So I wondered what people do when they don't seem to have anywhere to belong, and how you deal with that longing? Or is it just me?
I'll get to the point after a bit of background.
The last sentence is the summary.
About a decade ago, God took me on an interesting time in the desert (figuratively) that ended up being the biggest transition and transformation in my 40+ years as a Christian. To summarize, I had made my identity into expectations around me, a good Christian, a good husband, a good father, a good employee, etc. I had immersed myself in activities and ministry and serving God, using my gifts and talents and experience as much as I could. Over a period of about a year, God slowly took away all the activity. Ministries I was in transitioned, ended, and I could find nothing to take their place. In a rarity in my life, many ministries did not even need volunteers when I asked. My job turned into a dead end and I had a boss that sidelined me. My family life even stalled out some at that point. When I finally quieted down a bit, God put me in front of a mirror and I really had no idea who I was. I was a caricature of a good Christian with no identity of my own. In the following months, God worked on me to show me who He made me to be. I emerged from that desert with a much clearer sense of identity and much healing of some bondages and lies that had been embedded in my heart that I never knew were there. It was like I was seeing the world through new eyes and everything was different.
One of the things I had been looking for (and never finding) was "the place" where God wanted me to be. I was searching and waiting to find the right calling, the right place, the right group, the right role, the right ministry, the right...whatever it was... where I would fit in and do what I was supposed to be doing. I always felt like I had feet in several different worlds where I'd fit in to some extent, but not totally, or even mostly. I had started to resign myself to never finding it this side of heaven (and indeed hoping I would fit in better there).
During this desert time, God confronted me with the question, who are you? and I had no clue. During this time, God brought me across an online community of believers (the old ransomedheart forums) with a number of people on that same journey. It was the first time in my life I felt like I fit in somewhere. It was totally about trying to see ourselves through God's eyes as the unique individuals He intended for us to become. The external things (doctrinal, political, economic, ideological differences) just faded away. During this time, I found that the hardest things to share with others were not based in pain, shame, grief, or failings, but rather they were in opening up about who I really was inside. God slowly brought me across various things and memories that had shown hints of who I was, and I slowly learned. Later, I started some small groups based on this quest to discover who God really made us each to be and I found a similar sense of belonging. In hindsight, this had less to do with the groups and more to do with what was happening inside of me.
Since then, I find myself looking carefully at people for the cracks in their armor and walls and masks that lets me see that treasure of God that is inside. I've learned to ask questions and listen carefully to find hints of it.
I've now had close to 10 years to process this and I'd summarize it as this. God has made us to be unique individuals, treasures, works of art, that are meant to reflect His glory in a way unique to us. However, throughout our lives, our God-given unique identity becomes lost in a sea of expectations and trying to fit in. Between that and the sin and pain of a fallen world and an enemy that hates and attacks anything beautiful the God has created, those things that are intended to be our uniqueness often become the very thing we end up ashamed of and hiding. A large part of us being a new creation is Christ is about being transformed into the unique person God intends for us to be. To make this into an analogy, if our life is a garden, there are those fruit trees, flowers, and good plants that God has put there and a plethora of weeds we and others and the enemy have put in. We often cannot tell the difference and just assume because it's green and sprouting that it should be part of the garden. We look at other gardens, see the same plants, and assume those are what we need to keep watering. It's when we let God clearly point out the best plants, that we can focus our efforts on those that bear fruit. I found that many of those things that I thought were "this is how God made me" turned out to be weeds that were sucking life out of me and distracting away from the good things.
I found that as the masks dropped away and my identity became closer and closer to what God intended, I started to feel more and more in place wherever I was at. In hindsight, many of those feelings of not fitting in were just symptoms of a deeper problem that I had no clue who God made me to be. Those were just a reflection that the current mask I had on didn't completely fit where I was at. I knew my gifts, talents, interests, strengths, personality type, etc., but those are just things that told me how am I am similar to other groups of people and of what practical use I might be to accomplish a few things. They ultimately proved a distraction away from finding the unique person who God made me to be. I'd often get excited about something new and throw myself into it and find some sense of belonging, but usually after some time the feeling of not fitting in or being in the right place would reemerge.
So anyway, in my experience, feelings of being out of place were more related to not having a clear sense of who God created me to be rather than not finding the right place to be.
