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I’ve hit the point where Dickson just isn’t home anymore. I guess this happens to most people at some point in their lives. They go off to college, start a new life, and suddenly they have a new home. It seems like it’s just been an accelerated path with me though. My mom moved 40 minutes out of the city to a town that doesn’t even get cable, all of my friends from the last class are in college now, I don’t have a car so I’m stuck in Murfreesboro most of the time, and now I have my own apartment there. It seems my life has completely moved on and away from Dickson County. I’m finally facing the reality that I’m growing up and in this moment I don’t know how to feel. I can drive around town and think of all the memories that were made, I can go to all my old hangout spots, I can go back and visit the school, but all those things do are make me realize how far away I am from this place. Dickson was my life for the past 10 years or so and to realize that it really doesn’t mean much to me anymore is so strange.
Really, the only thing that has me coming back at all is the people. Sure, my friends get me to come down, but they could just as easily come to Murfreesboro or I to them. Some of the people who have influenced me most are still here, though and they’re here to stay. Honestly, It’s mostly just my church family that brings me back at all. I often don’t realize how big of an impact my church has been on me until I walk through the doors on Sunday morning. I can go all weekend feeling like I don’t really belong here, but that group of people instantly make me feel like I’ve never left.
So I’ve got this feeling of never leaving home in a town where I don’t feel like I belong anymore.
The truth is, Murfreesboro may be my home right now, but I still can’t shake the feeling that something just isn’t right. Something just makes it not completely “home.” Maybe it’s because I can’t just drive through the country, maybe it’s that lack of small town community, or maybe it’s because of that church that still desperately feels like home.
For now I’m in the in-between. I’ve really struggled with wanting to know what’s next. So easily I can come to God and just ask, “What do you have for me?” “What are you waiting for?” “When will I truly feel like I’m completely home?” But then I realize that what I’m really asking is, “When will I be comfortable?”
I think I’m scared that if I don’t know what’s next I won’t be able to prepare for it.
So I think to myself, “You are God and I’m not.”
When I sit and just think about that statement, I realize how God has brought me to this very point with a specific path. We left Kansas when I was pretty young so we could become closer to my grandfather before he passed. I left Dickson to go to college at MTSU in chase of the recording industry. It was put on my heart this year to change majors and pursue ministry, which could potentially allow me to leave another home multiple more times.
In all this I just realized why I want to be in ministry.
No mater where I end up,
It is home.
(Title quote by Relient K)
