout this morning, I challenged myself to do something and I would like to challenge you with the same.
There is a heartbeat of any place where people congregate. It’s an internal rhythm that can not only be felt, but can be see in the movement of its cars and people; slower in rural areas, faster and more energetic in cities. I know this isn’t a new concept but I was reminded of it as I sat in an office on the 16th street mall in Denver looking down on those ant-like skitterings of humans and vehicles making their way through their busy – or not so busy – day.
The joy of being both human and a member of a faith community is just like the excitement of being in the middle of a city that is being revitalized. Like that city, we have the ability to recreate ourselves; to take what was once there and recreate it into something not just newer, but better. Who we were before only adds dimension to who will choose to be tomorrow. But just like those who are looking at the shattered windows and graffitied walls of the city, we have to make a choice to change and accept that the choice will take work.
crookedroadfaith 