Still Puzzled...

I've never really been one to stay in one place for an extended period of time. I relish changes of venue and environment, breaking from the drain of "schedule! schedule! schedule!" or the comfortability of what was inarguably a "bubble." I guess that's why leaving the supposed 'spiritual greenhouse' environment that was Traverse City summer project 2003 [heretofore known simply as TC03] didn't originally seem that difficult for me to do. Like my good friend Kimberly from Ball State and I talked about this summer a couple times, we live -- and like living -- transient lives. I know I feel like a nomad. Not until these last 24 hours in which I've been disconnected from all things "TC" -- the city, the dorm life, the conversation with close, tangible friends -- has the transition really taken effect on me. I feel there's so much to sort out from this summer, and I don't know where to begin. It's all like one big drunken blur, one saturated with highs and lows, loves and struggles, victories and failures, big-time laughs and private "episodes." A time for everything, right?

I love the change of venue that being home briefly and then going back to school in less than a week brings, but I really wish I could take some people from Traverse City with me where I go from here. Why can't we all just live out of a caravan of cars and in tents and sleeping bags as we did for one last night on the Lake Michigan beach? It was glorious in its simplicity. One of my fears for this fall is that I won't make sense to, won't jive with people I come in contact with at school -- friends old and new. But I discount that as pure horsepucky, being one who adapts well to new or at least readjusted surroundings.

Still, I do miss Traverse City. I miss the dunes, the bay waters, the beaches. I honestly miss the International Hut of Pizza at which I worked, the zany array of co-workers, the dorm rats we hung out with, the grassy open space and the marina, the downtown, that dive of a karaoke bar, and the great friends I didn't believe I'd even make three weeks in but for whom my heart beats now.

I've been home now for about 24 hours from my 8 weeks of personal roller-coaster activity in Traverse City, Michigan. Ah, nothing can ever seem to just be with me ["Let it be?" Not so often a phrase in my vocab]. Excited highs and depressed lows seem to be the mainstays of this being. That said, driving around my hometown of Warsaw and generally sitting around at home has left me puzzled and a lil' perplexed; granted, these are both states of mind in which I'm prone to be. Home is -- argh, home. It's weird how detached I feel from what goes on [or doesn't go on] here, even though the members of my family are physically on top of one another in this small house. To shamelessly paraphrase one of many favorite Swingers lines out of context, "This place is dead." Feelings and other things left unsaid under this roof seem compartmentalized or else under rug swept, and that's just sad. "All things rearranged, but nothing's changed" -- this could be the motto of my house and home.

Something that became even more apparent to me while away, something that resonates inside me now as it did when the home front was tumultuous for a few weeks this summer, is this: no relationship and no family in which Jesus Christ has been displaced as the center can ultimately thrive. It will erode. It will eventually break down. This goes for all varieties of relationships -- those with fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, significant others, friends, yada. A verse I committed to memory over the summer sums it all up in 11 words:

"Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders labor in vain." - Psalm 127:1a

This is sometimes sad, sometimes unforeseen or seemingly unstoppable, but always true.

Posted by: Jon / 2:13 AM (0) comments