Relinquishing Independence – Happy Fourth of July!

By CutiePyeGirl from a few years ago – perfect for Watercolor Wednesday!

Happy Independence Day! The day has a multitude of meanings for me, not least as the day I felt called away from my county of birth, as I wrote in Finding Myself in Britain:

When Nicholas and I contemplated marriage, we each went on a quiet retreat to pray and seek God’s guidance about the potential union. I finished my time away on the Fourth of July, later joining the throngs celebrating Independence Day with fireworks, food, and friends on the Mall in Washington, DC. But that morning I was in rural Maryland, reading about Abraham, the stranger who lived in a foreign country. The text of Hebrews 11 came alive in an amazing yet disconcerting way, for I felt that I, too, was being called to a new land.

As Nicholas was studying to be a Church of England vicar, I knew that in melding our lives together, I would need to be the one to leave behind my life in the States. But until that retreat, I hadn’t considered the deeper implications of what such a move might entail. I hadn’t noticed before that Abraham was obedient in going to this new place: “By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going” (Hebrews 11:8). In the flush of the first stages of romantic love, it didn’t seem a hardship to be obedient to a move to a foreign land – especially such an exciting and olde worlde place dripping with history as Britain. I was blissfully unaware of the costs involved, and that my obedience would need to come later in accepting, with grace and without bitterness or complaining, what I had signed up to.

Like Abraham, I didn’t know where we were going; Cambridge was the first stop, but that would be for only a short time while Nicholas finished up his studies before ordination. I didn’t know then that I would be moving four times in five years, and thus would be a wanderer like Abraham. This moving brought upheavals and uprootedness, but over time God answered my pleas for belonging, a few friends, and even a fabulous job.

But on that Independence Day what struck me deeply was that I was leaving my earthly citizenship behind – instead I’d be a foreigner and stranger and would need to claim my heavenly citizenship. Like the heroes of faith listed in Hebrews 11, I would be looking for a country of my own; a “better one – a heavenly one.” I would have my American passport, and eventually a British one too, but my heavenly passport would denote my defining identity.

From Finding Myself in Britain (Authentic Media, 2015). Available in the UK from Christian bookshops, or online from Eden and Amazon. Available Stateside from Amazon.