Feels Like Home

the more I know I don't know

It is strange here sometimes. I am a border. This is a fact. I am welcome in the shared spaces of the kitchen, the dining room at meals and the bathrooms. I am welcome in my room. If i want to enter the house through the front door or the side door I need permission. I enter through my own entrance. My room has no cental heat. I leave the door open for the woodstove to warm me from the kitchen or I turn on the space heater.

I am responsible to make my own lunches from the supplies I keep in my room. I have a small fridge and I recently brought a toaster oven. When I want to store things in the Larger kitchen I have to label them with a sharpie marker as my own.

There are times when I am invited to be a part and I feel like family. For my birthday Debbi made a delicious dinner and I was able to invite my parents and a friend . Occasionally noah or micah will invite me to hang out with their guests and we share meals together. But othertimes it is hard, not exactly belonging here, trying to not feel in the way. The kitchen is the heart of this home and sometimes I feel in the way there when someone has stumbled into a serious conversation and I stumble in and awkwardly out, always feeling that I have interupted, guilty, but knowing it is inevitable that I can't stay in my room entirely. I on occasion require a glass of water or need to use the bathroom.

At school sometimes I feel like i know people and then in the same way I know there is only so far I can go. I do not live there. I cannot at this time live there and practically I think this is where God wants me to be. In the same light I wish that I would be understood in the way that they understand each other. I know though it is a fruitless pursuit, one that just makes me feel farther away the harder I try. It isn't so much that I envy them so much as I envy anyone with a sense of belonging. At home I am from now on always a visitor and here I am just a border, at school I am a friend to some but I feel like I don't really fit there too.

I know the answer doesn't lie anywhere but with me. I know God is pressing in on me to be content where he has placed me. I have so many blessings and I always have him to walk with me.

At the same time though...I wonder...is there a deeper sense of unity we as brothers and sisters in Christ can posses, that goes deeper then just living in the same place or spending time together. Maybe it isn't easy and it won't happen overnight but I think inside we all desire the same thing. The only thing we need to get closer is to deepen our walk with God and as we grow closer to him we will grow closer to one another.

I know it is easy for me to say too much. Part of that comes from this desire I have to be heard that often goes unfufilled. I know what I need to do is to perhaps spend more time talking to God and less time trying to make others understand. Too often others open the door a crack and in my excitement I walk right though the screen door destroying what might have been. I don't mean to, It is a reflex of despiration.

I think thought that now God is allowing me to be hurt and to see that the way things have been aren't the way they need to continue. I am slowly getting my ducks in a row and he is scattering seed about challenging me to call the ducks back in my life. They didn't leave, they are just getting rearranged and perhaps the new formation will be more stable. I don't know. It seems like the longer i am a Christian the more I know I don't know. That is ok by me.

I just hope I haven't screwed things up to far for repair with some people. I just want to do what is right and not end up hurt in the end.

posted by Kate @ 2/26/2005 10:27:00 AM