Sometimes it's still hard to believe. No, this is not some kind of announcement of being in a relationship for a year and four months leading up to a proposal. Seems like that's happening a lot nowadays. But as 2015 just began yesterday, it's been a time of reflection where my closest friends here agree with my reflections that it's felt way longer than just a year and four months of living out here in LA. It's crazy.
Those 6 months were tough. I didn't have a ton to look forward to. It felt aimless, with only League of Legends and weekly Tuesday nights of basketball to keep me going. Everything felt like vapor, just empty motions of trying to do what "adults" do, or at least trying to get to that place of doing what adults do. I don't know, I guess it just felt super alone and directionless ... and league and baskeball helped me not feel it so much.
But even as I think about college and my attachment to home in Houston, Baylor really was a time and place I felt convicted that God had sovereignly (and strategically?) placed me for my own growth. But a lot of that growth came at a cost to the people I had spent my previous 18 years of life with, the people I had grown to love and were indebted to for their raising of me. I would come back often as a Freshman, but as most college students do, that number grew less and less to about once or twice a semester during my senior year ... basically when there was an event at church to volunteer to serve at.
I remember thinking how hard it was for me when my brother and my older friends went off to college; how communication dwindled in frequency. And I thought to myself "I want to keep in touch when I leave," but I inevitably found myself repeating the process. I used to feel guilty about this, but over the years at Baylor, I felt a strange confirmation and freedom of "letting go" in a sense. I could let go of the weight I felt of people thinking I just ditched them and traded them in for other friends. God had called me to waco, to invest in making deep Christian friendships, to disciple, to equip, to learn, to be mentored, etc. But somewhere in the back of my mind (or bottom of my heart), I always wondered how my family from Houston really felt about it. I mean, no matter how hard I tried to keep up, it felt different when I came back. Was it me that changed? Them? Or both? Did I do something wrong in leaving?
When I ended up moving back to Houston it was hard because it was like I was trying to resume relationship with a people that I grew up with but had lost regular contact with over the last 4 years. They were supportive and it was awesome when I came back into town, but they weren't physically there to know what exactly the majority of those 4.5 years were like ... what I had learned and what I was getting rocked with. And there were new people I had never met or really gotten to know now. Not to mention that the younger kiddos I was so afraid of neglecting were still in college. So even though I was still decently active, I struggled those 6 months with community. As time passed, somehow in the midst of a lot of those things, when things were beginning to finally feel normal and I was starting to find a bit of a rhythm, God "opened a door"...
To El Paso for 10 weeks? Ya, it still continues to be a fog of what exactly God was doing in that time and place as an intern over there but that's another blog post. And then after Chris and Esther's wedding following that internship, I was under the belief that I'd get a chance to redeem so much of the apparent failure I felt from the previous 6 months before El paso. Heh. Nope.
I still remember the day (where I was, who I had been with, etc.) when I received a phone call from Benjamin that day that would propel me to begin my 22 hour drive to Los Angeles a whopping 3 days (was it really only three days?) later. It was pretty unexpected ... So much so that there wasn't really any time to prepare, much less pray. Scratch that, there really was no time to prepare. It was like an "open door," yes, but more like an open door on a freakin airplane in flight. Heh, I just made that up, but it definitely felt something like that where even the 22 hour drive felt like I was being taken by God to this foreign land to begin a "new" journey.
I have lived in Southern California for the past year and 4 months now. It's been challenging. I've experienced great joys, great pains, great laughs, great loss. Overall I've experienced great testing and the need to persevere and stick things out even when my heart and flesh fail me. Even on the days where I feel useless, inadequate, and pathetic. I've realized my need for the gospel in a way that isn't cookie-cutter and cold truth statements, but also realizing that the core truths of our faith are what I my soul most needs (The incarnation really is probably one of the biggest ones). I've seen the long-term benefit of sitting in the scripture over a course of time, even when I don't necessarily "feel" it at the moment.
[Tangent: To this day, a lot of my teaching and heart for people is that they'd get the importance of "church" and necessity to sit under the Bible. Underneath the cross of Christ, these two things always come out because they are what have held me sane when nothing else could. I mean ... sometimes you go through seasons where everything you speak to God feels void and sometimes you just need to hear Him speak to you. Eh, tangent done.]
[Tangent: To this day, a lot of my teaching and heart for people is that they'd get the importance of "church" and necessity to sit under the Bible. Underneath the cross of Christ, these two things always come out because they are what have held me sane when nothing else could. I mean ... sometimes you go through seasons where everything you speak to God feels void and sometimes you just need to hear Him speak to you. Eh, tangent done.]
As I was thinking about the seeming turmoil I still feel about how I left Houston for El Paso, only to come back and leave yawl (and now in addition to the Baylor family) again for LA, there was a weight of sadness I felt that recognized that the people most in my life are different now. And just as it was in Waco, it is hard for me not to almost feel a weight of guilt for leaving the way I did. I wish I could have left a lot more smoothly. I wish it wasn't so abrupt. I wish I didn't feel like I traded yawl in without much more than a word to say how much I love and care for you ... In the end, I know God drove me out here. I know He's called me out here and provided an outline of what He might have for me for the next however many years in the form of a degree plan and position at my church. But it doesn't mean I don't struggle with this feeling of guilt. It doesn't mean I don't want to cry about accepting the fact that a majority of you wont be in my life as much anymore. Eh, it just sucks because who I am today is very much a reflection of who you are and it feels like a very real part of me has been stripped away only to deal with the tension of seeing you all again for a few hours each time I come back.
As I was laying on bed thinking about this all, I heard my mind say "the life I now live," referring to this life in LA in comparison to what it was in Houston and Waco, but instead of the thought completing itself, I heard a verse I had memorized in college complete the sentence "(the life I now live) in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me" (Galatians 2:20). I feel confident enough in my studies to know the overall exegetical argument for the book of Galatians, but somehow I felt the Holy Spirit still speaking that same truth (of grace) in a way that is big enough to bring even this particular "guilt" before.
The church is not limited to one city, or one place, or one type of people. The bloodline of faith in Christ calls us all as ONE family, one Church. I guess that I can trust that this bloodline is stronger, no matter the frequency or distance of communication.
Love yawl fam,
-Jon
-Jon
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