Sojourner

The process of adjusting here has been a lot more complex and prolonged than I expected. During the first six months or so, I was mostly taken by all this area has to offer and the thrill of finally having settled, but this past month, I’ve been consumed more by what I would call adaptation fatigue and situational dysthymia. The logistical hurdles, the flush of introductions, the initial wonder at available resources have passed, and now I am faced with day-to-day life in a place where I don’t quite feel like I belong yet. I feel oddly tired of introducing myself to new people, of forever putting myself out there without feeling truly understood. I feel blanketed at times with a heavy sense of loneliness or displacement. I find myself withdrawing or becoming easily judgmental of others.

Part of the challenge is finding sufficient space to process this all, I’m finding. Space to breathe in it. I’m constantly on the verge of burn-out from childcare: to my bitter discovery, living near my parents in Virginia meant not only more breaks from childcare than I had fully realized, but also a level of support in the practical and spiritual parenting of our kids that I now shoulder largely on my own. Secondly, this process has been different for me than for Dave, who is a native returning to his closest friends—it is still a process for him, but instead of naturally bringing us together, it tends to bring out our differences, in values, personality and upbringing. Lastly, if possible I tend to disregard my emotions in favor of function and appearances; in reality, I haven’t chosen to give my emotions space as much as felt, rather frustratingly, that I can’t escape them.

In this space, there are two truths that are seeping into my consciousness. One, we will always be creatures who long to belong and are shaped by where we live. I thought before the move, “well, places are less important to me than to Dave; I care more about just being settled inside our own home”—but the reality is, while it’s true that I never wanted to live in Virginia forever and don’t necessarily want to move back now, I am apparently very much a product of the culture in which I have lived most of my life. This is inescapable. I am adapting in superficially functional ways—I now expect bikers and pedestrians at every stop sign, only “landfill” if it can’t be composted or recycled, own yoga pants and hiking sneakers, have upgraded Mac products, can push my way through the constant crowds of Asians at Costco—but in deeper ways I still feel like I’m swimming against the tide. I choose following Jesus over ideologies that value self-determinism, personal freedom or total inclusivity above all else. I tend to feel that chinos or jeans equal casual wear. I value common civility, maybe even a tad of Southern gentility, in public. I feel wary of the pervasive stress and busyness, the sense that success can be maneuvered into with the right kinds of programs and activities.

So I am more of a southern Virginian than perhaps I had appreciated, and it is no wonder that I feel more displaced than I had anticipated. There is a kind of grieving that must happen, a kind of loneliness that must be walked through, a kind of reconstruction of self that must grow out of this space. I don’t want to lose some of the good things about growing up and starting my family in the south, but I want to be willing to be challenged in some of it. I don’t want to lose sight of some of the more insular aspects of this place or take too much for granted. More than anything, I need to stay humble in all of it, not to fall into disengagement or judgement, so that I can receive what I need to grow how I need. I suppose any major life change—a death, a loss of relationship, a change in life stage—is like this.

Second, in this space I feel more keenly aware of the truth that I will never fully belong. Not really, not anywhere. Reading through chunks of the early Old Testament, I see a sweeping pilgrim narrative. Why did God choose his people, only to ask them constantly to leave—Abraham from his hometown, the people from their lands for Egypt, then from Egypt for the wilderness? Throughout the law, God values the sojourner: don’t forget, he says, that you wandered in tents; provide for the outsider because you once were one too. Remember that your forever-home is ultimately not here. The narrative is not of earthly belonging as much as God’s presence in the journey. There was never Eden again, but there was the cloud, there was the tent, there was the temple, there was Jesus, there is the Holy Spirit. The deepest part of me will always be sojourning, but it will always be with God present.

There is the temptation, particularly at this stage of our lives when we’re looking to settle in houses, kids, cars, jobs, geographies, to look to all that for belonging, but this instead is the truth which one day catches up to us all. We are sojourners. Life is full of goodbyes, and nothing we have do we grasp too tightly. Maybe one day I will feel like I completely belong here—maybe I never will. I don’t know. But in the not-yet, to be sustained by the I-Am: this is what it means to walk in this space.