This is how much of a none-writer, and avid avoided of this particular topic, I am... It's been, what, two weeks since the initial post? C'est la vie...
Okay, so where were we? Jeremiah 29, particularly verse 7... "Make yourselves at home there and work for the country's welfare. "Pray for Babylon's well-being. If things go well for Babylon, things will go well for you."
What if Knoxville is my Babylon? Have I been sentenced here?
I know that sounds rough... I mean, I love Knoxville! This is an amazing place! But I can't seem to leave... Being a tent stake in the ground. I don't feel so much as a stability as I feel stuck and unable to get out. I have dreams, ya know.
But what if I can't leave for a reason? Can we hurry up and get to that reason?!? Because I'd really like to be done here...
Again it sounds awful... I have friends here.
I grew up with the shows Friends, Seinfeld, 90210, Dawson's Creek, Cheers, even Saved by the Bell, Living Single, The Cosby Show, A Different World. And now we have How I Met Your Mother, Big Bang Theory, Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice, Parenthood, even Two and a Half Men, King of Queens, Scrubs. What do these shows all have in common? Community, family, a sense of belonging.
I lived in a community and that was a flop... I had a group of friends that are family to me who lived here for a while... Now most of them live in different states.
I'm not saying all this to complain. I say it simply for the fact that I'm lonely here. I don't have those few friends that I always hang out with who I can be ME with.
On top of that, I want to be traveling. But I want to be traveling with a community.
Back to Eat Pray Love, I've often look for ways to plan a trip like that. Seriously, I've looked into the Peace Corp multiple times (started the application twice), came up with various places I could go spend some time just working and living and visiting old friends, considered a few different organizations that are meant for sabbaticals of sorts, and even thought about different communities around the globe that I could live and work with for a year or so. To be able to take a hiatus from life, live simply, and deal with myself. I long for that more than you can know.
But something always stops me. Traveling alone is not my cup of tea. I firmly believe there was a reason Jesus sent his disciples in pairs. And the fear of not really fitting or belonging, well I have enough of that here in Knoxville, why go elsewhere to be that way with complete strangers?
A tent stake... A tent stake? I'm a bitter tent stake if that's the case. I've become quite bitter and jaded. I find myself being negative and complaining. That's not who I am! I told myself a long time ago that I wouldn't become that way and here I am.
However, no one is to live a life of bitterness and jadedness. We're to live lives of love. I have it tattooed on my left forearm for goodness' sake! Being bitter and jaded is a good way to squash love.
So now what? This whole blog has been one big mess of BLAH. I don't have a pretty conclusion, either. Because I don't know. IF God wants me to be tent stake, IF my welfare depends on the welfare of the place in which I live, then I guess I have some work to do here. And this is what makes me cry. Because my heart isn't here. My loneliness is here, my bitterness is here, and my jadedness is here.
I feel sentenced. I feel hurt. I know it's not about feelings alone, but when what makes me happy is so attainable, yet so unattainable, it's hard.
But I'm tired of being miserable, and negative. It's not easy for me to live in Knoxville. It's not easy for me to see others so happy and full of life here. It's not easy to see them not affected by the things that are changing here...
But I'm here, through the good the bad and the very very ugly. And if I'm here some things have got to change.
I can't think straight anymore... We'll come back to this later... I'll leave you with a verse to this song I heard for the first time today.
"Will your grace run out
If I let you down
‘Cause all I know
Is how to run"
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