Funny how sometimes being home makes me homesick. It's like a big giant reminder of what I miss when I'm gone. Yesterday I got to hang out with one of my dearest friends, meet her newborn, and spend time with her older two kids. I'd never gotten to hear the two year old speak a complete sentence before, but as I walked in the door cradling a warm loaf of blueberry bread wrapped in a tea towel he looked at me quizzically and asked, "You have a new baby too?" I miss watching him grow up, and I feel that all the more keenly when I do get to spend time with him. His older sister told me at dinner that maybe when she got a little bigger she could come with me to Thailand :) And it amazed me how sad I felt leaving their house after a lovely few hours. It wasn't sadness over this visit so much as sadness at all the visits I don't get to have.
Paul writes about being content in all circumstances- as in having plenty or being in want. For me, content in all circumstances means content in all locations. It means that when I am in Thailand, I live in Thailand, and that when I am in the States I am fully present with those here. And when I have special times, like next month in Argentina, to be fully there and enjoy the company of friends that I don't often get to see.
I don't foresee this tension between places ever going away. I cannot be in all three places at once and no matter where I am, I miss someone's wedding or someone's birth, someone's grief or growing vocabulary. So instead I find a way to live in that tension- to celebrate the weddings I do get to attend, the newborns (in several countries) that I do get to snuggle, the lives that I do get to walk alongside. I live in that tension because I know that God has called me to be content even in the sadness of the things I miss. I can be content because it grows out of the core foundation on my being in Christ. So whether I'm sipping tea in Michigan, mate in Buenos Aires, or cha yen in Bangkok, I know that it is not culture or location that defines my contentment. That lies much deeper, in doing what God has called me to and walking beside him each day.
I want to do better at this. I want to rest more easily in this contentment, in this struggle that so many of us face, not just the ones who move overseas. The world challenges our contentment in so many ways. So I do what I can to fix my eyes on Christ- the only way we're ever going to escape the tensions of having and wanting and of being and not being- so that we too can say, I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am (Philippians 4:11).
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