Beginning of the End

So, I was walking around campus yesterday and it struck me that this is my last semester here. I won't be returning next fall. I will probably never again wander across campus to the library to print things off, or to the DC for dinner. I will no longer trudge to the Business Office to pay my bills or to the church for chapel. This is it: the end.

A lot of people have told me over the last five years that "these are the best days of your life" and "the time will fly by and you'll miss it." I didn't understand until now. Not that these have been the best years of my life, I hope they get better, but the years have flown by and I can't believe all that I have experienced during my time here.

I made lasting friendships that I know I will keep until I die. I traveled to Cambodia. I was stretched and challenged and learned a lot about myself. God healed a lot of my heart during these years.

I think... I think I will miss my time here. I am ready to be done with school and enter a world where I no longer have to attend new classes every four months, and have 100s of pages of reading to do each night. I am ready to know something other than formalized education, namely a steady job. Yet, in spite of my desire to move on I realize now how much God has blessed me during these years with so many things. It will be scary to move on into a world I am not comfortable with. Stepping out of this safety net into the lion's den.

I am not sure when, but somewhere in the last two months I changed... a lot. I am mysteriously different than I was last November. I can't put my finger on exactly what or when, but I know something changed. I see things differently now.

I am not afraid of people for one. It wasn't hard for me to lower my head and ignore others and think I wasn't good enough for anyone to want to talk to. Now I find myself more confident, raising my head and smiling at strangers as I pass them on the sidewalk. In my classes, peers I once thought so much better than me I can now talk to without fear of their judgment. Not sure where the confidence came from or why I am no longer afraid, but I like it.

I guess better late than never. In just a few short months I will be in a place where I don't know anyone and I will have to build relationships from scratch again. I think I can do it. Maybe this is the one last thing God wants to teach me before I leave this place. Actually there are probably a few things left for Him to teach me, but this one will for sure take a lot of practice.

It is amazing how nostalgia always sets in before things ever even end. I will be so sad all semester, but then when graduation comes I won't be able to cry...

Bittersweet... so glad to leave, so sad I cannot stay.