What I miss ...

I try to figure out what I miss about Denver sometimes. Here's what I've come up with:

I miss the people. In Denver I lived with the people I worked with the people I played with the people I grew with ... you get the point. Intimacy in relationship and transparency happened because you knew you were safe and that everyone was striving for the same thing. God was center, and going deep in Him didn't intimidate anyone.

Purpose. I could leave it at that, but I really do miss having a daily purpose, even if it was just getting a guest house ready for a speaker and making sure that they were taken care of. I knew that by doing this, I was playing my part in touching the lives of people and seeing them grow in Him.

Being challenged in my walk. You had to be on top of it spiritually because if you weren't growing and being poured into, you couldn't pour anything out. Here, I don't have to do anything because there's no pouring. I feel like stagnant water at times, busting at the seams, with nowhere to go.

Conversations ... real ones. Rachel was just here and I had a lot of them. I hadn't realized how much fluff comes out of my mouth and how so often, there's no real connection with people. It's all surface, and I'm not sure how to take it beyond there.

Belonging to a community/family. God's word says that "He sets the lonely in families". I remember when that happened for me ... when I knew that someone loved me and thought I was great and wanted to spend time with me because I was me - not because they had to or because it was an automatic thing, or because I had met their set criteria, but because of the love of the Father that drew our hearts together.

So many more things I could list ... mountains, moments when God spoke so clear I thought he spoke audibly, doing crazy things because He asked ... it's so hard not to live in the glow of memories past. How do I find Him like this in the here and now?