Onward.

Today was my last day of college classes. Ever.

And I'm having trouble processing this. I keep recalling freshman year, which holds so many memories that are still so vivid in my mind. My thoughts as I walked around campus today went something like this: "I just got here. It's not enough time. I've barely been here. I'll never walk past the Union between classes again. I'll never eat lunch at the Grille. I won't be able to walk past the English offices and see my professors. This is my last day to sit in a classroom and discuss literature like this." After this week, finals week, whenever I return to campus I will be a guest. There will be changes and I won't have been here to experience them gradually. They will be noticeable to me. If I ever do sit in the Union again, I won't be part of the life that is happening around me. I'll be an observer on the outside of it all. It's the end of an era, a forced moving onward that I'm not sure I want to experience. It's strange that college isn't just school; it's an entire life. This is where I'm invested. It's where I learn, but it's also where I have laughed and cried and slept (or not slept) and experienced God and grown into a very different person than I was when I arrived.

And, yet, there are things about the future that excite me. It's wide open and completely unknown. I'm ready to experience something new, to come home in the evening and not have to do homework, to find a church and a community to invest in, to meet new people and to hear their stories. I'm ready to see Jordi get married (so soon!). And to hear about the progress of Mary's wedding plans. And to watch as Elise discovers all that God has for her between now and grad school. And I'm excited for the rare calls that I will, hopefully, receive from Matt in Alaska. I'm ready to have free time that can be spent curled up in a chair, reading contemporary literature and all the works of Virginia Woolf's that I haven't had a chance to read, while surrounded by my family. Just as God has been in the last four years of my life, he will make his presence evident in the future. For now, I'm just waiting for his guidance as I leave a place I love and move on to a place that I hope to love.