This postAgain, I should be studying for those midterms, but I couldn’t help myself. On my walk back up here to campus after FHE a few minutes ago (and what a wonderful walk it was! There’s a soft breeze outside and it’s not too hot and not too cold, and the air smells fresh and summerlike), I was hit hard with the realization that I’m graduating in a month. Meaning, I’m leaving BYU. It’s over. So many years of college, all coming to an end. Finito.
Now, this is something I’ve been looking forward to for a while, not because I dislike BYU in the least, but because it’ll be nice not to have homework anymore. And yet tonight I’m wishing I could keep on going for another few years. My world is unravelling. All my stability is based on that anchor of the fall/winter semester, knowing I have classes and professors and all that. And pretty soon it’s going to be gone.
To be honest with you, it’s terrifying. It seems like almost everything in my life that was certain is now stripped away, and I’m left teetering on the edge of an abyss. I don’t know if I’ll even have a job once I graduate. Sure, I have something in mind, but more and more it’s becoming clear that there’s a very real chance I may not get it, and if that’s the case then I have no idea what I’m going to do. It would be easier to deal with all this if I had a wife, but I don’t, and things in that area are just as murky as ever. I feel as if life after graduation will be a barren wilderness. Most of my handholds are fading into question marks, and I’m stuck grasping frantically for something to stop my fall, because it’s a long way down.
Saturday night was my mission reunion (we went one week earlier than normal because we did a session at the temple together, and couldn’t schedule the temple for this week), and I felt rather the same way: pretty soon I’ll have been home for three full years, which means that everyone’s moving on, all the people are newly returned and all of us old-timers have gotten jobs and relocated and most have families of their own. My mission is fading away into the past, still there in my memory but becoming less tangible and more fleeting with every passing day. I reach out to it but it slips out of my hand.
That’s how I feel. As for what I think, well, most of the time it’s the same, but I can also see that this is going to be one heck of a good opportunity to really trust the Lord, to put my “money” (so to speak) where my mouth is. Do I really believe that He’ll take care of me? It’s time to prove my faith. Granted, it’s not like life after graduation is as bad as I feel like it’s going to be — it’s just the beginning, really. And everything will turn out for the best. I may not be able to see the way, but that’s why I trust in a God who does.
And again, not everything is changing. I’ll still be in the same ward. I’ll still have the same friends (and hopefully many more), even though many of them will part ways for a time. (I hate that about the ends of things. Why do people have to move on, darn it all? I really can’t wait for the eternal reunions in heaven.) I’ll still have this blog. I’ll still be the same person, still have the same hobbies, still be doing much of the same thing.
I’m tempted to numb my apprehensions, to deaden the nerves so I don’t let these pangs of loss hurt me, but that doesn’t seem like the right way to go. I need to go through them. I need to miss them deeply, so that I appreciate what the Lord is doing for me. If I didn’t miss them deeply, I’d be shortchanging myself and, in a way, betraying their memory. These things do matter. We shouldn’t just cast them aside and move on. And yet we can’t keep dwelling on them either, lest we get stuck in the past and forget to live in the present and prepare for the future.
I want to freeze time, to keep things just the way they are. (Or at least the way they were toward the beginning of the semester when there wasn’t much homework. ;)) But that’s stagnation. Going on a journey means leaving things behind, because you can’t carry everything with you. But my hope and belief is that, in the end, all of the things that truly mattered will be there with me. It’s like at the end of The Last Battle in the Chronicles of Narnia, when they get to Aslan’s country and all of their old friends are there waiting for them. That’s the heaven I believe in, and it means more to me than almost anything. Further up and further in, then. Bring on the change. I will live deeply, even if it hurts, even though goodbyes will flank me at every turn, even if the road is dark at times and all I have are memories. “God has given us memory, that we may have roses in the Decembers of our lives.” (J.M. Barrie, slightly modified.)
