It's funny how you think you know the stories inside and out and yet a fifth or fifteenth or fiftieth read still yields another new revelation.  We have commisserated and mused with several different friends all feeling the pull to be someplace other than where they have found themselves to be very firmly rooted.  It is easy to strew pithy quotes to our left and our right as we dance past this sort of anguish.  "Bloom where you are planted!"  We scold. Listening closer often reveals deeper concerns rather than simple discontent:  

"We are here in an urban jungle and our children are surrounded by materialism and vice."

"We are isolated in the country.  There are no opportunities for the arts, no likeminded faithful families nearby."

"We are starting over.  Again.  Our kids left their church friends and are struggling to break into the new group."

"If we could just get to the other place there would be… (the better school, house,  job, church, opportunity….)"

"I'm not sure why we are here."

We worry.  It feels cavalier to tell our children, our spouses,  it will all be fine when we are eye to eye with major challenges, lack of support, isolation.  When is that faith and when is that being callous or plain foolhardy?  

Is it possible this is God's will?  

Maybe so.  Maybe this is exactly where God has put you to save your soul.  Perhaps He has whisked you, your spouse, your child from an unknown danger.  Perhaps you have been plucked from your comfortable place to be where you were needed, even if that purpose has not yet been shown to you.  Perhaps this is our season to pull away from other voices and be alone with the One we truly need to hear.  To lean into the fear and trust that a good plan is unfolding even right where we stand. 

Perhaps.