Yesterday I decided to start making a list of all the reasons I moved to Wyoming. I forgot what it is like to move to a new place and have everyone ask you why you moved. I have repeated the top, least-private reason enough times that I have gotten bored hearing my own voice say it. I thought I could write down all the reasons I moved and tell a new reason to each person. Then, should they talk to each other about me, they would get really confused about why I came! Okay, I am just kidding around! I am not actually going to give a different story to everyone, but it would be kind of fun to do!
Some of my reasons are pretty private. Most of them don’t really seem private if I was reading them off someone else’s list, but for some reason they seem really private to me. I moved to be within a one-day drive from my aging grandparents in case of emergency. That is the reason I tell everyone. It is absolutely true. It is a primary reason I moved to Wyoming. There are 21 other reasons on my ever growing list. None of which I want the world at large to know.
Maybe if you text me, I could tell you another. Maybe not. All of them are reasons I had before I arrived. None of it has disappointed me.
I miss home. Home was my 300-square-foot apartment in the middle of a crowded city. “My” children are all there, so are “my” dogs. Everything that was familiar to me was there. I had only left to fly to northern California or to go on mission trips in the last 5-6 years. In the years before that in Jersey, I took three trips to South Dakota and one to upstate New York to attend a one-day Celebrate Recovery conference. Twice in the last few years on a one- or two-night trip to either the Catskills or the Poconos. That is all my adventures outside of Jersey City and the immediate surrounding area in the last nine years.
It’s so gorgeous outside my window right now. The sun is going down in the west. The eastern sky is tinged with pink and purple over the mountains. I know that if I walked outside for about half a block, I could see a gorgeous, snow-capped mountain in the distance. (The one in the picture.) Snowy mountains are so beautiful!
I went to the bank yesterday, and it could have been a scene from a Christmas movie. Truly, some of these people are so friendly, they almost don’t seem real.
It struck me today that it would be so good if the people I am beginning to know here, knew the people I knew in Jersey. It struck me as I read something political. It seems we get so far removed from each other that we forget the people about whom we are speaking are part of God’s creation. Not only are they created in God’s image, but they are loved by God. In God’s eyes, they are worthy of the pain and suffering Jesus Christ underwent for them. We forget “those conservatives” or “those liberals” are flesh and blood like we are. They aren’t just their “bad” ideas (from our point of view). We forget compassion. Maybe we would all do well to have a pen pal on the other side of the political aisle in a completely different state and culture. Maybe it could help us remember compassion.
I do miss my former home tonight. As I proofread what I wrote about it, I started to cry. This is all so new; but on Wednesday as I drove home from Bible study, I knew I was going to be loved here too and everything was going to be okay.
I will be loved. I am loved. I do love. I will love.
I remember as a teenager, I once ended my night by writing in my journal, “God is in heaven; all is well in the world.” Something like that.
I have learned something in the last 20 years. The reason everything is well in my world is because God came down from heaven and his dwelling place is now among his people.
God is on earth; everything will be redeemed and restored at the appointed time; it is well in the world.
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