Even as the days grow closer and closer to November, San Diego remains in soaring temps and sweltering heat, bringing reminders of the deepest longing for home. Nostalgia seems to hit hardest in fall, with the back-to-school buzz and pumpkin flavored everything. I return to favorite memories of when the house seems to put on its layer of hibernation for the winter, everything starts to feel cozier next to the the fireplace with hot apple cider, movies, pie. But apparently this year California doesn't seem to care too much about fall- despite the constant assurance from teachers and parents that "this is very unusual for this time of year!" (Of course it is.... ;)) My google search is automatically set to "window unit air conditioner" - who knew the entire county would be sold out of these mid-October?! The heat goes on....
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When you can't have fall all around you, you have to bring fall to you.
My pumpkin porch thanks to the Field Trip last week :) |
A timelessness exists in this place that forever feels frozen in summer vacation. I've always wanted to experience a place like this and wondered if it would either steal my heart forever causing me never to return, or if it would build an appreciation for winter in a new way so that I am more grateful when I do return. Hm. Still figuring that out.
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The one and only changing tree I've found in Balboa Park.
I took too many photos. |
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| This home of mine is a place of peace. |
As I drive to work each morning, I watch the sunrise in the east, peeking through mountains, casting light to awaken sleepy hills. I am more aware of the rhythm of the day here, sunrises mark the morning and sunsets are a regular occasion to pause and gather with friends. The reminders of God's faithfulness through His Creation was lacking in my life in Chicago... I can see now how life-giving it is to be surrounded in His beauty; uprooting to a new landscape provides a lens through which I experience God in a new way. (Perhaps this is how I get addicted to travel...) Sunsets never seem to get old - even though people tell me "just wait until you're here long enough." I hope that isn't true. I've been living on earth for 29 years and still look up amazed at the giant puffs of white that fill the sky and pops of crazy color that sprout from the ground... The creativity of God remains astounding.
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| Sunrise along the drive |
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| Sunset outside my door. |
Though I'm settled in and life is rolling at a pace I appreciate... I've built a rhythm that feels natural and very much Me... I still can't shake the looming fear filled with questions mostly related to what's next. I wish so much that this wasn't true - I wish I could naturally be fully content right here, right now - but it is a constant discipline for me to live in the present. To simply Be without thoughts of Next. I hold my desires on one hand and ask God to carry them, knowing that He fully sees every single one of them, that they are somehow a reflection of His image in me. On the other hand I hold reality - the place that I live and the life that I already have. I wonder if my desires will always be a longing or if they will be fulfilled. Or perhaps they are already being fulfilled right now in ways I cannot see. Or maybe I just need to work on being more honest and intentional about pursuing what it is I want. This is partly why I moved out to California in the first place... to create a motion and start to turn the wheels of my desires. Maybe what I search for is simply the feeling of Home... a longing I will assuredly carry until I am in eternity with my one true Home. All I can do is live day-by-day-by-day-by-day right now and rest in the hope that He is with me, leading me forward, showing me more, and giving me what I need in His timing.
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| Weekend'ing for Madi's birthday - margs & pool life with such dear friends |
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| Waking up to brunch |
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We found a Chicago bar!
Let's hear it... Go Cubs Go....! |
My apologies for the long quote...but it's Lewis. So sorry I'm not sorry:
ReplyDelete“In speaking of this desire for our own far off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth’s expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”
-The Weight of Glory
I absolutely LOVE this quote! I think I even posted the end of it somewhere on this blog at some point! :) Thank you for the post, bro. You are always so encouraging!!! Love you!!!
DeleteHot is starting to sound pretty good from up here in northeast
ReplyDeleteWisconsin! Enjoy!
Ha ha ha - Northeast WI is starting to sound pretty good from here if you ask me! ;) Let's trade!
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