The Land of Familiar

Not long ago and not far away, a Nobody named Ordinary lived in the Land of Familiar.

Every day was pretty much the same for Ordinary. In the mornings he got up and went to his Usual Job. After work, he ate almost the same dinner he’d eaten the evening before. Then he sat in his recliner and watched the box that mesmerized most Nobodies on most nights. Sometimes, Best Friend came over to join Ordinary in front of the box. Sometimes, Ordinary went to his Parents’ and they watched together.

For the most part, not much happened in Familiar that hadn’t happened before. Ordinary thought he was content. He found the routine reliable. He blended in with the crowd. And mostly, he wanted only what he had.

Until the day Ordinary noticed a small, nagging feeling that something big was missing from his life. Or maybe the feeling was that he was missing from something big. He wasn’t sure.
The little feeling grew. And even though Nobodies in Familiar didn’t generally expect the unexpected, Ordinary began to wish for it.

~Bruce Wilkinson, The Dream Giver

As I watch the season change outside, the leaves turning brilliant shades of autumn, the temperature cooling off, and the rain settling into a daily pattern, my life anticipates change as well. This time of year is my favorite, which seems kind of odd for me. For the most part, I resist change. My parents still bring up when I was about 4 and they were trading in their old clunker of a car for a newer model and all I could do was cry and sob out that I didn’t want a new car – I liked the one we had. Even if it broke down on the on every trip at the farthest point. But it was familiar to me and I clung to it with dear life.

This year has been doused with change, and a lot of those changes have felt like small deaths to me. Through a series of events, I am no longer involved in the youth ministry where I poured out three years of my life; the college-aged internship program that I was on volunteer staff for (the ministry where my heart felt alive and where I felt like I was actually making a difference) has morphed into a slightly different program and I was not asked to be a part of it; all of my roommates moved away and I was financially forced to move back home. During each of these changes, I fought to hold on so tightly, but God had other plans. So, now I am doing what I said I would never do – working a full-time desk job, living with my parents, and not involved in ministry at all. God, you sure are funny.

But through it all, I’ve also realized that without death, new life cannot spring up. During this time of ‘nothingness’ I’ve begun to open my eyes to new possibilities that God may be presenting. One showed up about a month ago, while I was ordering a book off of Focus on the Family’s website for our Children’s Pastor. It is a horse ranch down in Oregon that takes in abused and neglected horses and abused and neglected kids and pairs them together as sort of a therapy for both of them. I’ve read some of the amazing stories that have come from this place and as soon as I heard about the ranch, it connected very deeply with me. I’ve put off contacting them for fear of the unknown. Sometimes it just seems so much easier to just sit and do the things that are familiar. But that soon leaves your spirit dry and that is what I am experiencing.But a conversation with a friend tonight has reignited the flame of hope – that God would have a plan for my life that would give me a future and a hope, not just an endless flow of paperwork. So, I’m taking the first step this next week and I’m going to contact the ranch. I’m sure God has an adventure in store (no matter where he brings me), so it will be interesting to see what the future holds.