Belonging

I keep wanting to write a post about Training Camp.  But, for whatever reason (and there are a few), I just can't get around to it.  It was great, and horrible, and long, and restless, and beautiful, and eye-opening, and cold, and awesome.  I learned and experienced and was.  And now I'm back, and I can't believe that in only 2 short months, I'll be seeing those crazies again.  And we'll be doing it for real.  Weird.

So, instead of posting my own blog about it, for now I'll just direct you to those of a few squadmates, because they're pretty neat.  Hit the nail right on the head.

Justin Orr:  "Puff, Puss, Pass!"
Leah Malone:  "These World Race People are CRAZY."  (That picture of the tent village?  I took that.)
Suzanne Bradford:  "So how was training camp?"

On a mostly different note, I'll be packing up all my belongings and heading home to Oklahoma this week.  I have a lot of feelings about that, and many of them are nice.  But it's going to be hard.  I've moved a few times over the past couple of years, and eventually I've begun to feel like I could live everywhere because I don't belong anywhere.  For long, anyway.  My frustration about this culminated in a prayer... partially inspired by the lyrics to Switchfoot's "Where I Belong":

"Until I die, I’ll sing these songs
On the shores of Babylon
Still looking for a home
In a world where I belong"
 

God, where is home for me these days?  I can see myself right now, standing on the shores of a land that isn’t my own.  This isn’t my home, this strange place where the people I trust the most prove unworthy, where the love void never finds its fullness, where too much is never enough.  Where the line between love and codependency remains ambiguous, where the battle between perfection and reality rages, and the perfection to which we were called remains unattainable in our own power. 
 
I don’t feel at home here, always in transition, floating, wandering, a nomad, never finding a place to land.  I drag the memories, the failures, the emptiness behind me.  You never really do start over.
 
Where do I belong? 
 
Eternity is written on my heart.  I was not made for this place, where nothing ever lasts.  We were not meant for goodbyes.  Facing the end of good things, those things that remind us of the greatness to come, those tastes of heaven.  The world is rigged.  We are deceived, expecting all that is beautiful here to be it, the point of arrival.  And surprised each time it isn’t.
 
We have that hunger for a world beyond ourselves, that place where all that we long for is just a little more present.  The kingdom.  Exposure.  Truth.  Life.  Standing on our own two feet, naked, without judgment.  Without fear. 
 
Yes, we all have crap.  But “God likes it that way, because live things poop.”  ‘Dump it here,’ He says.  ‘Lie exposed, all of you.’  Maybe that’s what belonging feels like.  Maybe that’s what home is supposed to be.


Do you ever struggle to feel like you belong somewhere?  What do you do about it?