I'm starting to get really nostalgic about moving and this whole leaving Austin business (I don't like the leaving Austin part). As in, Bryan Adams just came on my iTunes and I'm getting teary eyed.
This feels very similar to when I graduated from high school and it was time to move on to Austin. I had no idea what life in Austin would bring. And it's amazing to think about all the tremendous things God has done in and through me, others, and events here. It's funny how during my last two moves (Dallas to Austin, and this one), things seem to have settled so much pretty shortly before it was time to go.
In Dallas I had been lonely for much of high school. Had lots of friends, but was always ready to move on, go somewhere else, try something new. It was restlessness that drove me to dream of a new place. By junior year, the darkness of doubt and questions made me not just humanly lonely, but spiritually lonely. But God provided the most amazing friends I could have asked for, and just when it was time to leave.
So I came to Austin. And here I met challenges bigger than any I would ever imagine: the darkest days of doubt (without God, there is no true peace or hope), depression, anxiety, fear, my family being stripped from me, my idols being stripped from me, my self-confidence being stripped away, all so that God could break me and mercifully put me together as a new creation, newly aware of who He is and how good He always will be. I have seen friends hurt worse than I could fathom, I've seen hallmates chase vanity in ways that only lead to heartache, and I've watched respected leaders fall amid lies and deception.
But what I also encountered here was a light and a song like I've never seen or heard. I met Believers who woke at 8 a.m. to pray at the Tower. I met men who make it their mission to plant churches among college students. I met women who pour out the truth of God into younger women with the passion of someone who understands that their treasure really does belong at the foot of Jesus' throne in Heaven. I have met people who live for THAT day, not this day. And yet those same people have more joy in the present than would make sense to the normal observer.
Five years in Austin. Five years in God's grace. Five years of chasing truth, running from truth, being ripped apart by truth, and learning that truth is the sweetest honey to my lips I will ever find. Truth has put a song in my heart. Truth overrides how ugly that same heart often is. Truth leads me, guides me, assures me.
Five years in Austin - and an encounter with truth. And it's that same truth that tells me I have to leave.
