my twenty first fall

This September marks my twenty first fall, my fourth start at a new school, my umpteenth change of address, and the first time in a long while when I felt completely at ease with my current life circumstances. I have spent the last few years wandering, each time packing up my emotions, my shoes, and my bible while leaving most everything else behind. Each new year, which is marked by most college age folk with September or there abouts, I think we all claim a ‘new beginning.’ But for myself, I truly have shed off over the summer the rough calouses of heart ache and weariness. I have a lot of people who I could blame for that process to have even been necessary, and it is truly easy to do on many days. But in all reality life is just life. It isn’t very appealing all the time, and even more often the people in your life hand you a lot of disappointment. I went into my summer break really hoping to rest my heart and mind from all that they had been through in the last year…I suppose a broken heart, family issues, and the stress of finance seems standard fare for any person breathing, but that doesn’t make it any less trying than it was.  So I when I found myself feeling, learning, and still living during my summer I was taken aback. Had God really just stuck me right back in the middle of whirlwind? It really seemed like a cruel joke. I really had wanted to hide myself away, wall up my heart and my head in my own little world, but I fared through it, granted with a few mistakes, but also many successes. I can look back now and see that my summer turned itself into one giant pumice stone. I was being scraped clean of all that burdened me, a process that couldn’t have possibly been easy. People, places, and pieces that had hurt and hindered me were cast away. I gained a new clean skin, a new amazing home, a job I would have never expected, and even a few new people I could share all of it with.

It seems a bit opposite of the norm for so much of a life to die during spring. It is still true that my summer was not what I had hoped for in the months preceding, but it ended up being what I needed. And now as the leaves fade and drift down, I feel myself shining from the inside brighter than ever and rising up from the ashes. Finally the life that I had spread to thin, given too much of, is mine again and I am so ready to live it.