Middleness

It's that time of year again. Time for lights and parties and sweaters and food, lots and lots of food. It's the time of year when you can walk into any coffee shop and see every chair, table, and spare corner occupied by students with haggard faces and books sprawled in front of them. It's the only time of year I do not miss being a student. The memories of cramming for finals and staying up until the words blurred on the computer screen as I tried to finish that last paper are still fresh. That familiar knot of anxiety is beginning to tangle even writing about it now. For those of you in these coffee shops now, I feel for you. And I envy you. You are days away from ending a semester. Next year you choose new classes, you have a fresh start. One thing I have had to come to terms with is that I am a starter. I love beginnings. New semesters, new projects, new jobs. I started to notice in college that I was a great motivator and ideas generator, but the struggle for me comes in the middle, in finishing. And that scares me. Beyond college, there are very few fresh starts. There are beginnings to be sure. New jobs, new cities, new relationships. But the freshness is what becomes hard to find. There are no clean slates. There is baggage. There is a past. There are mistakes that follow you no matter where you go. It's this middle place that is hard. If I can't start over then I have to just keep moving even though every part of me wants to drop it all here and try for that fresh start that doesn't exist. Life after college doesn't have semesters. There are seasons, to be sure, but the branches that are broken under winter's ice are still broken in spring. Enjoy this week, students. Enjoy the fresh start after holidays at home. Know that this season is a gift, and gifts of other kinds will find you after this one ends, but know that it will end. This isn't sad. Our broken branches and overlap of seasons past are what build a life. They are what give us a story worth telling. They are the layers of our humanity. I am sure that anyone with a few years more of moving through this middleness has come to realize this already. I'm working it through, pieces of adulthood falling into place, naivety slowly falling away as I resolve myself to keep moving and stop looking to start over.

November

A year later, November is just as I left her. She has waited patiently through cold, and rain, and heat, for the gentle decay of the calendar until she could arrive once again. She came with familiar question, "Is this who you want to be?" And she came with hard decisions. This year when she came, I was in a different place, but it was the same place. November drove me to my knees once again, in thanksgiving and grief and relief. Yet on this hard ground I feel November's heart beating, as if to remind me that with her brokenness comes her grace. November has been my test, my gift, my salvation. Though she comes in cold and barren and with signs of death, she leaves a warmth and hope that keep my soul from abandon. Oh November, you are just as I left you, but I am not as you left me. I'm finding it in myself.