Fourth of July Musings

My relationship with the United States is complicated.   

In fact, I’ve spent the majority of my life longing to get out and stay out of the United States. I never wanted to stay here permanently. Not because I have any sort of hatred or dislike for this country, but because I never felt at home here. The U.S. was my vacation country, my passport country. Not my home, not my place.   

I’m American by blood and citizenship, but I’ve never felt American in my heart. Every fourth of July was an excuse to eat hamburgers and shoot fireworks, but I never thought of it as anything more. I look American, of course, and I speak southern English. I’m 100% by blood a Mississippi American. But it took me years to actually consider that a positive thing. I was jealous of my friends who were from other places who all seemed so much more cultured than me.   

I moved overseas when I was eleven. We lived in Costa Rica, Peru, and Mexico during my middle and high school years. I loved each place and made my home there. In my mind, anywhere that was not the United States was my home. When I moved back to the United States for college, my plan was to move back out of the U.S. as soon as I could. And with that in mind, I fought everything and everyone who gave me reasons to stay.   

I spent two of my college summers and one of my semesters in other countries, brainstorming and dreaming about when I would leave the U.S. I was ready to go wherever God called me, as long as it wasn’t the United States. I didn’t even entertain the thought of staying in the United States because surely God wouldn’t make me stay here any longer than I had to. I had my plan: I’d get my college education then get on a plane.   

But then God called me to graduate school. In the United States. I told him, “Ok, I’ll push off moving overseas for a few more years.” I assumed that I was moving to New Orleans because people from all over the world live there. I was just getting practice so that when I moved overseas when I graduated, I would have experience and training in an international city. When I met my husband, he knew on the first date that I was planning to be a missionary, to move overseas as soon as I graduated because I wasn’t from the United States and didn’t want to stay here.  

I never asked God for His opinion, of course, because I already knew it. He wanted me to leave too. Why would He make me stay here? There’s no way.   

                                                                               ***  

 This fourth of July, a few months after my seminary graduation, I’m writing to you from the booth of my favorite New Orleans coffee shop. I’m not overseas, and I have no plans to move overseas anytime soon. In fact, my husband and I are settling into a house in Louisiana because we plan to stay in the United States for a long while.   

It turns out, when I actually asked for God’s input in my plans, He tore them to shreds and replaced them with an even better plan. My heart still belongs overseas, but my heart also belongs in Louisiana and Mississippi and in the United States.  

This fourth of July, I don’t just consider the United States to be my origin country or passport country. I consider the United States my home and my missionary assignment. In my stubborn insistence to leave this country, I overlooked the many lost people that God placed in my path right where I was. I still mourn my lost plans sometimes, but my mourning is overshadowed by so much joy because, as it turns out, God knows me, my needs, and my desires so much better than I do.   

My relationship with the United States is still complicated, I’m thankful the Lord has changed my heart and transformed my passport country into my home.