Finding My Key to Belonging
Can you belong too much? In the past I would bounce around from one friend group to another trying to spend time with everyone. From one hobby or sport to another. I didn’t bounce around because I felt like I didn’t fit in though; I did it because I felt like I belonged with all these things and these people. My husband can attest to my willingness to get involved with many things at once, saying yes when everyone around me thinks I should be saying NO! I used to think this was because I was looking for that ‘it’ thing for me. The one thing I could do better than any other. It would stand out for me, marking my rise to the top, and then I would find it. That thing to claim as my own.
I don’t have this issue only with people, activities and groups either. I feel like I belong in places as well. How can I feel at peace and secure in so many places? Isn’t that weird? I feel a sense of belonging when I am at home in the house I own and share with my husband, children and small zoo. Yet, I feel that same sense when I am at my parents’ house. Both houses feel the same to me. I know I belong in both places. I’ve often yearned for a place where I would feel complete. A physical place I could be in and be wholly me. I thought that it would feel different, somehow set apart from how I felt at other places. If I felt like I belonged at a multitude of different places, surely, I hadn’t found the one place I was supposed to be? The placed I belonged over all others.
When I sit on the beach I feel like this has to be where I belong. Then I go to the mountains and that same feeling stirs inside me–the feeling of belonging. I sat on a dirt floor in India thousands of miles from home, surrounded by people I didn’t know, speaking a language I couldn’t understand and I felt altogether like I belonged there. I didn’t want to leave that place that felt like home and hope and God. I sat on the floor in a local Islamic Community Center, the women separated by a divider from the men as we broke the fast during Ramadan, and I didn’t feel out of place. I was flooded with belonging and peace.
I had the pleasure to stay in Chicago at Jesus People USA. It was a short stay and somewhere I had never been but before I left for my trip my mother joked with me that I should remember to come home. She knew that when I got into that amazing community they have built there, I would feel like I fit. I would feel that sense of belonging and want to stay.
I never feel like I belong anywhere more than when I am at my place of calm, of peace and in the presence of God. When I walk into the Monastery of the Holy Spirit I feel secure in the fact that I belong there. Most find this odd because I am not Catholic! I’m not a monk or even Lutheran. My Baptist self finds security during 4am vespers in the dark sanctuary sitting on hard wooden benches bathed in the soft glow from the stained-glass windows.
Before my walk with Christ started I felt constantly out of place. I didn’t know why. I felt like I belonged places but I couldn’t make sense of it, so it felt awkward to me. Now I know why. Even when I wasn’t walking with Christ he was walking with me. When I felt awkward he was pushing on me to feel him. To know that I belong with him. When I walk with him I belong everywhere.
When we lack a sense of belonging it affects our idea of self-worth and limits us from being all God wants us to be. There seems to be a connection between our belonging and acceptance. If we don’t feel we belong then we feel dejected and begin to fall into a cycle of pity and abandonment. Sometimes we can’t have a physical place to belong to, or something happens and that place of physical belonging becomes a bad place. If we remember Romans 14:8 and know that we belong to the lord we can find our place anywhere. As long as we have God with us–we belong.
[perfectpullquote align="right" cite="" link="" color="" class="" size=""] “If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.” – Romans 14:8[/perfectpullquote]
For me, I have found the key to belonging. So, when I encounter a new place or a new group of people and I am overwhelmed with a sense of belonging, I understand it now. I let it happen, I fall in love with the place and though I can’t stay everywhere I know I belong everywhere. I know this because as long as Christ is there with me I belong.