When I was very little I planted a Scrub Pine seed in the ground and a tree began to grow.
It's planted at the camp where I committed to Christ, grew up, and spent a summer of college. I remember, as an eight year old, being filled with anxiety about planting the tree at our home in Oregon. I didn't want to ever lose my tree. I didn't want it to get chopped down, or taken for granted, or neglected. I wanted it to be deeply rooted in a place where it would thrive forever.
For a long time, I compared my own life to my tree. I saw its struggle to grow in poor soil as my own failure to find a healthy community throughout middle and high school. I saw its stunted growth as my struggle with self-worth and anxiety. I compared both of our opportunities to be planted and rooted deeply as my journey of leaving Oregon and moving to Chicago.
Now I envy my tree. For over ten years it has grown taller than I can understand and has gotten to stay in the same place. After high school my solution to being hurt by Church and community was to move to Chicago. Over the last two years, I have felt a stronger and stronger desire to move and live in Palestine--something I had the opportunity to do this past summer. Now, quite unlike my tree, I feel my roots being splintered between three distinct communities.
The life I feared for my tree is the life I have led for the last three years. The night before I left to come back to North Park I wrote "I'm tired of being transplanted". I am tired of putting roots down for a few weeks and then leaving. I am tired of processing self, past, future, and present in different places.
Right now, if I could choose where I would go, I would take root in Palestine. I would move to Bethlehem. I would learn Arabic, do research, and coordinate college students. I would find community among like-minded scholars, activists, and peacemakers. I would get a master's degree.
But right now, in reality, I have thirty-two weeks of college left. Right now, my roots get to hold tight in an eight-person house. Right now, I am planted at North Park for one more year. I'm resistant to this.
For one thing, it feels backward to go to Palestine for the summer and then to be forced to come home and to sit though meetings and classes when six weeks ago I was LIVING THE DREAM.
And THIS IS ENDING AS SOON AS I GRADUATE.
So there isn't a lot compelling me to really enjoy and embrace this season of life.
I need to admit that. I need to be honest about that.
I don't want to be here.
So right now I'm learning to settle; in all senses.
To settle into a place that feels temporary and transient and irrelevant.
And to settle for the fact that this is not a season of life in which I can be rooted in the way I wish to be; where I choose to be.
So I'll start working up the courage to drop some seeds into the ground where I am. And I need to have faith that something might actually grow; like it did so many years ago.
