Roots

My Sunday school class at church has been talking about different topics related to church growth or lack there of. Last week we discussed relationships in the church. This got me to pondering, remembering, and looking back over the last year of two. This time last year I had recently returned from my year in Macedonia working as a Missionary Associate. I had stretched my wings, flown for a time, and returned to Wisconsin. I had not real job and was searching for a way to meet the requirements to renew my teachers license. I had no relationships or roots to speak of. Nothing that would keep me in one place if opportunity knocked somewhere else. My friends from college are scattered all across the US. Most of my extended family lived 5 hours away and we are not that close. I had my family and one close friend but that was not enough to keep me here. I could easily keep in touch with family and one friend if I stretched my wings and flew away again. There was just not much to keep me here. Wanting to do God's will, I waited and called on Him to show me what to do. He didn't answer but slowly, almost unnoticed, God began the process of growth, roots began to form in my life for the first time in a long time. And as these roots began to dig in, God was also working on settling me socially (I'm not sure if that is the best way to say it, but I can't think of another way of putting it). I had been asking God for years for close friends (plural: more than one) who lived near by and God began to answer these prayers. I meet some wonderful friends in a near by church. I'm still looking for a teaching job, but now I'm not in such a hurry to fly away. The urge to fly is still there at times, but my roots hold me to a place and people that are important to me and I'm okay with that. I like it and find that I am content, despite the lack of progress being made in other areas of my life.