The Gift of Place

Where have I been? Am I alive?

Maybe this post will shed a little light on my absence.

… Did I know a writing exercise in my doctoral program would become a prophetic utterance? Not in the moment.

One of my professors a couple of years ago invited our cohort to write a short essay on “place.” The exercise was designed to reflect on a place which meant a lot to us, for good and ill. She wanted us to capture the sights, sounds, smells, and feelings of the “place.” An exercise for becoming better writers and communicators, but also to reflect on the ways “place” is an unavoidable influence in our lives.

I wrote about growing up surfing with my dad in Southern California. Some of my better memories of place, and dad, and childhood. California and surfing are common and hold hands like spaghetti and meatballs in this part of the world, which is not the significant bit. When I wrote this reflection, I was living in Kansas City, Missouri. I hadn’t lived in the 562 for almost twenty years. Despite being a California native, I had no intentions of moving back to my homeland. I’d not written on surfing or California in many years and not thought much of it.

Until I noticed a regular pattern in my doctoral program. Many of the exercises and writing assignments brought me back to these formative years. The places and times and experiences which made a lasting dent on my soul and heart and who I am as a person… for good and ill.

Much of my writing was centered on my days in California. Was God speaking? I think so.

Going Back to Cali.

We are officially home as of the summer of 2024. This is why I’ve been absent for these many months, writing on Substack, or anywhere public. We’d been navigating and praying and considering a move back to California since February.

Were those seemingly mundane writing exercises a prophetic utterance? Or was God up to something? You be the judge.

I spent the first twenty five years of my life living in a sixty-mile radius around Southern California. My folks brought me into the world in a nine hundred square foot home on Adderley Drive in Long Beach. We lived there for sixteen years. My folks later divorced, and I spent the rest of high school and college living in the nearby city of Seal Beach. A place which rekindled my surfing joy.

Post-high school would involve college, internships, marriage, jobs, and living in La Mirada, and Redlands for two plus years. These twenty five years never taking us outside the familiarity of Southern California with her beaches, deserts, mountains, and Hollywood scenes, all within an hour's drive.

Then in the summer of 2004 a nudging and stirring happened from unexpected places. A Divine calling of sorts? A nudge requiring us to leave the familiarity and comforts of family and friends and move across the country to Grand Rapids, Michigan. This sunless, cold, mosquito infested, dreary, and ocean-less existence. A place not built for guys with a heavy rotation of The Beach Boys on the turntable, and cravings for the soul-satisfying euphoria of sand in their toes, catching a left at sun down, or the insatiable taste of salt water in the mouth after a long beach day.

This guy needs sun and water and heat. Western Michigan only gives these things in pinches and small batches. Not good for a Southern California soul.

Before I left for the Midwest, I did something providential. Perhaps a way to force God’s hand back to sunny California. I gave my nine foot Harbor surfboard to a friend and said, “I’ll be back for this in three years.”

So much for playing God. The ticking hands of time filled up twenty years in between these spaces. Good years. Dry years. Years of suffering and years of great joy. The stuff of life under the sun.

The Waiting Game.

Twenty years passed. No thoughts of return. Scribbling reflections in a graduate school classroom about California. Prophetic utterance? Not sure.

But here we are. My family left California in 2004 with no children. We now have four, and a dog. I’m a little slower, a little grayer in the beard and hair, maybe a little wiser, not by much.

I’m still chasing this “call” involving proclaiming good news in a bad news world. Trying to be good news in the same world, and leave a mark of grace behind.

This is all happening four miles from my boyhood home. I’m no prophet, and not a son of a prophet. But I’d say with no hesitations. Listen to the surrounding signs. Fredrick Buechner said it another way, “Listen to your life.”

These nudges, impressions, and prophetic utterances are all around if we have ears to hear. Sometimes it will involve moving across the country, or perhaps across the street.

But these “places” are a gift. They shape and form us for good and ill. We can’t escape it.

It’s good to be home. I even caught a wave the other day. It still felt like the euphoria of the first time.

And maybe a conformation this is all part of a Bigger Plan. My friend called the other day out of the blue and said, “Hey, when do you want to come and get your surfboard back?”

God works in mysterious ways.