Metaphysics

A year ago, I stuffed my things into my car, drove two hours south and unpacked my life at a college I didn't want to go to. I wanted to live in Colorado, not Western Kentucky. I wanted to go somewhere far and extraordinary, not the college that seemed like everyone's second choice.

It's been a whole year now.

Where do I begin?

I'm nineteen years old and I've made my home in Bowling Green, KY and I am having the actual time of my life and I want to stay here forever. I think that about sums it up.

I get emotional talking about how much has changed. My fall semester at WKU was such a difficult transition in my life. Mostly I was just sad. I had just gotten back from months of living in South Asia, witnessing Jesus transform the nations and feeling like I could never be my old self again. Then I was thrown into secular culture and I couldn't find the line between legalistic oppression and worldly submission. So I settled into apathy.

My fall semester, I tried to stay busy. I joined a sorority and met new people and worked out and studied a lot. I wanted to stay in touch with some high school friends but we were all living such different lives by that point, and the distance between us felt much further than it actually was. The truth is, I thought about transferring colleges after my fall semester. I felt disappointed by WKU and frustrated with friends and crippled by anxiety and stress. After almost a whole year of jumping from place to place, I was afraid to settle down for four whole years.

But spring semester? I don't even know how my discontentment turned into pure happiness and fulfillment and gratitude. I can't even pinpoint what changed.

Spring semester was full of formals and cookout runs and sitting in sonic parking lots. It was camping on the top of PS1 on a Monday night and creek floats when we should've been studying for finals and sitting on the Fiji roof talking about nothing and everything. Hammocking under cherry blossom trees and castle parties and jumping off the swings at Hospital Hill and losing at chess and outdoor worship services and vegan pizza and spring thunderstorms and loving so deeply I could only fit the words into a poem. Concerts in Nashville and painting fields of wildflowers and changing my political party affiliation to 'Independent' and strawberry acai refreshers and ripping up my 5-year plan and jumping into the backseat with no real destination in mind. Movie nights and trust falls and discovering Jesus in a new way and rock climbing and crying because change is both terrifying and beautiful and Honors College "study" sessions and Cards Against Humanity and sneaking in waterfall swims right before my Microbiology class and driving down Chestnut St. with the windows down and laughing until our ribs were sore and and a whole lot of Spencer's Coffee. And those gosh dang Bowling Green sunsets.

I think I stayed up till 4am every single night during the month of April. There was just too much life to fit in.

There is something deep in me that knows that I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be. I've never felt this kind of peace or satisfaction before.

I wish time would just slow down, because I'm so painstakingly aware that these are some of the best moments of my life and I feel them falling through my fingers like sand. So I hold them tightly and try to pack them in as close as I can. I don't want to forget how I feel during these moments... they are worth everything.

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How I'm Changing and How it Feels:

I'm home for the summer now.

I'm driving down my hometown roads and walking into my church and there's a familiarity in the air that feels like nostalgia, but more final.

I find myself tangled in space and time, and all this emotion rushes in, and I don't know how to feel it all at once. So I lay in the cold grass under the stars and I close my eyes and and I let the weight of glory take me. I'm changing and it feels so necessary and beautiful and satisfying all at the same time.

I'm thinking about how lonely and difficult last year was, and how this year has already been so much kinder to me.

It's a confusing dichotomy where nothing has really changed and yet everything is different. I think life is like that sometimes.

I overthink a lot and I try to put words in places that they don't fit, but tonight is simple: I am grateful for a gracious God, a full life, and things turning out better than I ever could've dreamed for.

There is beauty in the way of things.

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