foreign places.

The suitcases are empty and the laundry is folded after a recent trip to Portland and Montana, but I’m still unpacking my thoughts.

At the end of our trip, my dad said that out of all of his kids, he would have thought I’d be the least likely to move far away. I had to agree with him--I am a homebody to the core. I love Portland, I love our families, and I love the familiar. It still surprises me sometimes that we’ve made our way across the country to places that were once foreign, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. God, in His patience and grace, has given me so many opportunities to trust Him as we’ve encountered new towns, different cultures, and unfamiliar faces. He has taken me to foreign places and shown me the depths of His provision, the beauty of His plans, and the heart of His people.

Though I once was afraid to venture beyond my front door, He has proved Himself faithful in all places. And now, I sense that there are new places He longs to take me.

His word says, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” (Revelation 3:20)

Sometimes, often times, I open the door for Jesus, and then I ask Him to kindly make His way up to the attic of my heart where I can think about Him, know that He’s there, and call on Him when I need to, all the while quietly refusing to let Him dine at the table of my heart, refusing to sit face-to-face with Him and take in what He is calling me to do. It is safer, easier, to keep Him in the attic.

But God does not call us to a safe, easy life. He calls us to fling open the doors to the foreign places in our hearts and love, bearing all vulnerability, absorbing all risk, fleeing what the world tells us is good for something better.

God has led me to unfamiliar places, and my prayer is that by His grace, I will allow Him to invade the foreign places in my heart, that I might be emptied of myself and filled with Him.

xoxo.