Word and words

It's been 18 days since I came back from Colorado. Back, not home. I have had a hard time trying to figure out what to do with all the drive in me to go west...it seems more pronounced than other years, after a visit there. I am beginning to wonder if I'm picking my feet up, or if I never put them down here in the first place.

A friend and I were talking about cars this week, and he asked me what my dream car is. I began to rattle off a scenario: "Well, if I was living in Colorado, or someplace like that..." And he stopped me and said, "No, I mean, what's you're dream car here?" That's when it hit me that I don't have an answer to that question. I don't have a dream car in Rochester. I don't even have imaginings of what my life would look like here in the future - no house, no nothing. And no dream car. In fact, I've never dreamed about my life being here at all.

Isn't that sad? My entire family lives here. I think a person can be happy here. But I can't imagine never living anywhere else. And I've watched myself through enough seasons of change now to know what it looks like - the difference between God's leading through my thoughts/emotions, and my own stubbornness. This feels too smooth to be me.

But then I come to the part where I have to keep my mouth shut. I don't know where God is leading me, how soon, or why. And to speculate sort of crosses me over into that, "Yeah, just shut up before you say something stupid" zone. Until I know something, I shouldn't guess at it. And it just makes the people around me uncomfortable to hear me talk like that.

Funny thing about talking. You'll believe anything you say enough. I wrote that into one of my most bitter songs - something about how "maybe talking is the folly that I owned/just say it twice to make it so." That was about a boy I talked too much about, and ended up getting my heart way too involved before there was really a relationship to speak of. That messed me up pretty good later on...so now I'm more careful about that. I've never seen excessive verbalization of thoughts/feelings about a certain topic lead to clarity on what God is really saying on the matter...it just seems to make more of a mess to clean up later. And I hate mental messes like that - I hate not being able to really hear God on an issue. I just want to be quiet and wait and really know it's from Him - and then move on it. So that's all I'm going to say about it. Longing out loud doesn't make anything of it. It's still just ache.

Today a co-worker told me he hated me. I mentioned something about having been to Japan once, and he looked me in the face, and told me he hated me for it. He really is just envious, because he desperately wants to go himself - he's been learning Japanese, has plans to move there eventually, and hopes to find himself a "hot Japanese girl" of some kind or another. And his way of expressing this was to be the first person in quite some time to really say those words to me. "I hate you!" He said, multiple times. I walked away annoyed - I know he was just messing around, just expressing himself in his own way, but it was almost like taking blows after the first few. Does that make sense? I mean, we recognize the power of saying, "I love you," to the people around you, how it can melt you down, make your day, soften a hard heart after a while...and I hadn't really thought too hard about what the opposite would do. I do not question that I am loved in all the right ways from all the people it matters - it's just that here's this guy, just some guy, throwing his hate around like it's nothing. I mean, the word. I don't believe he actually hates me. But he said it. Where did that land in the universe? Who knows. I still am a little bugged. Man, I just have always had a natural boundary with that - I can't say it to someone. I don't think I've ever said it to someone. Seriously.

Anyway, sticks and stones, eh?