coming back to a city with finished roads and new buildings is fun until you don't know where you are. being able to drive again is nice until you realize 65 mph feels like you're about to fly off the freeway. i am experiencing similar feelings as i get back to so many relationships that have kind of been on pause. things have changed. i have changed.
it has officially been a full week of being back in Vegas. the feelings that i carry with me on a daily basis are kind of indesribable. and the only word that always comes to mind does not at all do them justice. but alas . . weird is what I feel. i find myself just observing the things and people around me. like i am relearning how to interact with the familiar atmosphere around me. my adjustment process is much like the way i am handling jetlag: i try to engage as much as possible before my body just won't let me go on. i am realizing it is okay to zone out, existing is all that matters sometimes. God does not expect me to be super; that's His job. life is a process even here in lovely las vegas with so much that i love. yet it seems like i have been apart from it for so long.
the other day, in the throws of running around and visiting people before they holiday, i was thinking about what God has been doing while I have been gone. everyone i run into wants to hear stories from my life these past 6 months. but i want to hear theirs. as we exchange tales, i understand more and more something my father told me the night he picked me up from the airport. "you will never know how much your choice to go has impacted people." before i found it a bit absurd, but i may have just been sleep deprived. with each day that i am home, i am beginning to see what he was pointing out: the value that God has in calling us to 'Go.'
i know for myself, being away from home and friends and family left a gaping hole that had to be filled. there was a void and walking away from my natural habitat forced it to be filled with something other than what I readily had access to. i had to find something else and i had to learn how to get it. Jesus told the disciples before he ascended to heaven, "But in fact, it is best for you that I go away, because if I don't, the Advocate won't come. If I do go away then I will send him to you."-John16:7 The Advocate is the Holy Spirt, our Comforter, our Encourager, our Counselor, our Friend. He is meant to fill the void.
Jesus said he had to go, in order for Holy Spirit to come. So it makes sense that we on earth would experience this, too. Looking at my life and the ones of those I love, I can now see the value God had for the absense we endured. So much growth has ensued! Beyond the unexpected accolades of people expressing how my journey has inspired them (super weird btw). Beyond the tangible differences I can see in my character and my own personal walk with my God. Right now, what encourages me the most are those lives I left behind 6 months ago. Those family members and friends who offer up stories of the valleys they trekked through and how they reached the mountain on the other side. And how they came to be the thriving lights that I have the extreme priviledge of returning to this Christmas season.
i am not saying that i came back to a perfect world. not at all. but i am grateful to have come home to a place that i vaguely recognize, physically and spiritually. because God has evidently been hard at work in His garden (John 15). He has been tending to his branches and showing us all what it means to abide in His love. and how to watch expectedly for the Advocate. we get to rest and reminisce, knowing that the manger has long been empty and God our Savior is a Man sitting on a heavenly throne. Yet, he is also ever with us. Emmanuel. God with us wherever we go.
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