March

I missed an entire month.

I didn't miss experiences, but I missed writing about them and discovering hidden secrets through that process where all things are illuminated.

I'm sitting at the UL and I'm supposed to be studying like a good student for her upcoming Studio Lighting Midterm. But my thoughts keep taking me elsewhere...to the safety of my high school bubble and the baby-blue comfort of seeing the same crowd day after day. Even though I prefer the broader spectrum of shades and depths at college (can we say the real world, yet?), that part of me that is still a child longs for the olden days of black and white. Thinking critically (and I'm not talking about inside the classroom) is fatiguing and scary. The days of When. When I would skip class with Julie and Karah or lay in the grass after 4th period. When I had lacrosse practice and touring choir and piano lessons on Tuesday nights. It's a time of my life that is growing more foreign by the minute. So much of it was mechanical...but it made the memory-making so much sweet. The grass, the road-trips, the rainy tuesday evenings driving down Lindbergh Blvd. with Jules or Lydia listening to Iron & Wine or whatever band I had just discovered. And I love that life isn't as mechanical anymore, but I miss that the friend-times aren't as spontaneous.

Does growing up mean that you lose all spontaneity? Will I one day stop swinging at the elementary school playground? Will I stop taking a two-hour walk at midnight when I feel that tightness well up in my chest? Probably. It will be replaced with better things. Not stability and routine, but children and work and responsibility. I just hope that my relationships can always retain that youthful elasticity and vigor.

Right now I am lonely. I won't be tomorrow. I wasn't even lonely for most of the day. But I'm sitting here thinking about the good friends that I have made this year that are suddenly leaving. Emmanuel is going to Canada tonight to become a father. Laura and Melanie and Dave are graduating. Even those people that I'm not particularly close to but I just like being around..are not present. Tory is in Spain. Alex is in Cuba. But I mostly just miss Emmanuel, and if I wasn't so saturated with technical photography terms I would start to cry, ever so softly.

I know that God is faithful and that He's all I need. But that doesn't mean that I don't need people in my life. My ministry is to partake in the building up of the body of Christ. To discover the beauty of relationships and learn about mutual encouragement and friendship. I am adopted into one gigantic family that takes joy in what I talk about at the dinner table when we're feasting together. And even though people are leaving geographically and maybe even a bit socially, they are just as much my family and Christ is still just as much the Head, who makes sure that we care for one another. It makes me long for heaven...when we can all be together again without ANY barriers...physcial, geographical, psychological, emotional, mental, spiritual, racial, gender(al)?. When the world will be restored to the way it was created and the fullness of Christ will radiate through our entire beings. There's a glimpse of that now, and I pray that God can keep revealing his splendor and love to me so that I get "hot for him," as ben might say. Earth is one large pre-gaming session, and heaven is the real party.

I hope that I can become less self-reflective and more God-reflective. Or that the self-reflectiveness can forever point me into the latter.

This letter isn't really about March. Or is it?