Leaving Memphis...Again

In a few short hours, I will be on the road, saying goodbye to the city I love and feel so called to as I follow God's calling elsewhere for a time. It's not the first time. The first time was a little over two years ago, when I left my family, friends, hometown--pretty much everything I'd known and was used to--in order to attend a discipleship training school called Ellerslie all the way in Colorado.

I remember crossing the Memphis Bridge and feeling torn between the place I was leaving behind and what God had in store at the place I was heading to. It wasn't just the city--it was also having to leave behind my family, friends that were so close they almost might as well be family, and all the people I knew and had grown up with here--but deep down, there was a painful awareness that I had to leave Memphis for a time, the city I had grown to love while so many I knew merely tolerated, if not hated, living in.

After I came home from Ellerslie about six months later and spent the subsequent six or so months here in Memphis, I found God calling me to leave once again--this time for college. That transition was rougher than the one from Memphis to Ellerslie, not because the move held more of an unknown (when I left for Ellerslie I had no idea what I was getting into), but somewhat because of the opposite; I knew I was heading into a completely different sort of environment and that even as I was going to college, I was going against the flow of our culture. I knew I wasn't going to college for an education and wasn't called to keep my head low and simply make it through. It was going to be hard, a different kind of hard than I had ever known before. And as we left Memphis, I once again felt torn between my more long-term calling to Memphis and my current call to this college three and a half hours away.

But it was a good kind of torn, even as the extremely similar bittersweet ache I am feeling right now is a good kind of pain. It's the kind of pain that comes with leaving someone--or a group of someones--you have grown to love deeply. This summer, God brought me to some of the front lines in the battle for Memphis. Through living and working with Street Reach this summer, I have gained a better perspective of that battle, as well as getting to know specific people who are also fighting it and other specific people whose souls hang in the balance.

The good news is that I do not have to be here to continue to fight in this battle. Prayer reaches farther, deeper, and faster than any weapon of this world. Still, it is painful to physically leave Memphis. But the One who has called me is faithful, and as always, He has a plan and will not fail to carry it out as He leads me on from here. His has a purpose for taking me back to Mississippi, and He will not fail to use me there or to use this season to draw me yet closer to Him and to prepare me for what lies in store. Just as He perfectly orchestrated the timing of leading me to Street Reach this summer--from preparing me for it even when I had no idea what Street Reach even was, to walking me through every day of it this summer--He has perfectly orchestrated everything about leading me back to MC this school year.

So, as bittersweet as leaving Memphis is going to be, at the same I am excited for what lies ahead. The same God who led me from here before into adventures I never could have dreamed of, who led be back here and walked me through even more, has infinitely greater plans for what is yet to come than I can possibly imagine. It's going to be hard, but at the same time it will be infinitely rich and beautiful because my King will never leave my side nor fail to draw me closer to Himself.

Here goes.