Away

It's a weird feeling, being away. You are voluntarily placing yourself in year long isolation from everything familiar. Friends, family, food, even your standard of living. Old expectations are abandoned and new ones are formed on the basis of totally difference standards. It used to be that I measured a good nights sleep by the comfort of my pillows, the arrangement of my comforter, or how often my dog started barking in the middle of the night. The constant presence of home often became claustrophobic. "I need to get out of the house!" or "let's go out and do something!", purely because sitting in the same two story building with only 4 people becomes pretty much unbearable after four hours.

Today I am thinking about all the people I know that chose this year to be "away." My best friend left this year to live 12 hours away from the place she has lived her entire life, just to "get away" and be on her own. The group that I was inseparable with for an entire year is now stretched across Alaska, Costa Rica, California, and Micronesia. We are all sitting away from each other. Oceans and several time zones apart. Today I miss them, but more than that I pray for them. We are all alone now.

These last two years my family has gone through more separation and distance than we have for my entire life. It's like someone grabbed my home, shook a couple people out of it and through them across the country unwillingly. Those rare, precious moments when we could be together can be counted on one hand. We take so many pictures in those moments, as if those pictures will help the moment last longer when we are all torn apart again. I have one of those pictures as the background on my laptop, but I think staring at is makes it worse.

But I chose to leave, I chose to leave complete and total comfort and familiarity. I left school - my addiction for the past five years. I left my baby nephews, missing out on a year of sweetness and smiles. I left my home, my dogs, and most of all I left my mom and dad. But, my reason for leaving was 100% unrelated to a desire to "get away." I want an adventure, I want a story, I want a live lived with unceasing passion.

Lord I lay me down
Bring me to my knees
I belong to you

Scattered across the world are people that are "away." Away from home, away from friends, and comfort. But what brings me comfort is that no one is ever really alone. I have heard it before, "God is always with you Kelsey!", but it hasn't been tangible for me. I like to think of it like this: God is all around. God shows himself to you in others. God can be revealed in the hearts of strangers, church members, and even little kids that barely know their ABC's or rebellious high school students that can't identify North America on a map. God is also in me. Every time I stand in front of my 85+ students and read a bible verse or pray for them on a quiz, I think He is with me. He knows that I want an adventure, a story, but He wants more for me than I could ever imagine.

Stephanie and I after she placed flowers in my hair.