Finding My Place

Photo by GeoJango Maps on Unsplash

Several authors I admire talk frequently about a sense of place - of being rooted to a specific town or house or community. I haven’t had that since I was a boy. We’ve moved around too much, and never seemed to create strong attachments in any place. Oh sure, we’ve made friends in our travels, but never such that we were sad to leave a place.

The town in which we currently live, Medical Lake, Washington, has a population of around 5000 people. My wife is a substitute teacher in the school district, so she knows a lot of the people (and their kids). I know comparatively few.

When we moved in, men from the local community church helped us unload. We thought that would be our church home. But the Chick tracts in the foyer were an indication that the church would not be a good fit for us. We moved in in the summer of 2016, and the election was underway. It became clear to us that anything other than full-throated support for Donald Trump was not a welcome position there.

The other churches in town were Catholic, or Lutheran, or Assemblies of God (and from what we could tell from talking to some of the people who attended there, leaning hard into the Bethel heresy). The Southern Baptist church was dead - they just hadn’t realized it yet. (It has since closed.)

This saddens me, because we believe in local churches. But there was not a healthy, orthodox church in town. So we had to look elsewhere for a church home. (We currently attend a Presbyterian church in Spokane.)

The town has a coffee shop and two drive-by coffee stands, a Mexican restaurant, and a bar that keeps changing hands and going in and out of business. A grocery store, a pizza place, and a Subway round out the offerings.

We have a city council that’s actually good at its job, and a mayor who I don’t personally care for but is beloved by most of the citizenry. (She didn’t like some questions I asked when she was running for office.)

The schools are decent, with a terrific band program and a horrible football program. (Guess which one gets all the funding?) A cross-country team coached by a one-armed coach that regularly competes in the state finals. And a robotics team that will forever have a place in my heart. (Go Circuit Breakers!) My daughter met her future husband on the robotics team.

My wife and I support the booster club and the local scholarship program as we’re able. We even go to the occasional football game, cheer every time the Cardinals score a first down, and be part of the community.

There is decidedly redneck feel to much of Medical Lake. I don’t love the redneck vibe, honestly - I grew up in redneck country and was glad to leave. But they are my neighbors and I want to love them, perceived warts and all. (And it’s not as if I don’t have warts of my own!)

When I go back to the town where I grew up in Florida, it doesn’t feel like home. The “house” I grew up in (really a mobile home with lots of built-on additions) has since been torn down, and the land is not in the family anymore. I drive past the church where I first met Jesus, the cemetery where the bodies of my grandparents await the Resurrection, my old high school. Maybe a couple of trophies in the case still bear my name, but I doubt it. There’s no memento that I was ever here, except in my memories. My life is elsewhere now.

I’m trying to find the place where I fit, and it eludes me.

I’ve been thinking about getting out of the United States lately. I don’t like the direction the country is headed. I don’t recognize this as the America I loved. But I won’t leave. My kids are here, and they still need me and my wife in their lives. And we need them in our lives.

Maybe that sense of place I’m longing for will only come when I myself am planted in the dirt, and my soul is with Jesus. Maybe that’s what it means to be a sojourner and an alien.