Southbound Train

The temperature feels like summer. Everything else feels undeniably like fall. The world is preparing to rest.

I'm a little confused and frustrated about life right now. My heart is in so many places that I seem to be unable to actually be in any one place fully. First, my heart is with all the Halo people, so really, it's in last month ... which is not even a place! I want to be in Finland with all my Halo kids. The fellowship, the focus, the mission, the purpose, the fun ... even though it was pretty busy, it was somehow the most restful and relaxing time I've had in awhile.
Yet, I love Muncie and I want to be here with my church, with my small group members, with my parents. But I don't have the patience to be home with my parents anymore. That's probably a little bit okay. I am, after all, 25. In terms of American culture, now is an acceptable time to move out of the house. No one should really still be living at home with the parents. But I can't afford to live on my own quite yet, not responsibly anyway. I don't want to answer any of their questions. I don't want to talk to them, and yet I hate that I can't talk to them about many of the things I think and experience. Part of this town feels like it won't allow me to grow. "That's not acceptable. People don't change." It seems to say. But I know that's not true.
I want to be in the city of Chicago because I have so many friends there and it's a city I love in my mind, maybe idolize a little.
I want to be in Cleveland, because I also have now developed a base of support there ... and a job.
And it seems that every one of my places, everywhere that my heart is, decides to do activities at the same time.
So next weekend, my small group in Muncie is attending a church-wide retreat and I've been "kicked out" of small group (not really) so they can have 100% attendance, but I really really WANT to be there. Yet, I have to be in Cleveland all next week for an Erie concert and it's great to go up there and be with my friends ... but it's going to be terrible, because I know where my small group will be. And I feel I've grown very much apart from them, because that's what happens when you are absent from a place.
They are the same people that have always made up my small group, but returning to them makes me feel like I imagine I would feel returning to my Starbucks in Boston where everyone I know has left.
People in my church have begun relationships, ended relationships, had children, gotten married, gotten pregnant, made decisions, moved away ... and I've missed all of it. All. Of. It.
I have missed out on everything because I've been doing everything.


Southbound Train
Jon Foreman

Oh
I guess they'll say I've grown
I know more than I wanted to know
I've said more than I wanted to say
I'm heading home
Yeah, but I'm not so sure
That home is a place
You can still get to
By train

So I'm looking out the window
And I'm drifting off to sleep
With my face pressed up against the pane
With the rhythm of my heart
And the ringing in my ears
It's the rhythm of the southbound train

Oh
And the wind starts to look like her hair
And the clouds in her bright blue eyes
As the sea and the shore fall and rise
Like her breast as she breathes by my side
And the moon is her lips as the sun
Is headed on down to the sea
Like her head as she lays down on me
Until we reach oceanside
Over and over
I hear the same refrain
It's the rhythm of my heart
And my sleepy girl's breathing
It's the rhythm of my southbound train

*harmonica solo*
(also, why this song is awesome)

Oh, I suppose they'll say I should've known
Or maybe I'm just feeling old
Like a lawyer with no one to blame
I'm headed home
Yeah, but I'm not so sure
That home is a place
That'll ever be the same

So we're picking up our things
And we head out in the cold
And your eyes are where you carry the pain
When I hear the whistle weeping
It's crying to the sky
It's the rhythm of my southbound train