Currently Listening Spoken For By MercyMe Homesick see related

Today I was walking to class, and I had this weird feeling mixed with loneliness that I couldn’t put my finger on.  It’s been lingering around for a while now.  And then I found it.  I feel homeless. 

Ever had that feeling of homelessness?  That nagging feeling that you’re not needed where you’re at or you're not supposed to be there?  The feeling that where you are isn’t where your heart is?

The term ‘homeless’ is definitely a packed label for me.  As many of you guys know, I’m a commuter student and I’m attending school part time.  It’s been a fun semester with my friends, but I never really get to that place where I really feel like I go home.  I love my friends, who are so kind to open their homes to me, and even going so far as to make me keys so I can come and go as I please.  But it’s not home.  Even when I go back to Union City to be with Grandpa and work for the weekend, it just doesn’t feel like my refuge and my place of rest.  I love him like crazy, but I’m never even there enough to really call it home.

I feel so restless, like I have nowhere to go.  And lately I’ve felt so withdrawn from my loved ones.  I’ve turned into a spiritual vagabond of sorts.  It seems like my heart feels homeless too, with nowhere to turn to for a break.  I don’t even know how to describe it.  I don’t want to say that I feel unwanted or I don’t fit in, because that’s not quite right.  Maybe I feel alien?  Like I’m only in passing. 

Maybe it’s because I struggle with the constant nonsense in my head that my friends regard me as someone in passing.  A friend in transition on the way to something else.  But now it’s taken over, where I’m just plain transient.  I feel like I’m wandering in the desert.  This place is only a temporary residence, and I’m not meant to stay here. 

But what the crap do I do with that? 

I feel like an alien.  I’ve read that piece of Scripture in the Bible, but the feeling has never felt so…tangible.  I feel like it’s in my skin- I hate it.  I’ve always wanted a place and a life where I feel at home and at ease.  I’ve never had it.  Ever.  The more I seem to find pieces of myself, the more people seem not to accept the woman I’m becoming.  This is especially true for my family.  They seem to already have their molds and preconceived notions of who I am, and no matter how I transform over the years some of them seem determined to cram me back into the same old mold. 

I’ve felt this feeling over the years as I’ve struggled to be more consistent in who I am to both my friends and my family.  I’ve always been two different people.  I’m one Brittany to my family, but it’s a different Brittany that my friends get to see.  I feel like the latter is the real me, but showing that to my family isn’t something I have the strength to face just yet.

But I digress.

Homeless.

How long is this feeling going to last?  And what the hell do I do with it?

What does God want from me?  Maybe it’s His call for me to call Him refuge.  I don’t know.  I feel so out of sorts.  It’s something to think about tomorrow.  I’m spent.