(1) Nakedness: No, I am not house hunting naked. However, as you probably know, your value, your identity, and your power are all boiled down to dollars in the process of making a real estate purchase. What is your salary? Your exact salary? What about the value of your debt? Assets? It doesn't matter what you wear, who your friends are, where you grew up, your daddy's name, or whatever else might give you an extra edge in life sometimes. All the ways that you dress yourself up for your work or your social life will fall away, and you are valued simply as the sum of your bank accounts. When you are staring at a page of numbers that sum up your value, it makes you feel very naked. This is good for the soul in that it challenges us to define what we claim as our value. I personally find my value in Christ, in the freedom that he died to provide me, and in the forgiveness that God grants because of his work on my behalf. What defines your value to yourself?
(2) Commitment: I am the first to line up as a member of Generation-X and claim my right to freedom of choice as well as my right to avoid commitment at all costs :) This is all very appealing except that it ultimately does not satisfy. The freedom that we crave to roam this world is ultimately a license to loneliness. I have been nomadic for the last 5 years, not in attempt to pursue that freedom, but in a time of career transition. I cannot describe the freedom that I feel as I am making a decision to commit (for the second time) to a job, a place, a community, and a home. These are not entirely known entities other that the job, but it is good for the soul to seek and accept consistency in the life we surround ourselves with.
(3) Purification: I am referring to the baring of the core of who we are before self, family, realtor, and mortgage broker. House hunting raises a lot of deep questions that looking for an apartment or rental house just doesn't dig into. What is it that you really want? Who do you really want to identify with as your neighbors? Why? What do you have to have and what can you live without (refer to previous point - there are only so many dollars to go around). It is a healthy exposure of our inner desires and a purification in the sense that we must sometimes accept that what we crave is not to be satisfied with any "thing" in this world. I crave a sense of home, a place of comfort, of acceptance, of carefree simplicity, and of relaxation. This is what some would call a fantasy - indeed - but it is also the desire within me that craves a life everlasting. I am reminded of this craving as I accept the realities of what a home in this world can and cannot provide. It is a purification of desire.
So, while my soul is a little bit uneasy and a lot overwhelmed, I am thankful for this and so many other areas of life that challenge us on the soul level.
