We’re walking through St. James Park in London when our daughter London asks, “Mom, what do I say if someone asks me where I live?” “Oh,” I say. “That’s a good question.”
I think for a second, “My Instagram profile says I’m wandering the globe.” Justin overhears and laughs: “‘Globe’ sounds pretentious.”
“She could say she’s a nomad,” he counters.
“All of her new 13 year old friends at camp are totally going to understand that,” I say, eyes rolling.
Later we’re watching a play in Covent Garden, and one character asks another, “What’s your permanent address?” The character squirms before quipping, “Permanency is overrated.” All four of us laugh and decide this is as good an answer as any.
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This past week my family and I left Weymouth, England (our home for the last 5 months) on a train bound for London. We spent a couple days exploring our favorite city. We saw a play. We ate good food. We wandered.
And then we dragged everything we own through the streets of London, down a couple hundred steps, onto the underground train, off of the underground train, onto another train, off that train, and through the airport. We took Covid tests. We went through security. We took another train. We boarded a plane. We flew for half a day—then customs and security and a layover and more flying and eventually a landing in Tampa, Florida. My mom met us at the airport, and we drove away like the Beverly Hillbillies in her too-crammed vehicle.
Within three hours of being in America we’d seen fifteen people (my parents are popular), and every one had asked some variation of this question: “Is it strange being back in America?”
On our second day back my mom and dad took us to the Weeki Wachee River to swim. I dove in, my favorite thing to do since I first learned to dive from that very dock, and sliced through the water like a knife through warm butter. We swam, reconnected with friends, read books in the sunshine. In the afternoon our kids engineered a smallest splash contest with new friends. I jumped up from my spot to participate, and dove from the corner of the dock just as I had earlier in the day. Except this time the tide had gone out, and I hadn’t noticed, and my outstretched arm hit the sandy bottom before my feet were even underwater. I came up yelling, “I dislocated my shoulder.”
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Located: positioned in a particular place
Dislocated: out of place, the normal arrangement or position disturbed (Also: disrupted, thrown into disorder or disarray, turned upside down)
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We humans like it when things are in place. I like it when things are in place. I like drawer dividers and alphabetized bookshelves and knowing that a medium-sized egg nestles perfectly inside a paper towel roll (something my daughter discovered at 4). I follow The Home Edit on Instagram and practically swooned at their picture of Dwyane Wade’s shoe closet—hundreds of sneakers organized by color, a rainbow of leather and laces.
I liked it when my shoulder was in its place—ball in socket, no pain, perfect function. I disliked it when my shoulder was out of place. I have never experienced that kind of pain (and, as my daughter Eve has reminded everyone tempted to minimize my assessment, “She had me naturally!”).
Obviously, things belong in their place (books, shoes, and shoulders), and things being in their place brings us a special kind of peaceful joy. Acknowledging that feeling, Robert Browning famously wrote,
The year's at the spring
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hill-side's dew-pearled;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn:
God's in his heaven—
All's right with the world!
Even God has a place. Location is holy.
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What does that mean for four people without a place?
Are we dislocated because we’re not located?
Are we doomed to disarray and pain?
These are genuine questions I’m asking today at the coffee shop with free wifi in a town where I don’t live. Because we don’t feel pain exactly. We feel wonderful most days. But maybe we’re in shock.
I pull out my Bible to double check (The answer I find is for you and me both).
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For generations of Jews God’s place was in Zion. He lived in the temple on the mountain. They’d seen Him move in on the day of Solomon’s dedication—a cloud descending and filling, like water in a jar. When Babylon destroys the temple and carries the Israelites into exile, Daniel still prays facing Jerusalem. Solomon had said the temple would be “a place for [God’s] dwelling forever.” Surely God was still there, somewhere on the mountain.
Later the Jews would rebuild the temple and dedicate it joyfully. Scripture doesn’t mention a cloud, and the people don’t seem to notice its absence. In the holy of holies, behind the special curtain, a stone commemorates the spot where the ark of the covenant should be.
The temple will get a facelift under King Herod (it’s undeniably beautiful—a wonder of the ancient world), and an eagle will adorn the front gate as a sign of Rome’s protection. Herod didn’t get a cloud either.
When Jesus comes to earth He says His body’s the temple, destroyed and raised in three days. No one understands—God dwelling in flesh, God walking from village to village, God at a party, God in Samaria, God at Golgotha. God lives on the unmoving mountain, not in a man with legs.
When Jesus ascends and the Holy Spirit comes, every believer is turned temple—God dwelling in fallen flesh, God in my car, God at my dinner table, God in my bed, God at my desk, God in my heart. Few understand this, either. God is in Heaven, or God is at church.
It was David who first had the idea to make a house for God, David who so often sought God’s face at the tabernacle (the ever-moving tent). David wanted to give God a house like the one God had given him. But God didn’t want one: “From the time I brought Israel out of Egypt until today I have not dwelt in a house; instead I have moved from one tent site to another, and from one tabernacle location to another. In all my journeys… have I ever spoken a word… asking: Why haven’t you built me a house of cedar?”
David is like a loyal son who buys his RV traveling parents the house next door because surely they’d rather live in a home with brick walls and a dishwasher and subway tile than live in a camper—more respectable, easier to stop by with a question.
God will relent; He’ll settle down and put down roots (for a while anyway) out of love. God goes with His people, and God will stay with His people.
If God has a location it’s with.
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Dislocation hurts. When you’re not where you should be you feel it. Even today, four days after my injury, I can’t sleep at night. I wake up thirty times; every little shift brings pain, a reminder that things aren’t right.
Have you felt it? Dislocation?
Like you’re in the wrong place? Like the way things are isn’t the way things should be? Like you’re untethered?
Maybe your job isn’t a good fit. Maybe you feel out of your depth. Maybe you feel like a whale in a goldfish pond.
Maybe parenthood isn’t what you’d thought it would be. Maybe you’re not the mother you wished you’d be.
Maybe your relationships are fraying, relationships that once seemed sturdy.
Maybe your bank account, the one that always made you feel secure, is empty.
Maybe you just feel turned around, like something’s not right.
Today I had coffee with a friend who’s dislocated. His relationships are wilting. People he loves don’t love him. His present isn’t the future he planned in the past. It’s torture.
His story made me think of David in the cave, on the run, anointed king and not king, everything in disarray. He prays:
Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me,
for in you my soul takes refuge;
in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge,
till the storms of destruction pass by.
I listened and leaned in and learned and loved. But when it came time for me to talk, to offer some bit of light, all I knew to say was what I’d learned from David: God is with you. And you’re with God. And that’s right where you should be.
till the storms of destruction pass by
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Is it strange to be back in America?
Not really.
It wasn’t very strange to be in England either.
That’s partly because England and America aren’t all that different from one another—same language, same basic culture, shared history. We left a coastal town that smelled like fish and salt and landed in a coastal town, sea birds on our morning lawn.
Ask us again next year after Cape Town and Israel and Malaysia.
But also, shouldn’t it be strange? We don’t have an address. We’ll sleep in ten different beds this next month. We left our tennis shoes in our last hotel room because they were heavy and we didn’t want to haul them around. Shouldn’t we be turned upside down or at the least, disrupted?
Here’s what I’m learning on the road, my whole life in transition: We don’t have a place. But we do have a location, a permanent address even. It’s with.
Daniel prays to the God who lives in Zion looking out a window in Babylon, but soon he discovers what God told David—God journeys. Sitting in a pit in the dark surrounded by hungry lions, Daniel meets God with us.
God sends His son to earth, Emmanuel, God with us.
God sends His Spirit and his people are “filled with.”
In a new and powerful way I’m learning that everything is right and in order, positioned in the exact right place, when I welcome the withness of God.
No. God’s presence doesn’t fix everything. There’s pain, disorder, and disarray still. But also, God’s presence does fix everything. With Him there’s healing, peace, and purpose. Still.
If you’re feeling dislocated by the winds of destruction, the hardships of life, transitions, and pains, seek refuge with God and find yourself rooted and sheltered.
If you’re feeling dislocated because you’ve wandered away from Him, seeking refuge in people or habits or Netflix or stuff, come back home. God’s your location.
I don’t have a great answer for London’s question, “Where do I tell people I live?” The answer’s complicated. But if the question is deeper, “Where do we live?” the answer to that is simple.
With God.
-JL
For more on God’s “withness” check out this book I read years ago. It powerfully affected the way I see both God’s identity and mine:
With: Reimagining the Way You Relate to God by Skye Jethani
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