Update

So graduation turned out to be pretty okay.  I was sitting (mostly) by friends, and it turns out that we're all friends on a day like Graduation Day, so, yeah...

The service was...eh...mostly good.  Between Baccalaureate and Graduation, they managed to put together some decent worship.  My fam was around, so I had dinner with them afterward, and then got up the next morning to open at work. 

Excellent. 

Now I've just got a couple days left until I head home for my sister's wedding.  Eh.  I feel like every support system I have is systematically being stripped away.  In a way I suppose this is good, because it's forcing me to rely on God in ways that I don't know that I've had to before.  People who were my close friends are just sort of...not...anymore.  The friends I have that I'm still close to are so far away, and it sucks not having them around to be with.  By the time I get back from the wedding, another of my friends here on campus will have left to start her new job.  I'm really happy for her - I'm just going to miss her.

And I think that's part of my struggle with going home for this wedding.  I say "going home" because that's where my parents are, but really, Kansas isn't home for me.  I lived there the last three years of high school.  I haven't been there longer than 2 or 3 weeks since I was a college sophomore.  The people that I'm friends with from high school no longer live there, and the high school classmates that still live there I'm no longer friends with.  I'm headed to my parents' house where they are basically the only people I know or care about, to be drowned in the fact that everyone else but me has the one thing I really want.  

I suppose that's covetous or jealous on my part, and I wish it wasn't.  Because I'm trying really hard not to be jealous or bitter, it just hurts so much.  It's like being the last puppy at the pound, or kid at the orphanage.  Everyone else gets picked except you, and not only do you know it's happening, you're actually having to watch it, and what you want more than anything is someone to pick you.  Should I be joyful and content nevertheless?  Probably - I have the "one thing needful", after all.  But what do you do when your heart is so broken it can't break anymore?  How do you be joyful and content then?

I was deep into Psalm 51 last night, because I just have a bad attitude and a bad heart about so many things right now.  Sin, death, and the power of the devil are just so oppressive.  So often when we talk about freeing the victims of oppression, we mean the ones who are being sinned against by other people.  But what we often don't talk about is that those who are doing the sinning - to be trapped in jealousy and covetousness is every bit as oppressive - it's just that you're being oppressed by the devil himself, rather than somebody else.  And that's almost worse.  Maybe. 

It's days like this that I wish (modern) Lutherans hadn't ditched the tradition of private confession and absolution.