Struggling to find your “Place?”

         It is too hard for me to summarize God’s interaction with my life this summer but I may reference these: I spent part of my summer working at a restaurant in VT, four weeks at Baptist Youth Camp in Maine, and one week in Pennsylvania and a week in Nicaragua leading missions trips.

We have been doing “Place vs. Space” studies in my Survey of American Literature class. It has opened my eyes. Space is a landscape you just entered, like a new room. It is foreign, the walls are barren, nothing in it is really yours, it smells good (not what us guys are used to)-it is just a space. It becomes a place, somewhere that is yours, you are comfortable in, it doesn’t make you want to vomit, when you tack up the Allen Iverson/Michael Jordan posters, strew your boxers everywhere, stack your favorite books somewhere, put a coffee maker in it, and let a fart go-and for girls there is a much more complicated process that would take years to describe. For weeks while I followed God I experience the turmoil of not having a place!

         I am somewhat happy in this restaurant I work in because it is my second year and then God lays it on thick after I listen to him that I am to leave this 45 days before I had planned, and go to this space in the heart of the woods (seriously where there wasn’t grass or roads there were encroaching woods that you could not see more than two feet into) to throw hundreds of kids around, in a cabin that was going to give me little sleep because my roommates were in that stage where they don’t run out of energy for four weeks. If this wasn’t enough God communicates with my mom that I am to lead a missions trip to Nicaragua and the organization we are to go through requires me to co-lead one first. After four weeks in this weird land where a flock of young kids mimics my every move, I have to fly directly to Johnstown, Pennsylvania where a flock of older people follow me around and expect me to know everything about life and times and ministries. God provides energy for all this and works in mighty ways and then hits me with Nicaragua. I go to fly and find out my flight doesn’t leave at 7 am, but 5 am-a fact that brings my mom and me to a serious “DUH” moment. After FIVE hours of fighting TACA Airlines (the guy spoke awful English) I got on a different plane and after the most stressful day of my life I find myself sleeping overnight in Atlanta, Georgia, which loves to make their airports about negative 65 degrees. I shiver on a weird shaped bench (I conveniently left my sweatshirts in my checked luggage) all night and finally get to Nicaragua in the morning where I find out they lost all my luggage-I was to live in the space called Nicaragua with nothing but a few sets of clothes (which through circumstances God had me pack in my carry-on bag at the last minute, I praise Him). I do not say this to complain, but to shout out the facts of a life with Jesus!

         I sleep with a team of Americans that were already there, a group of friendly strangers that had an extra bed. Then, after two days I brush my teeth (travelling and circumstances prevented me) with a toothbrush that my friend Annie Valenziano used “only once” before. After a day of planning for a week-long trip people that I know and grew up with (from my church) arrive and a wave of joy runs all over me. Things are different though because I have to do everything I can to make this space of mine feel like a place to my friends. After borrowing Nathaniel Huff’s clothes and shampoo and deodorant and toothpaste, Kelsey Dobson’s sheets, and using a towel that I had found for a week (this is how it works in God’s kingdom!) I head back to VT for a day and having lost most of my clothes my loving mother buys me shirts and two pair of shorts and jeans. I could describe more but I think you get the point. Instead I will sum it up: When the last box of mine finally got to me in Ohio a week later, I wanted to cry with joy.

So think with me what makes you feel most at home, in your “Place” if you will, will you? I will. Is it when you are with a spouse, best friend, at a raging party, with the opposite sex, in front of a fire with family, on the Maine seashore, in the woods? Christians, do you ever get overwhelmed by “the world”? Draw back at night, don’t empty your mind like they do in hypnosis but clear it so Christ can fill it with his tender love, scriptures, promises, affirmations, and peace like a river with just you and the Holy God. To spend time with the the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the ultimate “place”. When I think of the struggles I have gone through these past months, these verses come to mind:

Jesus speaking while he was on earth:

         All the glory to God who is my strength. I thank God for all the people he brought to Nicaragua who brought the Kingdom of God to me and the people of Granada through love in action.

Love Joe Carter