The Familiar Places

There are some places throughout our life where we distinctly remember every detail, every sound, smell, and even just walking through the door triggers so many memories and emotions. I feel that way about walking through the door at my grandparents’ home - the alarm always chirped in a high pitch way. Greeted by the French blue and red wallpaper, the cozy kitchen, and the welcome of the familiar. A second home away from home. The smell of the fireplace, my grandmother’s cooking, and the sunlight streaming through the windows from a hot New Orleans summer. It’s been over a decade but I know this place well. There are those places – where I sat to eat lunch with friends at school, my own childhood home, the house of someone you loved that’s no longer in your life - are all familiar to me. I know where everything is located, where I can grab a cup, where I like to sit, where everything is placed and how each of my senses knows what to expect when I walk in the door.

Those familiar places are not just part of my exterior, but destinations, places I retreat and find similar familiarity in my thoughts, emotions, those places my soul goes: Yes, Jennifer, you have every right to be angry. Life is hard; you certainly have had your fair share. No, no one knows what it’s been like for you these last 36 years. You could at least get a break here. Or there. Or maybe even somewhere. Yes, welcome. You deserve to feel this way. It’s only natural. Ah, yes. Bitterness and hopelessness are my familiar places. I’ve been here before and they welcome me only to easy to come back next time. These are the familiar places I retreat too. Those places the minute life gets hard or I am reminded that this world is a fallen place, they’ve welcomed me with open arms. They’ve never asked me to leave and I find the longer I visit, the harder it is to leave and the easier it is to come back the next time.

Where are your familiar places? What beckons you to come back time and time again? No caveats, no judgment, but here you are and stay for a while. Is it past hurt or the current heartbreak you deal with? Is it loneliness that longs for your company? Is it the anger and unforgiveness you harbor for decades against those who wrong you? Is it loss that is unbearable? Or just discontement and restlessness for something more than the emptiness you feel? Because the door is always open, even the slightest reminder can send you back to those places you know well. Do you take it seat and listen to the record on repeat, playing over and over again the messages, failure, pain, the voices that will never stop repeating because you’ve never asked them too? Maybe these places are not just familiar, it’s where you’ve established residency. If so, have you ever stopped to ask if maybe there would be somewhere more lovely, somewhere that plays different music, where the curtains are pulled back and sunlight brings light to every corner of the room?

I want to my familiar places to be somewhere that doesn’t make the heart sick, rob me of hope, and instead fill me with joy unspeakable. I think those places exist…. No, I know those places exist. Thankfully, the Lord has made it clear that these places are not our home. Rather, we can re delight ourselves in some other landscapes. First, we need to remove ourselves from those familiar places and see where the Lord has called us too. If you still have that music, that broken record on repeat playing over you, let’s go rest. “The Lord causes me to rest in green pastures and lays me besides still waters.” Here, let’s stop. Let’s find the nutrient rich grass that is the Lord’s presence and His promises, resting and feeding in Him. Be in His presence, rest knowing that He’s taken you out of the weariness and exhaustion that came from your last familiar place or places. Ask the Lord, to feed you Truth, that comes from scriptures, Truth regarding who you are as His child, as a co-heir to His kingdom. “He lays me beside still waters.” Well, you have may have been drinking deeply from the water of pain or hurt, but the Lord’s water is healing. Let’s find a new source of nutrients – “the Lord’s presence is healing waters. The waters aren’t rushing but still. Take your time here, learn that you don’t have to open every cabinet to find a glass of water, the Lord readily provides this life giving water.

From places of rest, begin to ask for more. Where are you leading me Lord? Where would you have me find refuge? The Lord can begin the daily process of renewing our minds. Make his Promises your familiar place. “Take every thought captive” – well I’ll turn in my key to bitterness. :"Turn my eyes from worthless things" – okay here is the key for hopelessness. "I have come that you might have life and have it more abundantly" – I’ll stop going to visit my friend despair.

Scripture is rich with promises for you, a treasure for you to uncover. New places to make the familiar landscape in our spirit, heart, body, mind, and emotions.

Some of us made need an interior designer, to highlight the beauty of God, in our thoughts and minds. New paint colors and some sprucing to the places we frequent. Bitterness and sadness will never be my home. As much as it welcomes me to retreat here, I will run back to the Lord and ask for somewhere else – places of hope, places of peace, places of restoration to become familiar. Today, my prayer for you is to look at your landscape, and the places you allow your heart to go. Where can the Lord take you instead?

Reflections:

What are those “familiar places” in your heart or in your ways of thinking?

Are they filled with God’s promises? Or do they seem hopeless?

What are ways we can thank and praise God that His places are better? What he would have us believe is better?

Prayer:

Lord, you have called us as your sons and daughters.

Because you have come that we might have life and have it more abundantly.

Lead us to those places Lord, where your provision is present. Where your rest beckons us.

Sing your song over us, a song about who we are, where you are leading us, and what is in store for us.

Lord, as a sheep, stubborn in our ways and resistant in our hearts, bring us to those places you will have us dwell and call home.

Our hearts sing because we are at home in you.