stuck

I feel kinda stuck. My new year’s resolution was the least specific I have ever made it: achieve balance in my life: balance in health and finances and work and relationships and entertainment and God. It feels like I am taking baby steps in all these directions except towards the Lord.

I spoke with Lena the other night (a completely unexpected blessing) and Kristin and Brynn last week. I spent 5 days with Kim in January. I saw David and Leanne last fall. I spent a weekend with Whitney before I moved.  The mood from the diaspora of Resonate appears the same no matter if you left 2 years ago or 5 months ago: walking with Christ is a struggle post transformational community.

It is easy to think that the community of Resonate was just church community, that ideally, it can be found anywhere, with the same ease as long as you find a great church. But leaving Resonate is just like graduating. For some it happens at the same time, and for others, like Kim and I, it happens quite a while later. But it turns out biblical community in a collegiate driven church in a small farm college town is not something that is easily replicated in the big city (as Keith has said many times).

As I was talking to Lena we were verbally processing what our walk with the Lord has been post Pullman. I am sure there is a bit of glossing over the rough patches but we also remember and admitted some of our darkest days were in Pullman in the context of Resonate. So it’s not all fuzzy warm memories.  We are not what you might call “in the valley” but more like wandering around aimless in the desert. Apathy, indirection, lack of discipline and a general floundering of what life with God looks like when it is not around significant community are the names of our game.

In some ways it makes me smile. I appreciate now more than ever the gift I was given for those 4 years. Friendships that are deep and real and true and that can be re-engaged at a moment’s notice. Accountability too I miss. What I wouldn’t give for an hour with April Young that makes me cry!

It is just harder when the people you do meet are at different stages of life and you live far away and have to get up earlier to go to work. Or when try as you might you can’t get past the Sunday service at church because they have for some reason made entering into community obnoxiously hard.

I am in my 7th month in Denver, having attended church faithfully for all but November (that’s another story) and this week I will get to attend my first “fellowship group”.  I led a small group/village almost every week of the year for the past 5 years and I haven’t attended one once since I moved here – not for lack of trying mind you. It blows my mind. I did actually visit one but it was all teaching and no participation. It felt like class on a Saturday night. It was all I could do to not want to take over the whole thing. Turns out I miss leading them, although I always knew I would.

I will own up to my lack of discipline and just laziness. It seems like I am ready to blame my lack of engagement on the temperature of the room or how tired I am or anything else that would make the situation less than perfect. Things just move slower in a big city and it is hard to get used to. Friendships. Community. Finding a job.

I was talking to Lena about how I need to start seeing this as “my summer vacation” or “semester abroad” or those other times in your life that you know ahead of time might be hard to be a faithful disciple as your routine and location changes. I created plans for all those times in my life, so why not this one? And yet I struggle to create a plan for something my heart is not engaged in. It is an age old story…the chicken before the egg…discipline turns into love which turns into joy which turns into discipline.

I am hoping I am learning lessons right now that I won’t need to relearn again and again. I plan on moving again in another 4 yearsish and if my dreams come true I will hopefully live many places in my lifetime. The other half of me lit up and turned on in the presence of Kim and Kristin and Brynn and David and Leanne (those two are doing the best out of anyone I know, I should take notes) so I know there is something deeply missing from how I am living my life right now and that in itself is motivation. I am not willing to lose myself and who the Lord shaped me into being every time I move to a new place. Hopefully though I will get better and better at the transition, preparing for my known weaknesses and taking a much more active stance in the whole thing. After all, I will honestly never move back to Pullman, so there ain’t no turning back.

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