becoming a neighbor

So, back on the question of community, here's what the Teagles are pondering these days.

Here in Atlanta, we are hunting for a house. Or maybe hunting is too strong a word. Exploring the purchase of a home is probably more like it.  Anyhow, we look online, we drive around, we talk, we dream, we look up houses on my Trulia app (which fully feeds my somewhat stalker-ish Internet search tendencies, but hey, it's all in the name of home purchase research).

We are also in the process of a church transition. We've been going to a church - a really, really great church at that - since we first got married, but we feel like God is leading us somewhere new. We've been visiting another really, really great church over the last month and feel excited about it. It's smaller, and it feels like it could lead to some great friendships. We love the teaching and the worship and the mission. We are getting on board with this new church becoming our new church home.

However, point A - the neighborhood where we are exploring buying a house - and point B - the church we are considering attending - are not close to each other. As in 25 miles apart. If you add in where each of us work as points C and D, it looks like we've taken a map of greater Atlanta and dropped four pins as far as possible from one another.

This is bothering me, or maybe more accurately, this is provoking me to ask a lot of questions. I sat tearfully at lunch with Jayson on Sunday and tried to share what I was processing, which is that I want to live and work and go to church all in the same neighborhood. I want our kids to go to school with our neighbors and our best friends to live around the corner and to be plugged in our community. I want to run into people at the grocery store. I want to pop over at someone's house and borrow sugar or olive oil. I want to have a Bible study in my home that people can walk to. I want to be a part of a community that's not just relational, but geographic as well. I want to be a part of a neighborhood.

And we talked and talked. About if this is realistic, or if I have some sort of 1950's idealized version of life in my head. If it's realistic in a sprawling city like Atlanta. And, most importantly, if it's realistic based on the home, church and work opportunities God has laid in front of us right now.

Jayson is always saying that we need to just "take the next right step" in each area of our life, which is so wise. If we feel directed by the Lord to buy a house in A City, God will honor that. If we feel called to plant at B Church, God will make our time there fruitful. If we feel led to work at C and D, he'll orchestrate the details. We just have to be obedient in our next move. But what do we do when our hearts seem to be leading us on so many different directions?

I feel confident that the desires I have for community - a rich, relational, close-knit community - are real and are planted in my heart from the Lord himself. But the more I've thought about it over the last couple days, the more I've decided that the main question I'm wrestling with is this: Did he plant this desire in my heart for our next season of life, did he plant it in my heart for a future season of life, or did he plant it in me to fulfill in heaven alone?  I long to play a role in the kingdom coming on earth as it is in heaven, but at the same time, I believe the quote by C.S. Lewis - "If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." Already, but not yet.

So that's where we are as a family, navigating where God's leading us in our home and our church and our jobs and our friendships. I know he has a plan, and I know Jayson will lead our family well through these decisions that face us. I feel confused right now, but I know one day I look back on this season and see God's hand orchestrating each and every day. And in the meantime, I'm trying to remember,

"He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end."
Ecclesiastes 3:11