Stuck in the waiting room.

This summer certainly hasn't turned out the way I envisioned it. It's nearly mid-July and I'm still stuck in the waiting room.

All waiting rooms are different.
My waiting room happens to be in the form of a place called Barnesville, Ohio.

Ah...good ol' Bville! It's a nice enough spot. Population 4,000ish. Large, brightly colored Victorians welcome you as you cruise down tree-lined Chestnut, making your way "up-town". Thrift shops, pizza parlors and empty storefronts share the blocks of Main Street. We have churches and gas stations. Banks and bars. Even a reputable boarding school makes its home within the boundaries of the village.
Kids on bikes, towels draped around their necks, head down to the pool. Truck trailers full of noisy livestock clamor down Main Street. Jones Boys stumble around half intoxicated (or wait, maybe that's Buzzy...).
It's all relatively normal. Peaceful even. Simple. And I'm sure for most folks here, it's a happy place. It's normalcy. Contentment. Safety. Life.

Then there are folks like me. Where life doesn't appear to exist here. Where entering into the city limits puts me in a state of hysterical panic. An instantaneous wave of suffocating emptiness. For me, this place is the sum total of every bad decision, every mistake I have ever made. A place to be escaped...survived. To live only in rumors, yearbooks, forgotten friendships.

So it's no mistake I'm here. Whether it be by Gods direct will or by my own fears (Job 3:25), I can't be sure. How I got here isn't as important as what I do while I'm here. So, here I sit...in the waiting room...flipping through the magazines of my past. Scrambling to make peace with who this town shaped me to be - peace with who I was, wasn't, should've been and can never be...