Goodbye's and Hello's

Sometimes I get so caught up in saying hello that I forget to say goodbye.

One of my talents, and also one of my weaknesses is my ability to plan. Whether it's five years from now, or five minutes from now I typically have an idea of exactly what I'll be doing. Granted, sometimes God has a chuckle and I find myself doing something entirely different than I thought I would.

Anyway, it's no surprise that I've let myself get so swept away with plans of saying "hello" to Nashville, that I've forgotten to say "goodbye" to my home for the last three years: Manhattan, Kansas.

My dad dropped me off at the dorms of Kansas State University on August 18th, 2012. Savannah and Tucker came with us. Everything I owned was loaded into my car and I was beyond excited to start a life for myself. I said goodbye to my family, and said hello to my room mate for the first time (in-person) met some people on the floor of the dorms, and started considering the dorms my new home.

Over the next several months, I said "hello" to a lot of things, like driving to see Ty in Lawrence every weekend, applying for jobs, and feeling like a speck on the wall in a town where no one knew my family, my dog's name, my siblings' names, where my family's cows were, let alone my name. I said hello to applying to jobs and to being a freshman in college.

My three years of college passed much the same. The sad thing about being in college is that it's such a transitory state. You know that this isn't your permanent home. It's just a stop along the road to a job. So while I was focused on building myself up professionally, I inadvertently built a home for myself--something I didn't realize until I arrived in Tennessee.

Somehow, this transition has been harder for me than it was to go to Europe and be over five thousand miles away from home. I'm still in my own country, and I have to pull out the GPS to figure out how to get to Walmart. I've been here over two weeks already and I still have no idea how to get to the most basic of places. I have to drive on the interstate with hoards of people, go to yoga with hoards of people, shop for groceries with hoards of people, and even live with hoards of people in a gigantic apartment complex. I can't walk outside by myself at night.

I guess what's sad is, is that I'm starting to realize that living in Nashville isn't just a stop along the road in life--it is life. It's not just a six month long exploration of a different land. And I'm realizing that I did build a community in Manhattan. I built a home. I knew exactly how to get to Walmart, I knew how infuriatingly long it would take to find a parking spot on campus, I had people in Manhattan attending my (and Ty's) graduation, cheering us on.

So I suppose my question is, how soon will it take to find something that's hard to say "goodbye" to in Nashville?