Adage #25: Location isn't everything.

When I was a little girl, my parents put me in one of those snowsuits that makes you look like the kid in A Christmas Story and set me outside to discover, for the first time, the wonder of snow. I was so excited to venture into this whole new world of white fluffiness. I touched the snow with my little hand, looked up at my parents and started to cry. This has been my basic outlook of snow ever since, especially when I have to drive in it. Given this inclination to hate snow and cold weather, you would never guess that I would have chosen to live in it for the past 9 years instead of moving back to the land of warmth, happiness and sunshine from whence I came. 

After college graduation, most of my peers moved back to their hometowns, found themselves on exciting adventures to other countries, or moving to glamorous cities such as Portland or Seattle. I stayed in Spokane - a city heralded for being a great place to raise your kids and not so much praised for being a great place to be a single twenty-something. I spent many years after graduation asking God where I was supposed to be. Was is Seattle? California? Surely, it cannot be here? This was the most important question to be answered, I couldn't get on with my life if I didn't know where I was supposed to live. I received no other answer other than that I should continue to be a part of the church family I was involved in.

Then, after 8 years God gave me an answer. He said I was going to go with my friends, Kym and Jacob, to plant a church. In Airway Heights. This is a small community (about 5,000 people) that is 10 minutes away from downtown Spokane with an air force base just down the road (with another 6,000 people). Spokane has some beautiful qualities: an exorbitant amount of pine trees, some great rivers, hills and valleys. It's full of beautiful views that I have learned to love despite being cold for half the year. Airway Heights possess none of these things. It's flat, ugly, just far away enough that I don't see my friends all that often and for the past three weeks it has been so foggy, I've almost ran a few red lights. Not so reassuringly, 3 out of 7 days a week when I have left my apartment complex for work in the morning, I have found a car that slid into an icy ditch.

Photo credit: MDP Photography

I've been told this has been a big thing with my generation, that choosing where we live has become a much bigger deal than the generations before us. I think maybe we've got something wrong. Despite all of the things I don't love about Airway Heights, there is no other place I would rather be. Not only is this the place God has called me to for this time, I am learning that being a follower of Christ means a lot more of living out God's will in the everyday mundane things and a lot less about making huge, life-altering, I'm-going-to-change-the-world decisions. It's not about me and how cool or indie where I live is, it's about losing myself in who Christ is. I can no longer wait for some big revelation about where I am supposed to live and what God is someday going to use me to accomplish for Him. I can no longer sit around waiting to be told what my future holds for me in 5 years, 1 year or next week. I should be too busy helping my neighbors take the trash out, getting to know the same cashier I see every week at the Airway Heights Wal-Mart, sharing the story of what Christ has done in my life with others, helping my friend paint their house even though I'd rather take a nap, talking with my server at the delicious Thai restaurant down the street and serving other people (friends and strangers alike) with no expectation of a reward. These things will accomplish much more for the Kingdom of God than spending hours praying and thinking about where I should be instead.

That being said, when Jesus comes back, I'm asking for some beach front property in Southern California. 


What is God asking you to do today for Him, where ever you might be?