Often in my life, I get trapped in one passage of the Bible. It's why there's a picture of Jacob wrestling with God hanging on my wall, because for months in college it was all I could read. There are seasons where I can’t seem to move on from one story or moment. My post fellows summer has been one of those seasons. This is the passage I have clung to these past months:
“ This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” Jeremiah 29:4-7
God’s people were far from home, their city had been destroyed, their life as they knew it no longer. They were now living in a foreign land, far from home, far from what they had hoped it to look like. And this is the Lord’s response to them there. He tells them that this is not forever (v.10) but he also tells them what to do in the meantime. And what they are called to do is to settle in. Not to live their life with one foot in and the other out. God tells them to build houses, and have kids and grand kids. To press into the new city - even if it wasn’t where they wanted to be, even amidst all they were grieving, even while what they hoped for was still unfulfilled.
This has been at the same time balm to my weary heart and kindling for my frustrations at the way things are. Because if I’m honest this summer of building a home and planting a garden in the newness of this season has been hard. And I have begged for the Lord to just fast forward to another season - where it isnt all so new, so far from home, so unlike what I planned. And yet time and time again, he shows up in whispers that tell me to press in here. To unpack my bags for a second and remove my feet from halfway out the door. Prone to wander Lord, I feel it !! Because I may have finished fellows, but the Lord is not done with me in Raleigh yet.
And he has not left me here on my own. Not in exile alone. Not building houses and gardens in new places alone. The mercies he extended to me through Fellows have grown even sweeter in its wake. I feel humbled by the kindness and grace of living with Celeste and Jenna and Evy and Maggie Mae, of getting to worship at Apostles on Sundays, of having dear friends from other seasons of life close by.
So in many ways I am crying out to the Lord saying “this is not what I thought it would look like, this is not how I wanted it to be” but I am grateful for the way he is teaching me to plant gardens.
Even here his hand will lead and hold me.
All my love,
Lola
PS I have yet to plant a real garden but I will keep you posted, but I have killed 2 Basil plants since Fellows ended.