Inky Orchard

I miss absolutely everything about Lacoste. This is my fourth week of being home, and things aren’t exactly peachy perfect. My brother returned from Thailand two days before I flew home from France, and the two of us have been slightly funkified as of late. We miss where God took us over the past several months. Both the adventures we had and the experience of learning to trust God in another country, another culture – another context for life. But the amazing thing is that we have each other in this time of confusion. Coming back we are both asking questions like: Should I be going to college? Where are we going, God? Why am I studying this? Why have you made me this way? Where can I GO for you, God? – I’ll go anywhere! And in not knowing the answers to these questions, I find myself longing for the simple life in Lacoste.

I find myself missing the feel of tall weeds brushing my knees in the morning in the valley, dew drenched feet making the trek up for breakfast. I miss what it feels like to wake up to light gently streaming through orange curtains, coating my walls. My suitcase as my bedside table for alarm clock, watch, unused envelopes, and glasses. I find it easy to look back to time spent with my friends – on the terrace watching the climbing clouds change colors above the valley, in our Murrier room telling stories while piled onto one bed, staying up late weeping together over heartache. I miss living in community with them. I miss the quiet mornings on Tuesdays and Thursdays when I had the room to myself to spend with God. I miss the glory of the view – sitting on the rock ledge outside the Mac Lab to watch the afternoon shadows on the fields or late at night watching the stars reveal themselves across the enormous sky. Marveling at God everywhere. In all that I saw. In how I saw Him in my new friends.

At home I find myself in a very different season – one of rest and also of challenge. God is showing me ways that I don’t trust Him. Ways He wants me to trust Him. I want every scrap of my life to be surrendered fully to Christ. Holding back nothing for myself and for my own control – because He is showing me how He loves me and how strong He is. My God is relentless, and He wants all of me. He didn’t just make a way for me (that part is sweet!) – He wanted to make a way for me to be with Him again. Now my sinful soul is counted free. For God the just is satisfied to look on Him and pardon me! He wanted me! Not only did He declare me guiltless through the penalty Jesus paid for me on the cross, He wrote His NAME over mine. I am His! My questions are still valid. I don’t know the answers to them. But God does. So in this summer at home, I will content myself with simply being with my Father who loves me. And doing whatever it takes to fall more in love with Him. Wherever I am.