Mild melancholy.

On Sunday evening I came home to an extremely messy apartment that would normally stress me out, but instead I rolled up my sleeves and was excited to get started.  There were a number of reasons for this:  one being that it was a project I could start, work hard on, see to completion and delight in the fruits of my labor; while the other being that I was in a funky state of mind since the weekend and didn't know why or what had caused it.  I was ready to clean up whatever mess my brain and heart had accumulated from the external stimuli of the weekend.

Something on Saturday night acted like a straw that broke this camel's back.  I realized it wasn't really the content or events of the end of the year banquet itself that I attended that spurred this on, but rather a question that Pam Lee had posed to me in a conversation we were having.  She explained some of her plans for the future and asked me how I've been dealing with moving away from family and friends and the realities of them moving on with their lives without me (sort of).  In the moment she asked, it didn't really bring anything new to light - I had been mentally aware that leaving community behind was going to be my reality and is simply a part of life.  But it wasn't until later on that night as I was recalling that moment when I realized how much I needed to look in the mirror and face the reality of what I really felt.  In what seemed like a flash of a moment, I was overwhelmed with a sense of sadness but didn't really understand where this was all coming from. 

So strangely enough, my attempt to internally process during my cleaning endeavors was not very helpful.  I focused, I cleaned, I reviewed, but couldn't really figure out anything significant.  But then again, now that I think about it, I don't think I was actually looking very hard.  

My internal diagnoses weren't really getting me anywhere beyond mixed feelings of sadness and I was still in this sad daze on Monday, so it was good to just talk to someone...which ended up being Nathan.  Talking about it helped me not just identify a little bit of what I've been feeling, but helped tie those feelings in with the patterns I've been experiencing all year, particularly with my overall temptation to feel like a failure and be full of regret.

It wasn't just that I was going to miss some key people in my life - it was this sense of not having closure and not having time to make it happen.  It's as if I was reading a sentence at the bottom of the page of a book, turning the page expecting to finish the sentence, only to find that the page is blank.  That's how I feel about these last few weeks in Binghamton.  There are still tasks to complete, and it didn't seem to be prime time for creating closure.

I've been feeling helpless, useless, sometimes frustrated with myself and sometimes frustrated with others.  I'm stuck in limbo, floating around until something hits me.

But I started this post a few days ago and things seemed to be turning around a little bit.  Now that I've identified this feeling of lack of closure, I can focus on trying to come up with ways I need to create that closure for myself.  As I share my thoughts and feelings with others they've helped remind me that it's okay to make mistakes, it's not my job to "fix" everybody and everything, and that the weight of that responsibility falls on the shoulders of our Lord Jesus Christ.  I am reminded of that freedom I have in Christ and how I can trust the One who loves the people in my community more than I do.