An Unscratched Itch

July 3, 2005

I’m a restless soul. As a missionary kid, I moved every two or three years. (In fact, I counted once and realized I’ve lived in almost 30 different houses.) Consequently, my life has been lived in chunks, with little being carried over from one chapter to the next.

I wouldn’t trade my experience for anything though. I’ve had the privilege of seeing a lot of the world–I’ve lived in 5 different countries and have visited countless others. But it wasn’t all fun. Actually, it was extremely painful at the time.

We’d move to a new place, deal with the culture shock of a new country, make new friends, and then once we were just starting to feel settled, it was time to move again and start the process all over.

In order to cope, I developed some pretty unpleasant patterns through it all. For one, I’m not very good at friendship. I’ve lost so many friends through the years, I’m reluctant to establish any more. And when I do, it’s a matter of sheer determination to risk going very deep. After all, why would I want to pour my heart and soul into a friendship when I know it’s just going to be taken away from me?

The other pattern I developed, as I said, is restlessness. It’s like clockwork. Every two or three years I get an itch for a big life change.

Since I finished high school (and returned to the States from the mission field) I can see how I’ve made huge changes every few years. The funny thing is, I didn’t know I was doing it.

I finished high school and attended a small college. Two years later, I transferred to a large state university. A year after that, I moved to Israel where I studied abroad for a year (although my year turned into 8 months because of some bus bombings–that’s another post).

I returned to California and almost a year later, moved to Chicago. A year and a half after that I got married. A year after that, my husband and I moved back to California. Two years later we had our first child and then promptly moved to a new city to help plant a church. Two and a half years after that we had our second child and promptly moved yet again from California to New York where we are now.

That was two and a half years ago. Can you guess how I’m feeling now? Yes, I’m searching for something new and huge. It’s a horrible feeling. The only thing I can liken it to is when I had a broken arm in the summer. The cast used to make my arm itch like crazy. My dad rigged up a metal coat hanger for me to scratch my arm but one time I didn’t have it when I was out. The itching nearly drove me stark raving mad. Yep, that’s exactly how I feel. There’s an unscratched itch in my soul. Boy do I have issues.

Category: Deep Thoughts, Life

Comments

One Response to “An Unscratched Itch”

  1. Tricia
    July 11th, 2005 @ 8:32 am

    Well, you can pray about it….maybe there is something for you to do now, that is different…or maybe you need to create something, what would that be? Start a get together for a certain cause, write a song, publish a book… invent? Give voice to something that needs a lot of support..like… http://www.intuneonline.com

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