Time for Change

This blog was inspired by Don Miller's "Through Painted Deserts" (Nelson Books Publishing, 2005). If you are not familiar with Miller's writing, I recommend starting with this book or "Blue Like Jazz"

I’m taking a blog break from humor. Don’t worry; the break is only temporary, maybe just one entry, and is inspired by my friend Kristin Flores.

Kristin did something recently I have come to believe everyone must do: leave. A little background: Kristin was born and raised in Salem. She graduated from Oregon State, but spent many college weekends in Salem. She is well connected with her church in Salem, in which her father and mother pastor. She has wonderful friends here (myself included), and her social and familial life are worthy to be envied. She still left, moved to Pasadena and is attending Fuller Seminary. Before leaving she struggled a bit with the “why” questions, but she knew she had to go.

“…I must keep changing, and I want to change because it is God’s way… Everybody has to change, or they expire. Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons… Only the good stories have the characters different at the end than they were at the beginning. And the closest thing I can liken life to is a book, the way it stretches out on paper, page after page, as if to trick the mind into thinking it isn’t all happening at once.” (Don Miller, Through Painted Deserts, pg. x-xi)

I have a comfortable life here in Salem. I have a job I enjoy with a decent salary. I’ve been attending the same church since high school, and I have enough friends to keep entertained with my free time. I appreciate all this more than I did before I left. I went to college out of state, spent 3 years in Santa Barbara, CA and one semester in San Francisco. Then I came back (not necessarily according to plan).

Lately, I’ve been feeling the need to leave again, to find change. Those of you who know me (nearly all the people that read this) have heard me talking about moving to Portland. That is still the tentative plan – to move next year with a couple of friends, find a new job and start graduate school. Other options include Denver, Colorado and somewhere in South America. The purpose is to get somewhere less comfortable, a place that will require me to change. My experience living in San Francisco was my biggest for change. It helped me understand the common Christian paradoxes – I need to die to live; in my weakness is strength; be broken to be whole. And so I must find the uncomfortable to learn to appreciate the comfortable. Odd? Maybe. But it’s never made more sense to me than now.