If you are reading from afar, it has been snowing all day today where I live.  It is actually the first significant snowfall of the year.   I think we are somewhere in the 5-7 inch range as far as accumulation.  I enjoy the snow, and I don’t mind driving in it, as long as there are not a lot of other drivers on the road.  I would probably have stayed home, but I was the audio tech for our church services this morning, and couldn’t just bail on them.

I decided to stop at Wal-Mart on my way home, I have been out of things to eat at home for a while now, and since it was still snowing heavily when I left church, I figured I better at least have something to eat in the house if the worst happens to happen.  I grabbed about $40 worth of random, easily prepared food.  Typically I shop once a month, and just buy stuff that can be frozen indefinitely.  I travel for work a lot, and it is hard to predict when I’ll be gone for weeks at a time, so fresh food is tricky in my situation.

As I checked out, I thought about how this would be the last time for a while I would be shopping for something that needed to be refrigerated.  I’m letting the lease expire on my apartment at the end of the year, and I don’t have a plan that involves a consistent living situation for after that.  I’m not entirely sure what plans I do have at the moment, I just know that I need a change.

I have been in this apartment for 16 months, which in the grand scheme of a life isn’t too long, but I never intended to stay here for even a year.  I had grand dreams of heading overseas, or finding my way to a new adventure somewhere else, so I took the shortest lease I could, and then went month to month after that.

I haven’t found a new situation anywhere, and I think that is perfectly okay.  I mentioned in an earlier post about how I often confuse comfort with peace.  Comfort is the reason I am leaving.  Life is too easy here.  I don’t want to wake up one day 30 years from now and realize that I pursued comfort over all else.  Comfort is easy.  I’ve already found it, there is no pursuit to be made for it.

I think I’ve also mentioned (or at least implied) that peace is something that needs to be pursued, worked on, worked out!  You can’t just expect peace to fall into your lap and stay there.  It has to be chased, run down, hunted!  You have to chase peace with a giant stick and beat it into submission before you can drag it back to your cave!

Many will find comfort in this life, far fewer will find peace.

So I will forsake comfort, at least for a time, as I seek to find a way to not only experience peace for myself, but open the doors for others to find it as well.  There will be risks, but I believe there will also be rewards.

It won’t be comfortable at times, but I’m sick of being comfortable.

I want peace.

¹⁹ And a scribe came up and said to him, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” ²⁰ And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”