This past week has seen some of the most mind-boggling events I have yet to know, and I have many.
I reconciled with two friends, one of which I haven't talked to in 6 or 7 years. I had been friends with her for 18 years before that. It's strange. Since then, even more, I feel myself in neutral territory between to geographical areas and time lines.
I can't believe I am only two and a half months away from graduating. Two and a half months ago I was leaving to go back to CA for Christmas. Wasn't that just yesterday? Or wait, was it a lifetime ago? It feels like both. There is such a sweet bitterness as I feel the end of this time coming.
I can feel the future pulling, the past being left behind and the present as some sort of intermediary half in, half out of existence. I did everything I could to spend every minute I was here, living, learning, struggling, growing, risking, diving, surfacing and diving again, fighting to live in every moment. To soak up the fruits of redemption, to treasure the air of a different state, sunsets instead of sunrises, loneliness instead of manic schedules. It was all about taking back what I had lost, discovering, being with me, learning about God and my relation to Him. Stretching my mind academically and emotionally.
And I did it. I mean it was all of those things and more. It was peaceful and restless and life changing and I learned more than I will probably ever know. I think I learned how to learn. How to feel, how to understand. For the first time I saw things from different perspectives and came to grips with how wrong I was.... about everything. And how being wrong is the most freeing thing in the world. I learned how the only one I needed to worry about loving me, was me, since I'm the only one I'm really fighting against.
Now it's all about to come to an end. I'm already balancing work and school and feel as though I have gotten everything I will out of my degree and am ready to be back in the world of professionals and grown-ups. I have a love growing and ready to move to that next most permanent stage and I feel how right and good and wonderful that is.
My spirit, my soul, my heart is restful in the sadness of beginning to grieve the end and its strange. I can't believe some of the things I have done, some of the things I have gone through, some of the places I have been, the commitments I have made. I've gotten on a plane and moved to a city, an apartment, a place I had never been. I started one major, then changed my last year. I lived in Paris. I started one job, only to leave for sexual harassment (awkward), then started another at the Capital. I fell more in love with Jesus, learned how wrong I was about Him and how much He could change me, change my life, my heart. I committed a love and fought for it when it shouldn't have worked and not only did it work, it grew.
I also failed miserably. I wasted so much time sitting on a couch, fearing what was outside my door. I refused to hope and let my past guide me in so many ways. I got selfish and stupid at times, caring only about me and what I thought I needed. I let my insecurities rule.
I have never felt so much, so fast, so intensely. I still fear my life will amount to not much, or I will fail again, or will end up a soccer mom living vicariously through her children (no offense to anyone that wants that, it's just not me), but I guess now I realize opportunities are lost, they are only created. God's timing and redemption are more perfect than anything and allowing Him to create my life, but at the same time participating, risking, trying, finding out what path He does have, is the mysterious mixture. When it works, it works. When it doesn't, it isn't supposed to.
For now, with a few months left of by myself living, I revel in the quiet nights, my Ipod and my computer. I usually leave the lights off except for one, maybe open my curtains and look out at my inch and a half of the Washington Monument. I look around at the soft yellow glow, the pictures I have taken hanging on the walls, my art from Paris; the square tiles of the hardwood floors, colorless walls and a black and white rug I picked out from overstock; the books on the shelf I collected, reading through my life and God's heart; my journal sitting the lampstand next to my couch. This place has the warmest feel. It's my home. My quiet place, the place God created as a sanctuary for my heart and mind. It's my reality of redemption. I will be so sad to see it go, but so happy to start something new.
What a way to learn not all change is bad.
