I'm feeling deeply nostalgic today.
I spent my week in Illinois, and the entire reason for the trip revolved around love: Friends getting married, pumpkin carving with family, nieces, nephews. Beers with my old favorites from TJ's. There really wasn't anything missing. I made new friends and I got to get good, long hugs from old friends.
Don't make fun, but I may start crying as I write this. The older I get the more emotional I seem to get: Waterworks will often come unannounced and unashamed.
Today I decided to feed into that nostalgia by reading old blog posts... more like journal entries for me however (this is like a portal into my diary guys). I admit that feeding this sad feeling is kind of a bad idea. It got worse as I started reading posts from when I first moved to Illinois. I read all about surprising my parents by moving back, all the bike trips I used to go on, and the little solo adventures I'd take myself on to keep sane. I read about crying at work because I missed being near daily adventure and beautiful mountains kissing the sky, and now I feel like crying at work because my community here is just not the same. My work community, that is.
I yearned to find God in Illinois, when before all I could see him through were snow-capped mountaintops. I searched and asked and prayed and desired, and as I read back on those writings where I felt I just couldn't take it anymore, I realize now that I was experiencing God so, so very deeply. God was meeting me right where I was hurting and helpless, and he was sitting down with me and feeding me. I see that with my eyes wide open after having gone back to visit last week, and now I yearn for that intimacy I once had and didn't even realize. I miss my family so much it hurts. Near the end there I was really realizing how filled I was by everything, by my job, my church, and the ability to daily interact with my family, nieces, nephew. That is all a thousand miles away, and I prayed and asked to get to come back to the mountains, to get to come back to another adventure and get to turn the page and start somewhere fresh. Now that I'm here, though, I feel like I need God to come back down and sit next to me... I need Him to feed me again. I see, I know he's in these mountains, but now I know also that he IS is Illinois. My hear is deeply rooted in Illinois. Here my Illinois tattoo grows to represent so much more than it even did the day I got it back in Seattle, yet I am met with those same feelings of sadness and pining for a place so far away from me.
Last time I was afraid I would be forgotten. This time I'm afraid I'm missing out a place that has been set and molded for me.
Gods hand was SO evident in every part of my being back in Colorado. But why is every road such a hard road when God is leading the way? I can trust it because my driver is good and He loves me so deeply. But now I'm in unfamiliar territory and I really miss that road I was on before.
