Back Roads to Belonging by Kristen Strong

Author:Kristen Strong [Strong, Kristen]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: REL012120, REL012070, Christian Living/Women, REL012130
ISBN: 9781493417902
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2019-08-05T16:00:00+00:00

When I think of this in terms of finding our place and people, it seems like a good parallel plan.

Stay at your launching place and keep looking.

Watch your own life and begin noticing where you already belong.

Study ways you can reach out to others so you can recognize a good opportunity to do so.

Be patient, because larger belonging places are rarely forged overnight.

The Lord never acts in arbitrary ways. He acts in purposeful ways.

And the LORD set a time, saying, “Tomorrow the LORD will do this thing in the land. And the next day the LORD did this thing.” (Exod. 9:5–6)

Every comet that shows itself to us is on the divine calendar. The end of every struggle is on the divine calendar too—including our struggle to belong as we’re meant to belong. We need only remain at the eyepiece (or the living room or sidewalk or Starbucks patio or city park) to see it. But as we wait, let’s not miss his showering splendor.

I imagine that while those hunting for comets sit and wait, they see all kinds of other marvelous finds. Fast-rotating satellites. Quick-draw shooting stars. Ancient-named constellations. A thousand pictures of God’s wonder made visible while staring through the eyepiece.

It makes me ask myself, As you wait for your own larger belonging place to show, Kristen, what other pictures of beauty can you find where you are right now?

This lesson was brought home especially well after I returned from summer vacation with my family. Having largely ignored social media in favor of family shenanigans at one of our favorite out-of-town spots, I plopped down on our porch and visited the ol’ Instagram and Facebook. And within about two minutes of social media grazing, I gobbled down one big, disappointing fact: several friends were getting together without me.

On the one hand, some of those friends had invited me to join them. I wasn’t able to do so on account of conflicting vacation plans. No big thing. But on the other hand, other friends were also getting together and hadn’t asked me to join them in the first place. Of course, they had no obligation to ask. They’re in charge of who they hang out with and when. Yet here they were on my Instagram feed, bossing all those “on the outside” feelings I didn’t know were there till I opened the Insta-door and let them in.

I’m on to them, however. This isn’t my first rodeo with FOMO (fear of missing out). No, ma’am. I’ve wrestled that steer to the ground, and on that day, I was in no mood to go backward.

For me, in that moment, I sensed the Lord asking me to name all the places I belonged, right then and there. So I opened the “notes” app on my phone and began to make a new old-fashioned list. I typed “Where I Belong” and listed the following:

God’s daughter, Jesus’s beloved

wife to David

mama to James, Ethan, and Faith

daughter, sister, aunt, niece, and cousin of the O’Neill and Meeks

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.