I was cleaning up my apartment last night and it hit me, this is the longest I’ve lived in any one place since 1999.  Which leads me to think about all the constant transitioning that has been my life for almost ten years.  While during a few of those years I was just moving from dorm to dorm, it was still a different set of walls each year, which I count as moving.

This incessant moving has contributed to a character flaw which is the byproduct of dealing with constant change: I’ve become hardened to friendship.  I love friends.  There is perhaps no greater joy for me than to be silly and vulnerable with my girlfriends.  And through all my previous moves I have never had a problem making and keeping close friends.  It was something I learned how to do during all the moves of my childhood (which could be a whole other blog altogether; the longest we ever stayed in a place during my childhood was five years…still my record).  So why, now, with a community of attractive (in a friendship way) young women, do I have such trouble opening up and feeling at home?

The question remains.  I don’t really have an answer, except to land it in the anticipation of our next move.  I am yet again in the state of flux that comes with every pending move: depending on the speed of support raising, Edwin and I will be picking up stakes in less than a year in order to make it to the Philippines.  Spiritually, I’ve begun to view myself as a transient.  I’m a bedouin for Jesus.  He leads, I follow, and where He leads is often not here, wherever “here” may be at the moment.  Apparently, He’s been training me to keep earthly ties loose so that I might more readily GO.

Which, when I think about the life I have prayed to live for Him, is an answer to prayer.  I have promised Him, “Wherever, Lord, I’ll go.”  I even kept that promise to the point of staying in Mississippi when all I wanted to do was to go to the mission field.  And over time, His time, He has prepared me for that mission field, the one I had no clue I’d be going to: the Philippine Islands (with a filipino husband, no less!  Never saw that coming!).

And I return to contentment.  I am but a sojourner passing through.  I don’t doubt the future existence of deep friendships.  I trust God’s timing and the work He’s been doing on me; there is undoubtedly a reason He has kept me “single” this past year.  In one sense, I’ve been single in friendships so that I might be wholeheartedly married.  And beyond and deeper than that, my roots are pushing past the rough soil that had stunted their growth and they are once again reaching deep into the “soil of God’s marvelous love” (Eph 3:17).

Where I’ve lived since 1999:
99-00: Bacot dorm floor 2, Millsaps College
00-01: Bacot dorm floor 3, Millsaps College
01-02: New South dorm, hall, Millsaps College
02-03: New South dorm, atrium, Millsaps College
03-04: with the parents, Natchez, MS
04-June 05: with roommate in Pearl, MS
June-Dec 05: Wesley Biblical Seminary dorm, Jackson, MS
Jan-Oct 06: New Song Women’s Discipleship house, Oceanside, CA
Oct 06-Oct 07: apartment on my own!  Vista, CA
Oct 07-present: apartment with my husband (He moved in after the wedding!), Vista, CA

planned: present-May 09: our apartment
May-Aug 09: missionary training in North Carolina
Aug 09-?: ???
early 2010-???: Philippines