I have spent much my life just wanting to be somewhere else. My wanderlust began just after high school when I purchased a book titled, "Work Your Way Around the World." It was full of tips on bohemian life working in vineyards, living in hostels, roaming the countryside of every continent with a good pair of shoes and a few items slung unceremoniously over your shoulder in a weathered leather rucksack. Prior to this, I had stomped all around Illinois in search of trails to hike, rocks to climb and adventures to have. I was ready to find new paths in the wide world. The book served me well...holding doors, keeping papers in check, and looking good on my shelf. I never made it around the world in that fashion. I managed to see both coasts, meet a lot of people and have many different experiences. Yet one way tickets always became boomerangs and I would once again find myself dreaming of somewhere else. Where did I want to go? My only response was, "not here." But "there" is not very and difficult to triangulate on a map (I'm pre-Google, y'all). This earnest longing to live in and explore the wider world was not helped when I married, had children and "settled down." However, by God's providence, I had managed to find not only a beautiful woman, bent on living life fully, but one who shared this very same desire. We hoped to someday find ourselves living in a different context, a different culture, a different place. Our life together ambled on, children grew, relationships solidified, training gave way to careers and we were blessed but restless people.
Several years ago, I heard an ancient Chinese proverb (read that fortune cookie). "Where you go, there you are. "Duh," my sone would say. While on the surface, this seems to be an inane statement, there is another meaning that shuffles to the surface like gold in the swirl of a grizzled prospector's rusted tin cup. Crossing the country on a Greyhound bus with my guitar, a backpack and hiking boots did not make me a different person. Looking out over a dark, cold and wet New York City from the Empire State Building did not fundamentally change who I was, only the scenery. In more recent years, our family embarked upon a journey of exploration into international missions. As profound a moment as it was for me personally, I landed in Kenya the same person who boarded in Chicago. These are all experiences which have impacted and shaped my soul, but none of them brought fundamental change, joy or peace to my heart. This change came only through the gospel and the work of God's Spirit. I carry this statement, "Where I go, there I am" with me as a reminder that what matters most is the way in which I occupy a space, wherever it may be found. God is interested in who I am in this world, rather than where I am in this world. This concept was, at first like swallowing razor blades, similar to the first time I ate airport Indian food, delivering spices not to be trifled with. Living in the same flat, midwest cornfield where I grew up, I still wanted to be "there."
Jon Acuff said something like, "happiness is not where you live but how you live." Like many difficult things that I, with limited capacities, try to digest this came out in the lyrics to a song. The main tag line is the name of this post, "Joy is not geography." You can check out a simple version of it here.
I am speaking strictly about location, terrain, culture, etc. of a place and not the particular circumstances of one's life such as relationships, job stress, health and other factors of personal context. That is another discussion. In addition, I would hope, given my family's trajectory, that you would not hear me proposing that it is wrong to move closer to the mountains or to a city for job opportunities or to Kenya to serve a medical missionary. Naturally, I support such endeavors and sometimes for no more reason than you like warm weather.
The dirt of what I am saying is that if I place the weight of my contentment within a dot on the map, I have effectively made this terrestrial location my ultimate happiness. I betray the fact that John Calvin was right and my heart is a factory for making idols of things. Good things, but not ultimate things. While there are places that I would rather be, they are all just Lewis' mud pies when I have an invitation to commune with one at whose right hand there are pleasures forever more - here, now. No earthly land or cultural nuances will ever compare.
I have spent much of my life wishing I was somewhere else. But a wish won't take me anywhere and even if I got there, it would still be me, bumbling about my new surroundings and shoving straw back into my shirt like the weak kneed scarecrow on a new adventure. Instead, I confess with the psalmist, "I wait for the Lord, my soul waits; and in his word I hope." It took me a great many years to understand this truth and I reckon a great many lie ahead learning to live in that landscape of the heart.
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