Well, friend. It’s been a while.
Jeremiah 29:11 (ESV) “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.”
If you’ve been subscribed to this little corner of the internet for a long time, you may have wondered whether I fell off the face of the earth. I didn’t. But I did go quiet. And before I pick this back up, I want to be honest with you about why, because I think there’s something in it for you too.
When I first landed where I am, I liked it here. I really did. But somewhere along the way, through all the seasons that followed, I realized I had never quite let myself feel at home. My heart was always set somewhere else. On another place, another season, the somewhere that would finally feel like mine. And without ever really deciding to, I started treating where I was as just a place to pass through. Not home. A stop on the way to home.
And here’s what I’ve learned about living that way: when your heart is always somewhere down the road, you stop noticing what God is doing right where you’re standing. Why would you look for him here? You’ve already decided here doesn’t count. It’s just the waiting room.
Then a pastor said something a few Sundays ago that stopped me in my tracks. He talked about the words we let run on a loop, the quiet things we say to ourselves so often we don’t even hear them anymore. And I realized the loop running under my life had been one long not home yet. Not here. Later. Somewhere else. And it hit me that I’d been asking God the wrong thing entirely. I kept asking him when. When do I get to go, when does the next thing start, when do I finally get home.
I had never once stopped to ask him why.
God, why am I here?
Do you hear the difference? When keeps you standing at the door with your coat on. Why sets your things down and starts looking around the room. One of them waits. The other one listens.
And when I finally started asking the better question, I went looking, and I found the strangest instruction tucked into Jeremiah 29. Most of us know verse 11. We put it on coffee mugs. Plans for a future and a hope. But look at what God tells his people just a few verses before it. They are in exile. In Babylon. In the very place they never would have chosen in a thousand years. And here is what he says to them:
Jeremiah 29:5, 7 (ESV) “Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce… But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”
Read that again. He does not tell them to treat Babylon like a motel. He tells them to build houses and live in them. To plant gardens and actually eat what grows. To make a home in the very place that wasn’t home. Because somehow their welfare was wrapped up in the welfare of a place they never would have chosen.
Grow where you’re planted. It’s an old saying, and I always thought it meant grit your teeth and endure until you can leave. It doesn’t. It means let yourself be at home here. Put your roots down and receive what God actually has for you, even in Babylon, even in the season you didn’t pick, even before the somewhere-else ever comes. Because he is not waiting for you to get home to start his work in you. He is working right here. In this place. The one you’ve been treating like a stop along the way.
I spent a lot of days with my heart down the road instead of in the room I was standing in. I don’t want to miss any more of them. And I don’t want you to either.
So here I am. Coat off. Roots going down. Asking the better question. And, it turns out, writing again, because it was never the place that quieted me. It was that I kept waiting to feel at home somewhere else.
I’ve been working on something in this quiet season, and I can’t wait to share it with you. A devotional, built on the Lord’s Prayer, teaching us how to actually talk to God, one piece at a time. There’s more behind it too, but we’ll get there. For now, I just wanted to knock on the door again and let you know I’m still here, and he has been faithful the whole time, patiently working in a season I kept trying to rush past.
If your heart is set somewhere down the road, waiting to feel at home in a place that isn’t here yet, I want to gently hand you the better question this week. When you catch yourself asking God when, try asking him why instead. God, why am I here? Then watch for the answer. He is not silent. Sometimes we’re just looking so far down the road that we miss the home he’s building right where we are.
Welcome back, friend. I’m so glad you’re still here. Hit reply and tell me where you’ve been these last few years. I would truly love to know. We were never meant to do this alone.
Proverbs 27:17 (ESV) “Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.”
Much love in Christ,
Stephanie Lynn
