I’m a “mall guy.” My wife… not so much.
During the Christmas season, I head to the mall a couple of times a week. When I travel, I don’t just sit in a hotel alone. I Google where the biggest mall in town is and go there to walk, people-watch, and sit in the food court, eating nostalgic food served with a large ladle onto an overflowing plate. Usually Cajun chicken and fried rice. Every mall seems to have that.
More often, though, I find myself pulling into an empty parking lot and walking past stores with security bars pulled down. Closed. You can see what was and feel what could be. It’s disorienting to step into a space that should be filled with life and energy but instead feels like a ghost town. I end up power-walking around the city’s most expensive indoor track.
More than once, I’ve walked through a mall and seen one of those oversized maps with a bright red dot and the words You Are Here. It’s supposed to help you get where you’re going, but sometimes it just reminds you that you’re standing in the middle of a place that used to be and a place that could be. Used to be and could be… I think about that a lot lately. Standing in places that feel like they should be full of movement, but instead, they hold a quiet sort of longing or waiting.
You are here?
Liminal space. The in-between. The transition space between what was to what could be.
In June 2024, my family bought five acres in small-town Oklahoma, home to an old church and a parsonage. We’re converting the church into our home, a place to host friends and bring people together. The parsonage? That’s where my in-laws live as we walk with them through medical challenges, loving and caring for them along the way.
We planned to move in during the holidays. That was supposed to be November, 2024.
Now, I stand in a grassy field, looking at a 95% completed home. Our Chouse (church house). I see what was. I feel the future. And I sit right in the middle of the tension between them.
It’s strange to stand in an empty space, to feel the flutter of excitement in my gut but not yet fully inhabit what’s ahead.
I’m not discouraged. I’m hopeful. But I’m also not living the way I long to live. Surrounded by laughter, the smell of pulled pork in the air, good music playing, and kids running around in the field.
Soon. I hope.