I was beneath a beautiful blue Scottish sky today. Believe it or not, St. Andrews has quite a few non-gloomy days. The wind was just enough to refresh me as I ventured out to run. My body is very much out of practice in this area. I told myself to just focus on the music coming out of the earbuds. The music helped the run, but it helped my heart more. I remember on my runs in years past how God would use music to speak to my heart. I think that is why I ran often then, because I was never really good at it. Today was no different. I was still slow. A song came on that is not a song one would think God would use to move someone’s heart. However, my response was visceral. My knees went weak and my stomach got upset. I simultaneously felt the need to run faster and cry harder. Instead, I let a single tear run down my sweating face until I tasted salt and felt deeply the bitter truth that I have believed since moving to Scotland: I have let people down. It was hard to swallow. My family and I are going on our third year in the UK. We came for my husband to pursue his PhD, but we ultimately came because we knew God was calling us here for this season. His faithfulness has not disappointed. In coming here we left a whole world back home. We left parents that are aging, a daughter who needs her mom more now than when we left, siblings that feel further distanced with each year abroad. We left friends who were exactly like family, the kind of dear relationships many people dream of having. We left a supporting community. We left family and friends that are far from God. We left a place where brokenness is still fresh and our support is no longer there. Writing it all out even now, it makes very little sense to leave such a home.
The song I was listening to talked about growing up, leaving, and not feeling sorry about it. I did not realize the pain in my heart from leaving. The lyric that pulled the veil open says, “You don’t have to be sorry.”
Just the word “leaving” hurts. The reality unbeknownst to us when we moved from the US to Scotland is that cross-cultural moves have a way of changing people. I know with time and age that we all change. Change is often handled better when a close unit of people experience the changes together. I have been sorry that I am changing. Sorry that my kids are changing apart from their hometown friends. I have been sorry for “living life” without my tribe. I have been sorry for making new friends in a new home. I have been sorry for growing in the Lord not next to my besties. I did not realize I was sorry. But I deeply am.
Sympathy is not really what I need. I honestly need to feel the grief. I believe it to be healing and freeing. (Maybe it’s healing and freeing for you in some way.) God is a God of love and would never expose our hearts to a hiding lie unless he means to deal with it. I am not sure how it’s all going to work out but I trust it will.
The sorrow in my heart is big and I am asking God, who often does things that don’t make sense, to help me walk through this. I have to put all my hope on his call and purpose for my life. I have to trust the Lord who said: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” In Luke 9 many people made excuses why they could not just “up and follow” Jesus. I could see how it could be easy for many people to turn around after a while. Giving up things for the call of God feels so countercultural and is extremely hard. So for the next few months I will allow God to heal my sorrowful heart and give me passion anew to live my life completely abandoned to him, learning to embrace this place he has called me to occupy. I will rejoice in growing up, leaving, and knowing I no longer have to feel sorry about it.