For weeks, my senses have been alerted to the coming change
of seasons. A chill in the morning air. A gentle crunch underfoot. The
squeaking brakes of a school bus slowing at the speed bump in front of my
house. All these things tell me that fall is here.
And with it comes a change in my heart. I’m really here this
year. I’m really not leaving any time soon. I can really settle into rhythms
here in this place, enjoying the season and all it brings as a resident, rather
than a visitor.
Relationships that have been defined by sporadic “catching
up” can take on a whole new character. We can go deeper places. We can enjoy
spontaneity. We can grow into one another and develop patterns that
are comforting and lovely. We can create
memories together, instead of only sharing them as stories.
Before I went to China, relationships were one of my deepest
hopes and greatest fears. I wanted so badly to have depth and real connection
with my teammates and students. I had hope that the Lord would provide, but my
hopes far underestimated the good plans God had in store. I had no idea the
greatness of the blessings that awaited me in the women of my team (and the
guys, too) as well as in my students and other teachers. Those relationships
continue to bless me abundantly.
Coming home, I had expectations that things would look the
way they have for the last five years: Sporadic and a little distant. I
expected to be isolated. I expected for things not to measure up to my year in
China or my time in Memphis. They couldn’t. The past few weeks, my expectations
proved to be self-fulfilling prophecies. …Until yesterday.
I finally gave in to my growing desperation for real
relationship. I asked a girl I don’t know to have coffee with me later this
week; I made plans to join a new friend from church at a weekly gathering of
CSU’s international students; and I finally called my best friend from
elementary school and junior high after five weeks of intending to do so.
She and I drifted apart in high school, and our relationship
has been sporadic – at best – since 2006. But last summer I had the honor of
attending her wedding to a man I know she truly loves, and today we started a
new chapter of our friendship, kicking it off with lunch, a walk downtown, and
an hour in a coffee shop. The afternoon was filled with wonderful conversation - full of depth, good questions, and genuine care. I couldn’t ask for more.
There are many
questions to which I still have no answers for this coming season, and I know
many challenges lie ahead.
But the lightness of my heart tells me that I am finally
free to hope.
