Ordinary Spaces and the Feelings that Fill Them

We all are in different seasons of life, walking through different spaces, experiencing different things.

My friends are engaged, married with kids, preparing for the mission field, buying houses, and moving across the country, among other things.

That is not my season or my space.

There is nothing glamorous about my current space. It is not idyllic or quaint; it does not contain rare beauty or hints of the extraordinary. It is the ordinary sprinkled with a bit of the dull. This space is my reality.

What has it been like living here? Honestly, it hasn't been bad but it hasn't always felt good.

There are times I groan, feeling like self-made expectations will be forever unmet.

There are times I cringe beneath the fear that I am more of a bystander than hands and feet at the battlefront.

There are times my heart sinks seeing my weakness against the backdrop of others’ strength.

There are times I covet past adventures, longing for new ones.

There are times I hang my head, wondering when I will arrive at the space that all my friends currently inhabit.

There are times I feel stuck, unworthy, messy, immature, and lacking.

This space evokes all those feelings and reactions, and yet it remains a gift. That is the truth, even if it doesn’t feel that way. I have had to walk through my feelings, willing truth to shed light on the lies they often tell me. Know this: happy feelings can lie just as easily as sad ones.

Happy feelings can credit experiences and circumstances with the power of life and joy. Like sad ones can blame experiences and circumstances for stealing life and joy. Happy feelings can deceive us into thinking the source of our happiness is through a tool instead of its Master. Like sad ones can deceive us into thinking that the tool has failed to be the source of joy (which again, it never was), and we need a new one to replace it.

So when I talk about truth shedding light on my feelings, I am not saying I want to exchange sad, heavy feelings and those in-between with lighter, happier feelings. Rather, I am saying that in the midst of all my feelings and thoughts, I need to remember that while I walk through this place, there is someone and something greater than this space. There is Truth and there is life. This space is a gift, nothing more and nothing less.

That leaves a question. How do I dwell in this lackluster space without feeling like all those lies are truth?

I don’t.

I walk through this space, yes, but I do not dare dwell there.

Just like someone who is given a trip to Disney world cannot possibly make the Magic Kingdom their permanent home, we cannot dwell in our spaces happy, sad, exciting, or boring. They are a road by which we travel, but not the shelter in which we dwell. In contrast, there will be a time when I am given the gift of a new space. It may contain more color and excitement but I cannot dwell there. The gift cannot be greater than the giver, whatever it looks like.

Our Dwelling place is in the Person of God, not in a space or season. Was I to continue to look for my pale, boring little space to fill me with the life, I would continue to be tired and disappointed. I don’t have this mindset down perfectly. Those warring thoughts will come and I will have to battle them with the truth. And the beauty of it is this: He is more constant than the sun, more extraordinary than the stars, more powerful than the universe. He is my dwelling place.