Home

I feel as if I've come home. Though it is far from where I spent the majority of my life, there is an essential part of my existence that began here, and it teaches me about where I am to go. There is inside me a desire for community, a desire for what is familiar and recognizable, while at the same time my mind desires to be stretched by new ideas, new horizons, and new approaches to life. I am a paradox, because on one hand I would desire a family, but on the other have rejected the things that would have led me down that path. My journey thus far in life has looked like a patchwork quilt of things that do not fit well together. Upon graduating college in a city that I never expected to be in, I had no clue what I wanted to do, only that I did not want to continue on in school. I think I made the right decision and yet I find myself in school again. This time in different capacities, but here I still am, and the future is no more clear.

Yet to come home to Steubenville. To talk to people who babysat me growing up, and who know me though I am seeing their faces for the first time with eyes that comprehend. There is an essential energy, a vitality, a desire to live that pervades my every thought that I felt I had figured out. Life here is fast, and yet grounded in Christ, and in strong family relationships. People are uncertain of what they will do, but spend their lives living and questioning every path they take. No one waits for things to happen. There is little tentativeness, only a genuine desire to get to know one another and to help one another through this sometime difficult existence we all must live.

God works, God lives. I like to think back to the speech of the abortion survivor, whose life has been a testament to the glory and unlimited power of God to do good and bring about His will in the world. I cannot comprehend the nature of existence here, and maybe I am exhausted, but my reaction has been to relax and enjoy the moments without working too much. Only observing the lives of a family who I have loved for long and whose adoption of me over this Thanksgiving holiday has been a true blessing. I am grateful to them in so many ways for all they have given me.

Yesterday we visited the hospital of my birth, and I reflect on what it must have been life for my father to sit and wait, or my mother to bear the pains of childbirth, such that I might live. And what have I done with their sacrifices? What have I done with the life that our Lord above has so graciously bestowed upon me? I have had want for nothing in my life, so how do I give that back? I want to live radically and fully for Christ, and yet sometimes struggle to figure out what that means or even looks like. Will I translate as a part of it?...Maybe...Will I sing? Will I run? Will I fight? I will pray....What do you want of me Lord? I think it is eternally tied to what I desire for myself. For He wants only that we would love and serve Him to the greatest of our capability. We decide what that looks like.

I have some great opportunities opening in my life, and I only pray that I treat them as the Lord would have me do, and learn each day more and more of Him whom I love, and to whom my life is ultimately bound.