Square Peg Round Hole

I have been mulling this blog over in my head for weeks.  I just couldn't find the exact right words, or I found them and decided that they may not be taken in the exact right way.  I have had this feeling for months now that I just don't quite fit in.  The phrase "square peg and round hole" is from a movie that I love. It fits how I feel perfectly.  I am the square peg trying to fit into the round hole of life.  I just don't quite fit right. 
I have never fully understood the scripture 1 Peter 2:11"Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul."  I understood the part about resisting sinful desires, that is obvious enough. It is the fact that Christians are being referred to as aliens or strangers in the world that left me confused.  It means that they don't fit in, they are in a foreign place, they are not like others around them.
I have spent much of my life fitting in.  I have always wanted to be liked.  Being a part of a group and being seen as "one of them" was so important to me.  I enjoy being comfortable and I am most comfortable when I am similar to the people around me.  I love having things in common with people. I like feeling like I am a part of something. I would have died if someone had described me as an alien or a stranger.  But I am beginning to understand exactly what that means and would even venture to say that I am slowly becoming what I have feared so much- I am different.  I don't fit in.  I am a stranger to this world.
This is not the part where I say that no one loves me or that you should feel bad for me because poor me doesn't fit in or have a group.  This is the part where you should rejoice that I am no longer clinging to a dead world and dead things to find my identity. 
When you make the decision to follow God's will in your life you almost immediately guarantee that you are going to be a stranger to this world.  This world is all about following the most lucrative career path, seeking to do what pleases you, the life with 2.5 kids and the white picket fence.  The world is about doing what makes you happy.  God's will is exactly opposite of that.  God doesn't want me to be happy, he wants me to be holy.  He has lead Dave and I to choose careers that are in essence our ministry.  We are there simply because God has called us there, not because it is what makes logical sense.  We will never be wealthy, have power, or indulge in the best of what this world has to offer.  In that way we are different. 
But I think the most glaring difference for me has been the way that God is choosing to piece our family together. In a group full of pregnant women I am different.  At a baby shower for friends I am different.  When people talk about their parenting experiences I am different.  I am different when people ask me if we have kids and I say we are adopting. I have in fact never felt so different.  To be honest, being different has been a process of being uncomfortable. It turns out that I needed to be uncomfortable to see that God's calling on my life is supposed to be unique. 
Where much of life is ordinary  in these areas God's plan for my life is extraordinary.  In my discomfort God is shaping me to be the woman that He wants me to be.  My path seems crazy and haphazard to the world, but it makes a perfect picture in the hands of my creator.  I do not belong to this world. I belong to Yahweh.  The Most High God.  God has a purpose and a plan for my life that will in the end make me holy.  I am different because I am not my own. I am His.  For the first time in my life I am glad that I do not fit in because it has forced me to run into the arms of the one who understands me. 
This is where I have to make a disclaimer: Please know that this is just the way that God has chosen to show me that I need to run to him. I am not saying that having a good job or having kids means that you are the same as everyone else.  Every plan is God's unique plan for that person.  It just took God pointing out the differences in my life for me to realize that I need to run after him and not what I covet in other people's lives.
The reality is I am surrounded by people who are also strangers and aliens in this world. In our own ways we are all different.  I am thankful for the examples in my life of men and women who choose every day to be what God has called them to be.  I am glad that in the times in my life where I have cared more about fitting in then about standing out, God's grace never left me. 
The letter of 1 Peter 1:1  begins with this opening
 "Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To God's elect, strangers in the world..."  To the other strangers in the world, thank you for living life as an example for me.