the flipped side of familiar

I’m officially a Midwest girl again. I arrived in Wheaton on Thursday evening, without eye-makeup on and dressed in a certain numbness- part hopeful, part heartbroken.  My thoughts were jumbled. Loud and clear and then painfully distant. Polished and rational, then absurd and confused. I knew how to do life in Arizona. I knew what exit to take on the 51, I knew to wear a sundress to combat the 110 degree heat but to pack a sweater for the instant chill of indoor AC, I knew exactly how to order my drink at The Coffee Bean, I knew the layout of the Desert Ridge Target, I knew how to do my job, and I truly knew the people around me in deep and meaningful ways.  Arizona, in my seven years of residence, had become completely stable. Comforting. Familiar.

Familiar, in my life, is a coin that I’m constantly flipping. On one side, (let’s call it 'heads') familiar means family. It means being relentlessly surrounded by the people, places, tastes, and smells that make me tick. It means falling gently into a routine that breathes the breath of life into others and knowing where to go to fill up my own tank. It means having a schedule, a plan, and a backup plan. Familiar is knowing the good brunch spots, and always ordering the right thing off the menu. It’s warm, it’s inviting. It’s knowing and being fully known.

On the 'tails' side of familiar is the status-quo. It’s feeling underwhelmed and under-challenged. It’s realizing nothing scares me. It’s confessing that life has been folded and neatly compiled into a corner where I can keep my eye on it. It’s clinching with white-knuckles on the steering wheel of where my future is headed. It’s lifeless and mundane. Predictable and ordinary.  It screams for a trust in something bigger than myself, but relies solely on the strength that only I am equipped with. And here’s the part that is most dreaded about this side of familiar: it’s easy.

Don’t let it be too easy. Don’t know exactly what the day holds without some wiggle room for God to truly use you. 

Maybe you’re living a life so extreme and independent that you’re longing for some familiar faces that know you and love you. Or maybe you have those faces surrounding you and you’re longing for a life that is challenging and bigger than what you can dream up yourself. I’ve been there. Both places.  And God provides fellowship and he provides purposes when we have the faith to pray and ask for them.  (Sometimes he does even without us asking.)

One thing is for certain in my own life. The perfect balance is found only in making God my most familiar. In him I am home, I am fully known and fully accepted just how I am... today. In him I am challenged. I am moved, surrendered and trudging through a life that far exceeds my own limits. He yearns to cover us in his familiar presence. It is only there that we will feel safe. Safe… but with butterflies in our stomach knowing something BIG is about to take place. Something only the living God could dream up, something that may not make sense to those who don’t know him. Something unfamiliar to us, but carefully mapped-out by the most familiar hands we will ever know.