life in this town (part three)

This is part three of a three-part story. Please click here to read part one or here to read part two.

Seriously, read the other parts first if you want to read this one and have it make sense.

An eternity later, or perhaps it was only three very-full years of life lived elsewhere, Keith and I were married in this town, in that church where my parents tried to make it work, in the sanctuary where I first attended services as a new believer, in front of the cross where I had tried every Wednesday night to not be so smitten with the boy playing drums in front of it. And now I stood before that cross, holding the hands of that boy, now a man, and we pledged our lives to one another. And we began our new life in this town.

I worked at the grocery store then, the same store where I had pushed the child-sized cart when I was small and lived with both of my parents, the same store where my little girl now pushes the child-sized cart. Keith and I lived in a very small town forty minutes outside of this one, lived at a base where he worked as a wildland firefighter in the same place where my mother had done the same thing when I was three years old and had to live with another family while she was away. And we made new and beautiful memories there in the Forest Service house that we still drive past sometimes, where we were newlyweds seven years ago, where Keith planted sunflowers to surprise his new bride.

And we have returned periodically through the years to this town, usually to the house where Keith lived for the first eighteen years of his life, to stay for a month after our return from Sudan, for a few days before moving to Utah. This town has been our home base in between all the moves, when we have come home again and smiled over the memories that we’ve made here.

We returned again four years ago, when God called us to leave Utah and move back here to the cabin my parents built, which at that time had been sitting empty for seventeen years and at this time has been sitting empty for twenty-one. It had been promised to me for all of my life, and we had intended to restore it eventually, when the time was right. We were surprised by God’s call but we came with bank accounts swelling, ready to put in electricity and with a plan to renovate it far better than it was to begin with. And life fell apart on the way, as we lost our first baby to miscarriage and then moved back here to an unexpected hardness, to promises broken, to the blessing of Keith’s compassionate parents and the opposite response, the most painful kind of rejection and dishonesty by the one who had promised me the cabin for all those years. It broke us. And that was the hardest chapter we have had in this town, for it was a kind of confusion that I have never known since I have known the Lord, the confusion of having followed Him and having come to disaster. Why did God give me so many dreams of how to rebuild and restore? Why did the relationship of trust with the human parent never materialize as it should have? Was it my sin? Was it hers? Was it misunderstanding? Was this how God wanted it to go? I don’t think so, but as Aslan says in the Narnia books and as I suspect God says to my heart, we can’t really know what might have happened.

And so we left again, heart-broken, unable to stand living in this town any longer, so wounded by the poisonous venom that seemed to be far more than one person could spew at us. We had done well in our business for a while but we lost momentum, lost any will to succeed, so stooped by the depression and loneliness of the hardest season we’d known. We’d not found much support for our business here, so we moved to where our clientele were. But the depression moved with us, and eventually we failed.

We returned last year after Keith had been commuting here for a year and a half, returned eight months pregnant and with a one-year-old daughter. And it has been good this time, healing even, and we have been blessed greatly by the welcome we have received by this church and this community. And yet I am realizing that I am still nervous to be open here, still confused how to be the self that has been influenced by the times elsewhere; the five growing-up years in another town, the college years in Spokane and Three Hills, the ministries in Sudan and Quebec, the life in Utah, and the two years back in that town fifty miles away, the one where I lived when my mom was a single mom, the one where Keith and I lived again before moving back here.

This must seem silly but one of the books I’ve read most often lately is “Red Sings From Treetops,” a book of poetry and lovely drawing for children, one which Rilla and I both love. It’s about the colors of the seasons, and there is a line that says, “How can green be so many different greens?” I think when I am here, back in this town, I feel awkward because I remember all the Jamies that I have been here, and I wonder how one Jamie can be so many different Jamies.

It’s really not the people who live here who make it challenging for me to assimilate it all, even those who I see at church and elsewhere who have memories of me when I was very young. It is more my own memories, the beautiful mingled with the painful, the sin which God has chosen to forget but the reminders of which I still see. I find it challenging here to flesh out His glorious redemption in the same place where there was such humiliation and brokenness. In other towns, I do not remember the awkwardness of teenage fear of man; here it comes rushing back and chokes me at annoying, unexpected moments. Here I remember jealousy, bitterness, anger, hatred, lust, envy, pride; the sins of my youth show up sometimes in sharp remembrances. Here too there are encounters with the crushed hopes of four years ago.

But perhaps being here is a part of my growing up now, a part of gaining maturity as an adult. Maybe I can’t really call myself mature until I can be mature here too, can respond graciously to those who knew me when I wore snowpants to school in seventh grade, when I ran clumsily into a volleyball pole in eighth grade, when I had pimples and huge glasses in ninth grade, when I said the wrong word for tentacles in front of the whole science class in tenth grade. When I can learn to laugh about these things... and the more painful ones... without flushing in embarrassment, maybe that will mean I am growing in maturity in a way that leads to a more sincere understanding of the humility and redemption of Christ. I think I need to get there.