Tonight I am so grateful! Yesterday night I mentioned about not being able to take anything else unfamiliar. I needed something that could be expected and known. I have just come home from Bible study, and I am realizing that most of my day has been filled with the familiar.
When I woke up, I decided to return to a past habit in my life of Bible memorization. I opened to the book of Romans and went over it one and a half times today. It is familiar. It is homey. It is comforting, and it tells my brain and all my emotions that everything is well in my world.
I went to a gym today for the first time since moving. I stood in a squat rack. I lifted light weights and took lengthy rests to ensure I didn’t pass out from not being used to the high altitude. The squat rack is home. It doesn’t matter where it is or that it might be slightly different than the last one I stood in. It is familiar, and I know I belong there.
I read some more in the book I am reading that was published in 1916. It also feels like home. I have never read this book; but since I have read thousands of pages of theology and church history in the last few years, the activity feels familiar even if it is about a time and place I have not yet studied.
I participated in an online class and took notes. The activity felt familiar. Not because I actually did that in seminary though. I would just re-listen to lectures as I walked. I would rarely take notes on a lecture. I do miss seminary sometimes. I am looking forward to starting doctorate studies someday… in the next decade or two. :) Nonetheless, it was familiar and a quite structured class. The structure felt good… and homey.
Then this evening I went to a Bible study at the same church I have been visiting. It was my fourth visit there, and it felt familiar. I knew who I would see. I knew how they would greet me. I knew a little bit about what their conversation would be like. I knew to expect that even if the temperature was 45 degrees with a wind making it feel like 35 degrees, almost no one would show up in a coat. Many would be wearing hoodies, as would I. It felt familiar, and good.
On my way home, I realized that I could now drive through town without thinking about it at all. Yes, it is a small town. For some it might take less than ten days for this to happen. But for a little while there, I kept turning left at a corner I was supposed to turn right at. Now I can do it all by habit already.
It’s starting to feel like home. I am so grateful. God answered a prayer that I nearly forgot to pray. Maybe one of you did?
(The picture is my view from where I work on my computer.)
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