Thoughts on a beautiful new home-passing-through…

Once more in Redding, dear friends…

We have found our own plans outclassed by circumstance, here. Our new home is God’s blessing to us and I have come to the conclusion that I must enjoy it as such without getting distracted by worry over things that haven’t yet fallen into place. Earlier this evening I took my Bible outside and was reading, sitting on a tree swing that was too close to the ground for comfort, in the deepening twilight, the air full of the piercing whirr of crickets and the low hum of the Interstate 5. The grounds of our new house are not large, but they are semi-wild, and a pair of deer and a family of quails share it with us. We have rocking chairs. On the verandah. And an ancient jeep that won’t go above 45mph and has scratchy brakes but is feather-light to drive. Our landlady keeps a flourishing vegetable garden, and for today it yielded tomatoes and basil and chilli peppers for a spaghetti al pomodoro, which we shared with our housemate Ronda. It feels almost like being on retreat, except that my to-do list looks ever more pressing. I downloaded at least three separate time management apps last week in an effort to efficiently transfer a lengthening list of tasks onto a dauntingly empty schedule. But this house is tranquil, and allows one to think, plan and pray.

In Second Year we plunged abruptly into a very busy schedule, within days of school starting. This time around, we are wading in slowly, trying to assimilate the freedom that we have. I do, of course, have all my projects with goals neatly mapped out, but with a suspicion that it will all look rather different, after Christmas. I realised last week, walking on the downtown bank of the Sacramento River by the Sundial Bridge, that by the end of this year I’ll have lived in Redding for as long as I worked in London. Yet I’ve never really felt at home here, on our temporary concession visas that don’t even give us the full rights of academic students, moving around from guest room to guest room, making friends and trying not to be a burden. I am hoping that this year, this house, and this little room decorated in gentle green (my favourite colour!), will be our home until we choose to leave it. We desperately need to buy a car for under $1200, without which we can’t stay here long, being at the northern limits of Redding and within walking distance of nothing but trees. But home is important, and I am unpacked, and determined to find a way of remaining so.

And then I was talking to a friend of mine, a missionary in a central Asian country, who has a trailer here in the States, a car in his home country, and a car in his adopted land… and still finds the time to be a balanced individual and a man who seems very much at home, wherever he is. I take hope from that, too, since I am a person who travels between three nations and has no permanent home in any of them. After two years I feel I owe Redding, and the handful of friends who have accompanied us this far, more than a sense of just passing through.