Alone
This week has been different.
The girls moved out of the apartment yesterday - the apartment I've been living in a good chunk of the summer. Which is super weird, especially now that Anna has a ring on her finger and wedding planning has been taken to a completely new level. Bridesmaid dresses. Flowers. Colors. Ohandbytheway our lives are never going to be simple again.
So I've been a Nashville wanderer the past four days, sleeping wherever I can find a friend's hospitality to allow me. Working every afternoon.
I saw Anna and Luke the other day, just long enough to hear the proposal story and try on the sparkly rock to see how it looks on my left hand.
I talked to Sarah on the phone a couple days ago, too, and finally got caught up on the last month or two of life. I cannot express how much I needed to talk to that girl. It's like life is normal again after that, at least for a few hours. Connecting with someone deeply, knowing someone deeply, is insanely rare. Aren't best friends the craziest thing? Apart from God I could never understand how or why we have best friends.
But these random points of connection with people don't hold much satisfaction for the soul. It doesn't matter that I talk to 50 people every day at work, because I know nothing about them and they know nothing about me and we go on our way, living. And so I've been very lonely.
It's interesting to me that I can go a whole week in Spring Hill only seeing the walls of my room and occasionally my family and not feel lonely. Music, prayer, and books are my company and I'm content. And then as soon as I spend a week living out of my little blue Jetta and a duffel bag in the city, I get that cottonmouth feeling you get when you haven't said a word to anyone all day, and I'm bothered by it.
Especially last night, alone at a friend's house I had never been to before. Slow panic washed over me in that room because it felt like I was the only one in the whole city. Have you ever felt like that? Maybe I'm just overly dramatic. Probably. But I think the combination of entirely new surroundings and the transient feeling of not really having a home caught up with me and I just ended up very lonely.
And I started thinking about when the last time was that I felt like that. It was Russia last summer. With all my heart I pray this next month in Russia will not be lonely; I pray for understanding of the language; I pray for heart connections. Because this feeling of isolation is a very powerful one, and the enemy uses it in my life to paralyze me and make me forget I'm being cradled in the arms of God.
I've heard from a few women older than me that being a 20-something is both extreme connectedness and extreme isolation, vacillating between the two poles and you weave in and out of college semesters, different relationships, jobs, churches. "You're about to enter some of the best years of community you will ever have," Megan told us when we graduated high school, "but there will be times, especially after you graduate, when you will venture out completely alone."
Because no one my age is young enough to be settled or old enough to be settled. That's probably why these are the biggest transition years of life. I wrote in my prayer journal recently that there are so many paradigm shifts in life, so many changes that shape who we become. And I'm just glad I don't have to worry about becoming anyone in particular, because Jesus is doing it for me. He's putting the paradigm shifts in my life to shape me into someone, someone I will become because He has ordained it. I am so secure in that. So glad it's not up to my ability to shape myself.
Have I mentioned I turn 20 on Tuesday? Here I come, 20's.
The girls moved out of the apartment yesterday - the apartment I've been living in a good chunk of the summer. Which is super weird, especially now that Anna has a ring on her finger and wedding planning has been taken to a completely new level. Bridesmaid dresses. Flowers. Colors. Ohandbytheway our lives are never going to be simple again.
So I've been a Nashville wanderer the past four days, sleeping wherever I can find a friend's hospitality to allow me. Working every afternoon.
I saw Anna and Luke the other day, just long enough to hear the proposal story and try on the sparkly rock to see how it looks on my left hand.
I talked to Sarah on the phone a couple days ago, too, and finally got caught up on the last month or two of life. I cannot express how much I needed to talk to that girl. It's like life is normal again after that, at least for a few hours. Connecting with someone deeply, knowing someone deeply, is insanely rare. Aren't best friends the craziest thing? Apart from God I could never understand how or why we have best friends.
But these random points of connection with people don't hold much satisfaction for the soul. It doesn't matter that I talk to 50 people every day at work, because I know nothing about them and they know nothing about me and we go on our way, living. And so I've been very lonely.
It's interesting to me that I can go a whole week in Spring Hill only seeing the walls of my room and occasionally my family and not feel lonely. Music, prayer, and books are my company and I'm content. And then as soon as I spend a week living out of my little blue Jetta and a duffel bag in the city, I get that cottonmouth feeling you get when you haven't said a word to anyone all day, and I'm bothered by it.
Especially last night, alone at a friend's house I had never been to before. Slow panic washed over me in that room because it felt like I was the only one in the whole city. Have you ever felt like that? Maybe I'm just overly dramatic. Probably. But I think the combination of entirely new surroundings and the transient feeling of not really having a home caught up with me and I just ended up very lonely.
And I started thinking about when the last time was that I felt like that. It was Russia last summer. With all my heart I pray this next month in Russia will not be lonely; I pray for understanding of the language; I pray for heart connections. Because this feeling of isolation is a very powerful one, and the enemy uses it in my life to paralyze me and make me forget I'm being cradled in the arms of God.
I've heard from a few women older than me that being a 20-something is both extreme connectedness and extreme isolation, vacillating between the two poles and you weave in and out of college semesters, different relationships, jobs, churches. "You're about to enter some of the best years of community you will ever have," Megan told us when we graduated high school, "but there will be times, especially after you graduate, when you will venture out completely alone."
Because no one my age is young enough to be settled or old enough to be settled. That's probably why these are the biggest transition years of life. I wrote in my prayer journal recently that there are so many paradigm shifts in life, so many changes that shape who we become. And I'm just glad I don't have to worry about becoming anyone in particular, because Jesus is doing it for me. He's putting the paradigm shifts in my life to shape me into someone, someone I will become because He has ordained it. I am so secure in that. So glad it's not up to my ability to shape myself.
Have I mentioned I turn 20 on Tuesday? Here I come, 20's.
Comments
Post a Comment