yesterday afternoon i was trying to find something for a friend of mine and came across a recording of a band that i was really, really tight with back in high school. i listened to the three songs over and over and it immediately took me back to that time. after listening to them, i looked a few other bands up from that time and listened to them. it was really fun to take a trip back in time.

that was at 4:32 in the afternoon.

i spent the next eight hours in a trip through time in my brain through all of these experiences and places and people. it was a crazy ride that was really fun and led me to one conclusion:

i have a lot of really great things that i miss.

i don’t think or talk about the things that i miss very often. it’s one of those things where i figure if i don’t admit it, it’s not true. it makes it easier on me. nicole hates this and i’m trying to get better at it but i’m not there yet. i figure the only way to get better at that is to practice so i’m going to give it a shot.

1) i miss going to shows in high school. we would go to random clubs on friday and saturday nights and have more fun than we probably should’ve. we were a bunch of 15-20 year olds that were brought together by a love of music and we just enjoyed hanging out with each other. through the years we’ve all grown apart. there are multiple reasons but the biggest is that life happens and most of the time people grow apart but there’s not much that can beat those friday and saturday nights.

2) i miss nicole. yes, that’s cheesy but this is my blog and i can be cheesy if i want. there are times when the distance in our relationship kills me. i hate the phone. i really do. that fact makes a long distance relationship even harder. we have petty misunderstandings and arguments sometimes just because things get lost in translation. things get hard and i know that spending 30 minutes with her eating dinner would completely remind me of everything that is great with our relationship but it’s hard to do that four hours away from each other. hopefully we only have a few more months of the distance thing but for now, distance sucks.

3) i miss liberty. mainly the only things i miss are going to games, late night runs to sheetz, and the people. the other day i read back through some of the things that me and my friends did during games while we were there and it reminded me of how much fun we had. i also miss having a group of friends that i could randomly call and say, “hey. dinner. 6:30. la villa. you in?” and they’d say, “uh, yeah, sure.” i don’t have that here yet. i know a ton of people here but i haven’t found that core group of friends like the lunatics became.

4) i miss my church. this one’s the tricky one. this one’s the one where i have to tip toe a little bit. i love the church that i work at right now. i love the people here. i love the leadership of the church. i love the students i get to hang out with. just because i miss another church doesn’t me that i don’t love where i’m at. with that being said, i miss brentwood church. for some that’s hard to understand, but brentwood church is the place that i was able to fall in love with the idea of church. brentwood church is the place where i felt so comfortable and was so, you know, i don’t even know the adjective i’m trying to use here. it was my ideal church. if i could draw up a model for church that is everything that i want in a church, it is brentwood church. it’s not a perfect church because that doesn’t exist, but it was my church. i miss the people. i miss the teaching. i miss the light show and the techno rave that happened before church started. i read the tweets and the blog posts every week and it helps, but i just feel the need for a brentwood church fix.

5) i miss my brother and sister. (side note: i didn’t put brother first because i like him more. i put brother first because brother and sister sounds better than sister and brother.) we were pretty tight for a few years before i moved away for school. then while i was gone, we all started growing apart. then my sister moved away and we all started growing even more apart. i remember last year at christmas none of us got along at all and we couldn’t wait to go back to school. somewhere in the last 8-9 months though something has changed. we’re all still pretty far apart physically, but we’ve sent little random text messages or facebook things more often than we had in the past. when we were all home for thanksgiving we got along better than we have in a long time. i don’t know what changed, but something did. i hate being four hours from my brother and eight hours from my sister. i hate only seeing each other at holidays. maybe that’s the way life is and maybe that’s what happens when you grow up, but that doesn’t mean i have to like it.

6) i miss my parents too. when i was home last, me and mom sat and talked for three hours and it felt like it had only been twenty minutes. it went by so fast that i had no clue it had been that long. relationships with kids and parents naturally change over time and i think it’s really cool to see how ours has changed. i’d like to think that i’m proving to them that they did a good job in raising me and i definitely know that they did by the constant reminders that i get of things they’ve said when certain things happen.

i could probably continue to list things on here but that seems like a good place to stop. i’m still trying to get settled in here in tennessee and still trying to get comfortable in my surroundings and figure out if i’ll even be here past june. sometimes it’s just easier to escape back to the things that i know and that are comfortable.

i’m really tempted to just save this post to my computer or delete it completely. it feels whiny and pointless. i feel like since i work at a church that i should make some great transition into a point about god right here and how he loves us and misses us when we don’t spend time with him.

but i don’t want to do that.

i think i’m just going to leave it at this and press publish. this is me. i’m not perfect and i don’t have it all together. i have struggles and things that bother me just like everyone else. the only difference in me and you is that i have a blog that 32 people read and i write about my feelings. i know how you feel though. i know what it’s like to go through the crap where nothing is really wrong but things just don’t necessarily feel right. i’ve been there and honestly, i’m there now.

these times don’t last forever though. at some point god sends something our way to remind us that in the end, things will definitely be right, even if they aren’t right now. we just have to move through right now to get to right then.

hey, look at that. i somehow did bring it back to god.

say your prayers and take your vitamins.

have a nice day.

-jonathan