Are You Wondering, “Should I Stay or Should I Go?”
It creates nations, starts wars, and divides families. It affects your education, socioeconomic status, and mental health.
It’s the backdrop of your memories and the setting of your story.
It’s place.
With my kids and grands all back to different states after our summer gathering, and my beloved cardiologist moving to a new state as well, I’ve been thinking lots about place, especially the idea of a home place, lately.
Something about summer always conjures up memories of my childhood, too—the sunny months outside of the regular school calendar. I’ve said it before: Our animal-filled farm fifteen miles from town wasn’t a convenient place to be a teenager, but it was a glorious place to be a kid. So the idea of home always takes me back to that southcentral Kansas acreage in Harper County that raised me.
Yet somehow, I have lived in my current home longer than I’ve ever lived anywhere else, including that farm where I grew up. And yet, my husband and I, from time to time, consider a move—a lifestyle move, more or less. (A want, not a need.) But the idea of moving “home” to a new address is never easy.
It creates nations, starts wars, and divides families. It affects your education, socioeconomic status, and mental health.
It’s the backdrop of your memories and the setting of your story.
It’s place.
Seems appropriate (sheer coincidence? Divine design?), that my article, “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” for Just Between Us Magazine was recently published. I hope you enjoy it, and please leave a comment below about home, or about your own staying and going decisions.
Just Between Us Magazine | “Should I Stay or Should I Go?”
I don’t know about you, but I have struggled with being confident in my discernment as an adult. Somehow, believing I had wisdom was easier when I was younger. That kind of rootedness is what Scripture calls abiding, and it may be the deepest form of discernment available to us. As a teenager and young adult, decisions seemed more black-and-white. But it turns out, wisdom depends less on our actual decision, and more on how deeply we are rooted in God.
My husband and I were high school sweethearts, both attending the same area-wide rural school for grades 9-12. He returned recently for a class reunion. Many of our classmates still live in that small farming community. Over the years since leaving, forming a family elsewhere, and burying my parents there, I’ve considered what I missed by not staying.