Sitting at my computer looking through email. Reminded me of an earlier time, a different job, different names, but me still sitting and looking at my screen. I have been sitting in this spot, doing exactly the same thing since I started in ministry. It made me long for those days, those friendships and relationships I used to have. Made me wonder if I would ever have them again. Yeah, I get wistful sometimes.
From 2001 to 2009, I ministered in a Christian Church in Clarks Hill, Indiana. In Clarks Hill, IN, I was close enough to touch Lafayette, where much of my extended family lived. I could be at my parents’ house in 20 minutes. In 2009 I was asked to resign that position, which left me and family without a home within just a few weeks’ time. With God’s help, we had a call from a church in Palestine, Illinois, a former Disciples of Christ Church where they welcomed our family. We stayed there until early 2012 when we moved to our present location in Morehead, Kentucky.
At times, it hits me. Why did God move me so far away? I miss my family, being able to see my uncles and aunts, my parents and my brother. I wish I could be with them, spend another cheesy birthday party or family meal, especially when those feelings come over me.
But this is the new normal. Family is now a phone call away. I live four hours from my parents, and sometimes I feel very alone. Working in an area where extended families live together “up the holler”, I miss the validation that comes from family, to know that you matter to them.
I see families every day trying very hard to tear themselves apart through drug and alcohol use, abuse and divorce. I see men and women destitute because they don’t have any family. Why? Because they’ve destroyed every relationship they have. Their own family will not take them in, not again. It crushes me to hear that, every time.
But true family isn’t about blood, or surnames. It is about our common relationship with Jesus. Even folks who’ve lost everyone still have a family in Jesus. And this is a family that will stick closer than a brother.
Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”
(Mar 10:29-31)
Meritt Musings 