Home?

I'm missing a place I haven't left yet.

I feel like I've already checked out of this place. Thinking back over the 21+ mo. that I've spent here, my experiences and thoughts have varied greatly. Now I'm just ready to come back. But I've still got almost 3 months to be here. I've stopped studying Japanese. Heck, I barely even speak it anymore. I spend my time talking with English speakers, reading English books, listening to English stuff online, and keeping silent. I think a lot of it is because I know I'm coming home. I know I'll be home in 3 months, so what's the use in investing a whole lot in new friendships? Or even in acquaintances? I'm about to be 6,000 miles away from here, in a different job, in a different language, and not only will I be away physically and time zone wise, but there will be every aspect of life wanting to use and fill my time - new hobbies new people, a new church. How much do I try and hang on to what I have had here?

Maybe part of my problem is that I see everything as temporary. High school was temporary, college was just a few years in Eau Claire, Japan was never going to be more than a couple years, now I'll be out in Rapid City for a year or so, then hopefully eventually I'll get into the Foreign Service, and then they'll send me to a couple different places for 2-year stints, then after that I'll still be headed to places only on assignment temporarily...it won't be until I retire that I'd be living in one place for any extended amount of time.

So people will come and people will go. I guess I've got to start learning how to make life-long friends that I don't get to see but once every few years. Or just settle for peripheral-status friends for the rest of my life. A wife and family would always be there, but how could I call them into that same lifestyle of get up and go (for decades)?

"I'm a stranger, in this land
I'm calling out to you.
I'm a stranger, in this land
Oh what am I to do."

And part of it too is I've never felt like I've settled anywhere. Maybe this is true of most people. I think for me it's that my real residence is heaven, and everything else will just feel like sleeping in a hostel on rented sheets until I get there. Maybe I've got to start seeing everyone as they are - as eternal, and that some of them I will be seeing again and others I hope to be used by God to affect their lives in the eternal way so I can see them again too. That's actually quite a bit encouraging, remembering that we're all eternal. It will ease the sting of "sayonara." I actually don't usually say goodbye, and I certainly never drag it out. If I did, it would hurt, so I just don't. Maybe I need to embrace the goodbye in the way that people say it when they know they're going to see each other again.

Siiiiiiiggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

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