Letting go of my Nomadic Spirit

Remember the topic Not Settling for Less than God's Best?

What if not settling for less than God's best is staying put.  Right here?

That's a HARD thing for this nomadic spirit to grasp.  Moving is my thing!  I really should have kept all the license plates I've acquired since college.  If it's not states then at the very least it's apartments.  

My nomadic side is currently finding itself screaming on the inside; whimpering to God:

"But WHY can't I go overseas?!"

"WHY can't I live closer to my longtime friends who KNOW me and I them?"

"WHY am I STILL a nanny?"

"WHY do You have me here in the seemingly mundane while I want ADVENTURE!?"

I'm not even talking about close-call-could've-died
adventure like this....at least I don't think...

In the past few years I have watched God move people away from stable, midwest communities to the unknown environments abroad.  For steady midwesterners that's a BIG deal.  

We're talking farm communities.  Places where flying on an airplane is not a normal way to visit family.  After all, family lives across town (or just down the road!)  

A region where it's encouraged and assumed you want to and will be married shortly after college.  If you have to wait that long!  People back home stopped asking me if I had anyone special in my life a loong time ago.  Now I get asked if I desire to be an Old Maid the rest of my life!  Ha!  After all, I'm the ripe "old" age of 29!  

It's one of those rare places left in the U.S. where you grow up learning to be a stay-at-home mom if you're a woman (while of course encouraged to have ambitions of your own!) and a hard working provider if you're a man.  You stay put.   

Yet I can think of several families/individuals whom God has rocked their stable worlds and brought them to a different place of obedience: overseas missions.

People I've known to be faithful servers, givers, and prayers in their churches and in missions while never thinking they'd leave their jobs, their homes, their family to go abroad.  

People I went to high school with that never in a million years would any of us have thought they'd be missionaries one day.  

I am jealous.  Admittedly, not a righteous jealousy.  I want to go!!!

Yet here I am.  

Asking the Lord for forgiveness as I read scriptures like Jeremiah 29:11 and Psalm 37:2-7 and find myself half-heartedly hoping, believing, trusting.  

Battling frustration that here I sit waiting.  My heart has been full-time service to the Lord since I was a young teen.  It was all I pursued.  Yet for three years (how is it I KNOW that's not a long time yet if feels like an eternity?) I've been waiting? Waiting and watching the Lord take people who had been content in their small communities to a place thousands of miles away in a foreign land.

There it is.  Right there.  I am not content.  This nomadic spirit is tired of the inconsistency of rehab and wants to soar!  There's so much world to see and so many people that have yet to know Christ as their Loving Savior.

Then Proverbs 31 Ministries shared this timely post, Live Where You Live. 

Look for the opportunities in today.  In the here and now.  I can't compare being in full-time ministry or going abroad to do missions.  Why?  Because that's simply not my here and now.

My here and now is Denver, Colorado.  

It's not even the mountains every weekend.  

It's more often the city - a place that's reminding me more and more how much I miss small towns (if for nothing other than simply making it faster/easier to do errands!)

In my here and now I can ask Jesus for a sensitive heart to see the brokenness around me.  Right here in this community.

I can listen to the Holy Spirit and, instead of driving away from the grocery store parking lot immediately, allow the tears to flow for the lost people I saw inside.  And pray.  For God's love to shine through.  Right there.  In that moment.

I can choose not to be all city-fied and instead be horrified when I witness a male prostitute get out of the backseat of a car in my neighborhood park.  And pray.  For God's love to shine through.  Right there.  In that moment.   

I can read or listen to the news when I really want to block out the depravity.  And pray.  For God's love to shine through.  Right there.  In that moment. 

I can choose not to complain or ignore when we hear and smell things which are not God-honoring from our neighbors.  And pray.  For God's love to shine through.  Right there.  In that moment.

If the worship at the all white-American church is not connecting with me, I can close my eyes and praise God for the men and women that it's changing their lives.  I may not get why I'm still there but I can listen to the Holy Spirit and take that time in the midst of the concert-like noise to quiet myself before Him.  And pray.  For God's love to shine through.  Right there.  In that moment.  

This nomadic gal is eager to go teach english while partnering with a missions organization in a closed or restricted country (you know, adventure is sometimes synonymous with danger and that's just thrilling!)   

Yet I'm here and need to live where I live.  

While frustrating rehab inconsistencies still exist, healing has and continues to take place.  I may not be able to fly abroad just yet.  It may not even be a door the Lord has me walk through for a very long time.  Who knows.  But I DO KNOW that I DON'T want to settle for less than HIS best in the HERE and NOW.

"See, I am doing a new thing! 
Now it springs up; 
do you not perceive it? 
I am making a way in the wilderness 
and streams in the wasteland."  

Isaiah 43:19