hopeful

i thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, because of your partnership in the Gospel from the first day until now.  and i am sure of this, that He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. it is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace...  ~philippians 1:3-7

it's just hard being in a new place.  

there's nothing profoundly mysterious about that, is there?  
new is a lot of things, including:
challenging, exhausting, uncomfortable.  
refreshing, reviving, exhilarating.  
new is wide-open opportunity and suffocating unfamiliarity.
it is beautiful and terrifying.

i'm not sure if it's the new that is hard, or the presence of old (restful, familiar, warm) that makes forging ahead difficult.  after all, wouldn't new be all wonderful if you were leaving something awful? 

we didn't leave awful.  we left wonderful, knowing full well that we were heading in the right direction.  there's a peace in that... but peaceful does not equal easy.  it can be tough to walk in the right direction, even painful. when our direction is away from good, it sometimes doesn't matter that it is also towards a new good.  

so yes- new place.  hard.
missing the friends who are our family.  crazy hard.
missing easy presence- the effortless place where we know and are known.  
achingly hard.

but there is so much hope in the hard.

hope.

if we had never had the good... 
the friendships that relentlessly poured grace and love into our insecurity and filled us to overflowing; 
the church that brokenly and beautifully sought Jesus and our community;  
the city that gave us freedom to explore and enjoy and fall in love with its people.
if we had never experienced that kind of good, would we know to miss it?  look for it?  ask for it, work to find it in our new place?

if we hadn't had the good, we wouldn't have so much hope of it here.  
wouldn't long for it in ways that drive us to fling open our doors and invite others inside.  
wouldn't thirst for it enough to run around this new place- seeking, asking, knocking.

but we did, and we do- so much hope for the friends and love in this place. 
this new city, this new church, these new friends.

and hope in the midst of hard is enough.