Restoration

'"You know that verse in Joel about how God says he will restore to you the years that the locusts have eaten?"

Leah didn't know that verse.  "Are you trying to say my parents were locusts, and they ate up my best years?"

"Not exactly," Jessica said gently.  "I was wondering if in some way God was restoring to you the feelings and experiences you might have had over the last decade, but those years were taken up in your giving and caring for others.  Maybe some of those feelings had to be placed on hold.  You had to act older than you were.  You can be younger now."' 

~Taken from Robin Jones Gunn's Woodlands (page 80)

This quote has been rolling around my head since I first read it a couple weeks ago.  I've actually been thinking along these lines for awhile now...even before I read this quote. 

Throughout my life I have moved around a bit.  Not as many times as many others have, but more than I would have liked.  I don't do very well with change, or with meeting new people, so moving has always been tough on me.

Yesterday my mom and I went back to the city I was born in to watch an Easter musical my old church puts on called "Hosanna."  I hadn't been back there in 12 years or so.  It was neat to go back and see people I hadn't seen in over a decade.  One of those people (who I had no clue I'd see!) was my best friend from when I was little!  It was so neat to see her after all these years!  We haven't really kept in touch very well, which is really unfortunate, but I was amazed at how although we were only 10 when we last saw each other it seemed like we had seen each other yesterday!  We just picked up where we left off and continued on the journey of friendship!! 

While I was there I asked myself "I wonder what my life would have been like if I lived here my entire life?  What if we hadn't moved away?"  But as I pondered this question I realized I wouldn't have changed anything because in all the places I have lived I have grown.  I have been shaped and molded into the person I am.  The challenges stretched me.  And in the process I met so many people who have forever changed my life! 

Yet although I wouldn't have changed anything, in a sense I feel like Leah in the quote above.  Everything in my life was great...until I moved to BC in 2001.  I loved living in BC, don't get me wrong.  There was just something that kept coming against every friendship I ever tried to form.  To this day I don't understand it, I just know getting to know people was tough.  I hadn't experienced anything like it in my life.  But there, I did.  For nine years.  I loved my city.  I loved the mountains.  I loved my house...especially my yard and OWN room!  I loved the weather.  But deep down inside I was always discontent.  I tried to pretend I wasn't because feeling down wouldn't change reality, so I plugged along in life.  There were pockets of time while I was there that were amazing!  But overall it was tough.  Yet, ever since coming here to SK, again I've realized that I wouldn't have changed anything because that season caused me to become who I am.  It strengthened me.  It caused me to rely on God.  It changed my outlook on life.

But although that season of my life shaped who I am, I'm in a place right now where I feel like God is restoring the years the locusts have eaten.  He is taking that place in my life that was barren for so long and is causing it to blossom.  I see it everywhere I go.  I have met amazing friends in my church.  People who I feel as though I've known my entire life, but I've really only know them for a maximum of 6 months.  I'm meeting up with old friends who I didn't think I'd ever see again.  People who God had kept close to my heart and my prayers throughout all the years in BC are popping up everywhere.  Old classmates (who I may or may not see...we'll see when that door opens!) live either here in the city or nearby.  A friend from AB who I had lost close contact with while in my final years in BC is becoming a close friend again.  And the weird thing is that I feel closer to a few BC friends than I did when I was there!

Life is looking up.  God is restoring the years I had "lost" in BC.  I learned a lot there, and I wouldn't change it for the world...but I am truly blessed to be in the place I am in now!