Longings

It has been 5 days. Each day I feel like God is stretching and growing me, bringing different things to mind, teaching me how to come closer to him. I want to forget myself and be used in a way that would bless other people. That's difficult for me, because sometimes I get intensely selfish and just want alone time to veg. I have such a desire to see the product of everything I do, and to speed through the process. I have no patience.

I want so badly to go back to certain places in the states and just sit there. On a street corner in New Bern. In the park in Greenville. Strolling the sidewalks of Asheville. Driving down the highway, music blaring, windows down, on my way to Mars Hill. Warm, sunny, happy weather. These are my favorite places. God gives me these longings - I just need to know how to accept them without being too homesick and thinking that if I was there (instead of here) that life would be magically perfect. Because life never is.

If I really scrutinize my experiences, back to each time I spent in the aforementioned places, there were strains and stresses, an equal amount of bad with the good. I'm not sure why I'm only remembering the good things, but I am thankful for the memories. Does this mean that once this SoKo thing is over, I should rush back there (there I go again - speeding through life,) hoping to relive summers past? I don't know, and I kind of doubt it. I don't think anything stays the same. Once I leave a place and return, I don't fit in any longer. I experienced that slightly, after going back to Greenville for the second (and last) time before coming here. I had been gone only a week and already, I realized that because I was no longer a student, that life was going to roll forward - and it had already started driving down the road.

That's ok. I ultimately want to be in a place emotionally, and spiritually, where I can truly say that God is my only home. He is, of course. There's such an overwhelming peace I have by being close with him, and I want that to grow - but I want to be able to enjoy wherever I am, at that moment and not long for something behind or in front of me. True contentment. To be filled with the satisfaction that only God can bring, that makes me happy with my current surroundings.

Right now, I'm torn between missing Asheville and the two summers I spent there, my friends in Eastern Carolina, and this new, raw place. While everything here, collectively, is totally different than anything I've experienced, there are random things that remind me of home. I was eating in TGIFriday's at the bus terminal the other day and a song came over the speakers - one that my sister, Jordyn, loves. And I teared up, right in front of my pasta bread bowl. There are mountains surrounding Gwangju, and yesterday morning during my early jog, I was looking at them and feeling so much homesickness for my North Carolina mountains.