Longing for Familiar

The other day I was at work. (Did you know I went back to nursing? I’m working as a floor nurse at our church’s nursing home.) They put me on a hall I had never been on.

So a different med cart, different place to hang out and chart at the computer, different place for report.

Different people.

As the nurse was giving “my halls report” I just wanted to badly to listen in and hear how my residents were doing.

As I looked for something in the med cart, I just wanted to sneak over and grab it off “my cart”. I could picture exactly where it was kept.

As I started down the new hall I longed to go back to the routine I knew like the back of my hand.

Things sounded different on the new hall. The phone at the front desk came thru my ears a little strangely. The aides were different and the jokes they teased each other with were different. Changing the atmosphere around me.

The residents had their little quirks. Just like my hall but completly different.

The people I met were different. The meds I passed were different. The treatments I did were different.

Everything was strange and unfamiliar.

Sometimes life is like that.

Sometimes God takes you out of familiar. Sometimes you find yourself in a new season.

Do you find yourself longing to go back where you used to be? Do you long for normal? Do you long for familiar?

Me too.

It’s because we know the sights, sounds, and smells inside familiar. We even know the feelings we meet inside of familiar. We know the struggles. We know the thoughts the struggles bring. We know how to manage familiar.

Even when familiar was hard (and sometimes even horrible). Even when we may have even wished for that season of familiar to be over. Even then. We find our heart wishing to go back.

We remember how to navigate that old season. We remember how to deal with it.

And our heart longs for familiar.

But dear friend, in the new place God is waiting right beside you. He is there. Just waiting to teach you  Just waiting to show up in special ways. He’s there ready to take the things you learned in the familiar seasons and build new lessons on them.

You know, He is never really done molding us into who He made us to be. And each season of unfamiliar we come out a little different person. With each new season we are molded and made into someone more like Him.

I’d love to know, are you in a familiar season or in a new one?

Are you longing for the old season or are you leaning into the lessons in the new season?