Emotional Crap

I really like my congregations - they are great, full of wonderful people.  The larger of the two is so totally resourceful and has such a good attitude, and the smaller is really good at taking care of each other and doing their own pastoral care. 

The towns are awesome as well.  Just cute little blink-and-you'll-miss-'em towns, "a stop sign on a map dot", filled with a surprising amount of life and energy and goodness.

But, I am lonely.  I have no "friends."  Literally, with the exception of a couple old "Norwegian bachelor farmer" types, everyone in town is married, and almost all are older than I am.  I love being invited over for dinner at people's houses, and chatting about church stuff or even the weather or town festivals or whatever.  But I have no one to crash on the couch and watch movies with, or even to call up and say, "I'm bored, want to drive into town and go see a movie?"  Nobody from school to say, "I was reading this book/Bible passage/blog today, and I don't know what to think."  Not even any other pastors in town to just "talk shop" with.

I want someone to come home to at the end of the day so I can say, "I had a really long day" or a "I had a really great day".  I want to not have to long for the one day a week I'm in the big city so that I have enough cell phone bars to call friends who don't live anywhere near me.  I want someone who will lovingly kick my butt into gear when I'm procrastinating.  I want to have people - just one or two would be great - around me that I feel like I can trust, really trust, with my own stuff, and it won't be repeated.  I want to have somebody to cook with, or lament the fact that there is nowhere to order pizza from. 

Maybe it's that I want to have someone near me where our primary relationship is not that of pastor-parishoner, somebody who I can just be myself with.  Somebody I can say, "I don't know if this is what I want to do for the rest of my life" to.  I've been working on building some other mentoring relationships, in the state and over email, but that's still not the same as a friend.

And to make matters worse, I'm really good at feeling guilty when I feel this way, because "Jesus is your best friend," and "God doesn't give you anything you can't handle" and "He is always right there beside you."  Yeah, I get that.  But this is still hard. 

Sigh...48 weeks to go... 

Mayonnaise

Earlier, I wrote about the awesomeness of girlfriends, and how they are totally a gift from God.  Last weekend, before I left for internship, I spent the weekend with my BFF from high school.  We don't get to hang out or talk too often, as our lives have gone radically different directions since high school, and particularly since college.  However, occasionally we're able to make time for a good phone call or quick visit, and last weekend I got a whole day and a half with my "bestie." 

It was fun to see her kids, as they are so flippin' adorable, but her husband was also gracious enough to really keep an eye on them a lot of the time, and to entertain himself when they were asleep.  We had lots of time to catch up on the important and not-so-important things that are going on in our lives, to spend more money than we should at an awesome little bookstore, and even to do a little yoga.  (It was my first time doing yoga, and I kind of liked it.  Man, I worked hard, but it was kind of relaxing, and I didn't finish feeling frustrated at my total inability to "grapevine across the room" or whatever.) 

It was a great weekend, and also a very relaxing weekend, and I was reminded again of how wonderful these relationships - and this one in particular - really are.  It's also fun to see how no matter how much time or distance separates us, some things never change. 

Girlfriends

What a blessing it is to have girlfriends!  Of recent years, I have been intrigued by Luke 1:56.  This verse comes after the annunciation to Zechariah and Elizabeth, after the Annunciation to Mary, just after the Magnificat.  Mary has gone to visit Elizabeth, where we learn the power of the presence of Christ.  Even as pregnant-with-Jesus Mary enters the room, unborn-John-the-Baptist senses the presence of his Lord and "leaps with joy" in Elizabeth's womb.  And then, in verse 56, "Mary stayed with Elizabeth for about three months and then returned home." (NIV) 

I start wondering...what was Mary doing there?  Why did she go to visit Elizabeth in the first place?  Why travel from Nazareth to Galilee - who needs to be taking a journey like that in the midst of so much stress?  And why stay three months?