T-minus five weeks and I will be graduated from college. With shaking knees and trembling hands, I am tiptoeing up to the edge of adult life and peeking over it. It's a long drop! Not only that, but there are so many things waiting at the bottom: taxes, bills, full-time work responsibilities, numbers numbers numbers... For my whole existence, numbers have been something I've tolerated for the sake of the better things, but I can't run any more. I have to make peace with the piling, peevish numerals of being a grown-up. Also at the bottom of the cliff I see: adventure, freedom, delirious uncertainty, and the tools with which I may forge my own story-path. I think I'm ready to jump. I know the truth is that I'll never know until I dive off, head-first, into this next chapter of my life. It's terrifying. For the first time since I was five years old, I don't know what is going to happen come August. I don't even know what June holds in her ardent, eager hands for me. It's a fluidity that I have always craved in the depths of myself, but now that I have to face the reality of my shaky, colt-legged plans I want to shrink back. No! Suz, you've got this! I think to myself, more certain of my own voice than ever before. I can do anything and go anywhere, but that doesn't mean I HAVE to do everything and go everywhere... "Just do the thing in front of you, Susanna," advised a wise and dear mentor of mine.
I've been writing a great deal of poetry lately (to challenge myself and improve my skills), and in my poems there is an undercurrent of longing and lostness. I see the lives of people around me and my own life, filled with the temptation of self-doubt and the fear of becoming one of "those people" who doesn't belong anywhere anymore. I feel my identity becoming more weighty and stronger, and I begin to flex my long-neglected confidence muscles. But I am so afraid. The fear is threatening to squelch my joy of accomplishment and hope for an exciting and meaningful future. I regularly find myself being envious of the people who seem to know where they are going. They are walking "confidently in the direction of their dreams." I am stepping defiantly towards the unknown, hoping for the best and wanting desperately to become someone extraordinary. I don't mean extraordinary as the kind of person whose name echoes down eternal halls of fame, but the kind of person whose unidentifiable fingerprints are left all over everyone I touch. I want to always be kind. I want to love more passionately than I am able. I want to pour myself out so that I am always being refilled, reshaped and made better. I want to have adventures, but not just the kind that everyone thinks of. I want to become a traveler of people as well as geographical places... I want to know and treasure individuals. I want to become acquainted with cultures drastically different from mine and find what's beautiful about them. There is so much to learn, and I can't even begin to list all the things I want to see and do and say, but then I step back and look at myself honestly... How can I, Susanna, do all those things? I watch myself fall into laziness. I see my tendencies to spew my frustration on the people who love me most. I see the black, filthy snares of my selfishness that beckon me into their arms. I witness my frequent surrender to fear, and I shake my head. I can never be the person I want to be. I am in the way of my own dreams. I am my biggest obstacle.
Then, I stop for a moment. I take a breath, and look up. There are windows high up near the ceiling, and through them I gaze at the endless, azure notion of sky. If I am really my biggest obstacle, then it's not a very big one. I am intimately familiar with a Father who is known by many. He is a Father who crafted me carefully, tenderly, and with more love than I can conceive. I may be a sizable obstacle for myself, but not for him. He knows my path and he knows what I want. I am made to crave what he craves, and pursue the way he pursues. I call him.. "Abba... Help please." He knows, and smiles at me. He's wayyyyy ahead of me already. He knew I would ask for help today. He knew what I would be needing in this very moment. In the end, as long as he knows, everything will be fine. He has never promised me a life of ease or wealth, but he has promised that he is always there. He promises me that I am known. He promises me that he is not surprised by my success nor my failure. And, for now, that is enough. I will become his little bird, and dive off the edge. I trust that his warm and holy winds will catch me and carry precisely where I need to go.
