Citizenship by Susan L.

  I am a fellow citizen with the saints. Ephesians 2:19
  "Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God." NKJV
  "So now you Gentiles are no longer strangers and foreigners. You are citizens along with all of God's holy people. You are members of God's family." JCB

  A belonging longing. It's a fundamental piece of what being human means. We are engineered for community and relationships with each other as well as our Father in Heaven. This desire, planted into our DNA before the dawn of time, shapes our behaviours and guides our choices.
  Sometimes those choices aren't the best. I am an expert on making wrong choices. Many of them were simply so I'd be accepted by those around me. Guess what? It backfired every time. Instead of acceptance, rejection reared its ugly head.
  Hmmmm, I am being corrected. The choices I made weren't completely wrong, not all of them anyways. It's not a black and white world. They were the only choices I could have made with the tools I had at the time. At the time I didn't have Jesus to lead me, encourage me and guide me.
  I'm not so quick to sell myself down the river in an effort to gain the illusion of acceptance any more. I am not so quick to toe the party line so I am "one of the crowd". I am not so quick to squash what makes me uniquely me in order to be like "everyone else".
  Now there's an interesting thought. What does "everyone else" look like? This is something we talk about in some of the recovery oriented programs I've taken like WRAP. It's called mind reading. But, it's really projecting our own experiences, understandings, motivations and prejudices onto others. It's making the assumption they think like we do.
  It's really no surprise that they don't.
  It's Canada's 150th birthday this year. As I travelled to PEI for my daughter's wedding, I came into contact with all sorts of different people, in all colours, faiths, and languages. This was only a third of my own country.
  God's country is the universe.
  And we belong to Him. All of us. Even if we don't know it yet.
  My belonging longing has found a home. It's not completely gone, though. A persistent, unquenchable hunger for relationship with my heavenly Father makes me dig deeper into uncovering the riches of His world, His heart and His family.