Time For a Change

Ty 2004
Originally uploaded by andebos.

I posted this picture for all of you I haven't seen in a while - although...does anyone really read this thing anyway? Who Knows. But I have most ccertainly allowed my hair to grow out pretty long, and I'm cutting it tomorrow. Back to the soldier look. I told Claudia today that I needed to leave Kansas City - and I intended to be elsewhere next year. I am just about to the point where I would go even if a job didn't present itself, crazy I know. I love where I work - I love Kansas City, I love my family and Church...but I just have this feeling that it's past time for me to step up to somewhere I belong. I realized that there is a great possibility I have overlooked being in the place God has for me. (I don't mean leaving education) I just mean that my mind has maybe prioritized the wrong things over the last year...but maybe I'm regaining my senses, or at least forcing myself to do so. Where will I go they want to know? Well that's the problem. Filling out applications is one thing but here are the others. Going out of state I have to find the application, write a cover letter, mail it, get certified in the state, etc. etc. all this needs to be done very soon...and not to mention find a way to interview. In the end I need to do exactly what I am not - trust in God and seek Him. Hopefully, he will reveal where he wants me. I don't feel like it's necessarily here anymore, though I'm not closing that door completely. There are just many times I feel lonlely and not in my place - I don't want to feel that anymore, I feel like the skies are dark here - boy I don't know where to go...wherever it is I want to find community, a place where the sun shines (metaphorically: a place in the sun) I want to find relationship with others, genuine relationship. And I would prefer a place with resemblances to Columbia, Rochester, or a larger version of Kirksville. A city in itself, but within driving distance to a larger city - I like those places. So I'll be honest with all of you, here are the initial areas I have looked into and got infor for as of right now: Boston, Columbia, St. Louis, Minneapolis (please don't gripe on me with that one, there is just something I fell in love with up north, I loved the people, the atmosphere, the life...many things beyond what you are thinking) Here are areas I would like to research: San Antonio, Colorado, North Carolina, Texas, Scottsdale Arizona and Flagstaff, and maybe another area up north. Someday I would like to return to KC...that may not happen depending on how life turns out - but I want to leave after this year. I know there are a lot of reasons I have felt all this. Trouble with Annie, yes, things with loneliness, yes, wanting to teach elsewhere, yes...there are lots of reasons - so please just pray for me and where God takes me. Also pray that God's voice would be intimately clear to me as I feel of late that I have been searching for the wrong things. Finally pray for healing, trust, rest, and intimacy with God and that he would provide me with confidence in myself and that there is nothing inadequate in me - that the reason things went the way they did is not because I lack something as a man in God. What a world huh? In the end I suppose more than anything - I just miss my friend and I hope someday her and I can at least interact on a friendship level in Christ - but only He knows...my end is silence - fulfilling that request and trusting. Yes, there is a sadness in my tone and a longing for what was and what might have been....

"Why am I fighting to live, if I'm just living to fight? Why am I trying to see, when there aint nothing in sight? Why am I trying to give, when no one gives me a try?
Why am I dying to live, if I'm just living to die?"