Have you ever been emotionally attached to a place?
- The house in which you grew up?
- Your hometown or state?
- The college campus where you met your spouse, identified a direction for your life and formed lifelong friendships?
- Your first home with your spouse, where you welcomed your first child?
Have you ever mourned when you moved away from such a place, or it was no longer available to you? Have you ever wondered why losing access to this place left a vacuum inside your heart?
If so, I understand. That happened to me in 2023.
More Than An Office
In May 2023, four years after retirement from full-time teaching, I lost access to my office at Columbia International University. A rapidly-growing graduate program centered in the same building needed a new faculty member. Understandably, space for a full-time teacher took precedence over a retired adjunct professor.
During that four-year span after retirement, I drove to the office almost as often as when I served full time. That’s where I wrote blogs, worked on two book projects and met colleagues and students for lunch. I also taught at least one class each year.
Losing the office pommeled me emotionally. This change induced an inward disturbance far exceeding that of retirement from full time teaching. The difficulty of my adjustment wasn’t due to losing actual work space. My house included a fully-equipped office. The problem was losing that particular place.
After 42 years at CIU, a program’s growth severed the physical connection to what had been a vital part of my identity.
Why was going there so important to me?
Why did a pervasive sadness, a subtle loneliness, an unfulfilled yearning and discontent envelop me after leaving it?
Why did not having that place to go to exacerbate my depression for a few months?
Why did I grieve this loss as if someone I loved had died?
I identified three factors that explain my reaction.
My Sensitive, Melancholy Temperament
My melancholy temperament accounted for some of the maladjustment. Other retired faculty who stayed in the Columbia area didn’t maintain a regular CIU office presence. Yet my sentimental attachment to the university and my tendency to ruminate excessively over changes left me feeling unsettled.
I feel things deeply. When it comes in the form of empathy for others, the sensitivity is a strength. When the result is an achy self-centeredness, it’s a weakness.
Social Isolation
Losing the office resulted in far less social interaction. I’m introverted and task-oriented, yet various forms of interactions with colleagues in my office building had meant more to me than I had imagined.
When depression stymied my motivation, I walked down the hall to David’s office. He’d stop what he was doing to pray for me. When I voiced my hopelessness and pessimism to another friend on the same floor, she’d remind me that Satan whispered lies to me and she’d redirect my focus to God’s Word. Occasionally, I’d drop in on Mark. We often exchanged stories of teachers who had changed our lives. I wasn’t always despondent when I visited him, but when he sensed my mood had dipped, he reminded me of ways God used my testimony of His sustenance during depression.
Even when I didn’t verbally interact with other friends and colleagues, seeing them in the hallway, at the printer, in the break room or campus cafeteria reminded me that I was part of a meaningful faith community where I felt safe and accepted. That’s a far cry from now. Some days I never get out of my pajamas or leave the house.
Source for My Identity and Significance
My personal identity and sense of significance had been excessively yoked to my CIU role. In retrospect, the office represented the place where I produced for the Lord, a venue I relied on for meaning and sense of worth.
Despite having co-authored a book on a believer’s identity in Christ, what I knew cognitively about the source of my significance from God’s Word didn’t always seep into my affective domain. For most of my life, even before the CIU years, I felt good about myself only when I achieved and succeeded through ministry tasks. I’m not proud of this admission, because I mentally acknowledged that my identity as a Christ-follower is based on what He achieved for me on the cross, not what I do for Him.
To my chagrin, I wonder if I really believed what I wrote about identity.
After I vacated the CIU office, I actually asked myself, “Who am I if I can’t drive to the office each morning?”
Losing a place to go at CIU deprived me of what I erroneously perceived as the basis for my significance. Now, 16 months later, though the process is ever-so-slowly occurring, I’m focusing more on being than doing, on a behind the scenes ministry of encouragement instead of just public ministry roles.
A Sobering Realization
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention a caveat to the benefits my CIU office provided. Despite a sense of purpose and fulfillment offered by my CIU role, upon further reflection, I’ve never felt at home anywhere in this world.
During those decades as a professor, I battled despondency as much as I did when I served in a local church and for a denominational headquarters prior to moving to South Carolina. Despite affirming in my mind the vast importance of my teaching, I often felt empty, unsettled and restless. During those years, completing a doctorate, receiving high course ratings or releasing yet another book offered only fleeting fulfillment. Deep-seated joy and serenity remained elusive.
I loved the teaching and interaction with students, and there’s evidence that God gave me a fruitful ministry. Yet even when I wasn’t depressed, it felt like something was missing, as if a hole existed inside me that nothing could fill.
A Link to Depression
This sense of incompleteness wasn’t due to a neglect of my relationship with the Lord. It wasn’t due to a pattern of secret sin I refused to deal with. It didn’t stem from a failure to prioritize time with my wife and sons.
I don’t know how to say this….the restlessness just was.
The angst, the unsettled inner state I’ve described which worsened temporarily when I lost the office, is in the constellation of symptoms generated by major depression, which multiple therapists diagnosed in the 1980s. I’m aware that few Christ-followers would grieve the loss of a work space as much as I did last year.
A Niggling Discomfort
Yet we’re all physical creatures, and to some extent, having a sense of place, of belonging, matters to each of us. Even within many believers who never experience depression, a deep hunger persists: an indefinable longing for something more that they can’t quite obtain in this fallen world.
This isn’t due to a fault in God, but in us. Here, we’re still vulnerable to sin that hinders our enjoyment of Him. Only when we see the Lord face to face and worship Him without hindrances will we feel totally at home.
To what extent does this remark by C. S. Lewis resonate with you?
“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”
A Forever Place
Hmmm…perhaps there’s a positive spin to the dissatisfaction of losing my CIU office. Perhaps it’s a way of whetting my appetite for a sacred place that will prove a million times more gratifying.
There’s a special place Jesus is preparing for everyone who trusts in Him. He mentioned it as a balm for His disciples’ troubled hearts, for they would soon be without their Master’s physical presence: “Let not your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you…I will come again, and receive you to myself, that where I am, you will be also” (John 14:2-3).
A place where I will no longer experience displacement.
Or depression.
Or restlessness.
No more “yearning for more.”
There, God shall “wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there shall no longer be any death, there shall no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain” (Rev. 21:4).
Indeed, there is a physical environment where I’ll flourish and truly feel that I belong. There is a perfect piece of real estate for me… in the new heaven and new earth!
No wonder I’ve never felt at home.
You see, I’m not home yet.
I hope my new home is near to yours. I often have alums speak well of you. Nothing compared to what awaits.