within these barbed walls

When I chose the name for this blog, for this season of our lives, I was coming up short of any other explanation of how Turkey felt to me at the time.  It was the end of July and we'd just spent 18 days traversing Europe after leaving our 2 year home on the island of Terceira, Portugal, to plant our feet in a different country, culture, and circumstance.  We didn't know at the time how vastly different Turkey would feel to us than what we were coming from.  "Far from home" is still truly the best way I can think to describe how it feels here.  It's foreign, uncomfortable and different from anything we've ever experienced.  Not the country itself, (as the only bits of it we've experienced happened on our drive here), but the circumstances we live in.  The base was locked down the day after we arrived.  We've never been into "the alley" - the shopping area just outside the gates - in the history of lock-downs, that area is not included.  Members of the base have been permitted to experience that part of Turkish culture, even when the main city outside the barbed perimeter is off limits.  As we close out this month of November, we have been locked into this small section of land for 4 months now.  Unable to leave barring medical emergency or flight out of country.  
I grow increasingly claustrophobic of the area we are allowed to roam.  We have yet to eat at the golf course restaurant, but save that we've experienced everything there is to experience on base, and that is with spreading things way out and doing those new things few and far between.  It's comical, really, to think about it - comical only when I can make it, to keep from crying.  A tiny taste, perhaps, of what living on reservation is like.  Only a tiny, for sure, as our liberties cannot be compared to the oppressive atmosphere many reservation residents experience.  

A week or so ago I was out running errands while my brood was at home with our Turkish friend and helper.  I was driving one of my familiar routes coming home from the Turkish market on base and glanced over to the towering blue mountains in the distance.  My heart caught and there came a painful knot in my chest.  How I long for the freedom to drive and breath deep that crisp mountain air.  I came home and sat for a long while to think of how to word it - then posted to Face book -  "If I keep my eyes within the perimeter that we are surrounded by, and my heart where it belongs, right here, I do well. But when I look outside the perimeter and I see the dark blue silhouette of the nearby mountains reaching for the sky I start to feel antsy and discontent. Such a strange circumstance we live in here - unlike anything we've known."  
 

Josh and I were sitting on the couch a couple days ago reading.  I had my face buried in the words, but when I looked up he wasn't reading his book - he was looking at me.  The edge of his mouth curled into a sad sort of half grin and he asked, "are you unhappy?".  I exhaled and tilted my head to the side to ponder the question.  My eyes burned and watered as I searched for a way to explain to him the tangled mess that has been my thought life for the past while.  I'm able to be at peace with where we are, but it hurts none the less.  I trust and know that our location and the timing of it all is completely intentional and a piece of the puzzle in this beautiful masterpiece of a story our Creator has written, but it doesn't take away the pains of being tacked down and kept from things that I hold dear to my heart.  Both the ocean and the mountains are within a 45 minute drive - All my life I've felt closer to my Creator when wrapped in mountain air - and more recently the ocean became the same way - I can see the mountains and many days my ears remember the sound of the pounding waves so vividly that I could swear I'm sitting on those jagged black rocks on that sweet little island in the Atlantic.  
The beauty is this: that if I do keep my heart where it belongs - if I keep it where our Lord has placed it right now to serve, I do well.  The jagged fence tops only add more texture to the scenes outside them.  What is inside them is what God has brought us to.  Inside the perimeter lives hurting, desperate, broken and lost people, far from home.   All of them longing for the things they love and for the home outside here, wherever that is, but lacking the promise of the only home where we actually belong.  These walls we are confined to make earth just a bit more uncomfortable than it's felt before to us.  These standing straight soldiers and tanks at the gate that enforce the rules make this "home" on earth feel more foreign than it has before.  When I keep my eyes set up I remember that none of it is "home".  "Far From Home" first implied far from the island, far from Florida, far from family and friends of the past that we love so entirely and miss deeply.  But "Far From Home" has ultimately come to mean this experience we live in, this blip, is so far from the reality of the Home we are created for.  That will come!  And right now, being pinned inside these four barbed walls our call is to spread that promise to every ear we can.  We have no insight into what our next place of residency will be, or when that will happen - so there's no distraction in the future - nothing to give me the excuse to say, "I just have to grin and bare it for the next 20 months...".  We have no insight into when the gates will open and the guards will stand to the side and let us pour out and explore the culture around us - so there's not just holding tight until that happens - no counting down the days.  We have no insight into when our time on this foreign "home" will be at it's end - and that all forces me to focus on where He's placed my heart right now.  To use my gifts and pour my heart out into the broken - to bear burdens with my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ - to help the broken and hurting and lost - to care for the "widows and orphans" that are left in this strange place while their helpmates and fathers are deployed to other areas - to live as salt and light.  To love my boys and raise them to love Christ, above all else - and be ready to serve him in a world that is become increasingly and rapidly more hostile and foreign.  

I am Far From From, indeed.  I have an eternal promise that gives me the best kind of hope and peace that is available.  What a strategic Father we serve!  What a beautiful timed placement!  What a mighty Creator that has formed this place and orchestrated it's story!  Be still my heart!  The time for liberation will come - but now, choose JOY, and like a wildfire takes to the dry and overgrown plains, spread Light and Love in this very dry and very barren land.