Something Like a Summary:

How do you put a year into words? How do you take the pieces of it and stitch them, as you would scraps of fabric for a quilt, into a unified whole? How can I tell you about the year that was the best, and worst in my life, when there's so much to say- when all the darkest and brightest things are too precious, or too tawdry for me to give to you? I don't know. I've been trying for a while now to think of something like a summary. Something that would tell you enough to be worth saying, without saying too much. And it comes down to this: I can summarize my year quite well. This is all that's worth keeping from the twelve months that have elapsed since I graduated from high-school last May:

God is sufficient.
God is merciful.
God is powerful.
God is glorious!

Now, I realize that's a pretty generic summary, and although it's all you really need to know about my life up until this point, there are all sorts of things you DON'T need to know that I rather feel compelled to share with you.

I had my last final today, began packing to move out of the dorms, and spent some time with friends I won't be seeing much of this summer. Have you ever had days that, from just looking at the bare details of events, you know should have been good, and yet they were... not? This was one of them. The only truly lovely thing I can remember is walking through the chill of grey morning and listening to a robin calling in a cataclysm of sweetness. How can such a small song slice the air so?

The rest was deeply tinged with bittersweetness. I suppose, if I had to give today a name, I would call it 'wistful'. I dread the endings of things, and to have such a great season of life ended is disconcerting. Foolish as it sounds, there's a deep ache in it. I seem to be putting the semester's labor, and ideals, and dreams away into boxes in more senses than one.

So what is it, like, this packing? Well, first, the walls are stripped- photographs of family and friends, missionary prayer cards, poems and Bible verses on sticky notes- all are pressed between the back pages of my scrapbook, now, along with the memories that overwhelm me when I look at them.
The 'covenant stones' come down too- the once rain-drenched leaf that I placed on the Altar one black night, and its song:
'O Lord, I wish Thy way.
And when in me myself shall rise
And wish for something otherwise
Bring sword, and slay!' -Carmichael

The other, small leaf, white as bone that I found nestled in the lush new grass, reminding me of Aline Kilmer's poem. It has a story too:
'The grass withereth, the flower fadeth, but the word of our God shall stand forever!'

The locket, which opens upon the stern question: 'At what point is Jesus Christ not worth it?'

The slender red twig, plucked from a hedge on a rainy day when I stumbled through the field in a haze of confusion:"As for God, His way is perfect... And if His way be perfect, we need no explanation."-Carmichael

The great, cruel thorn, broken from a locust branch: "All Christ's life was a cross and a martyrdom; and thou seekest for thyself rest and joy?"- The Imitation

All of these nestle now in the bottom compartment of my jewelry box, along with other mysterious treasures. As I pull off the last of my pictures and trinkets, I feel the friendly walls receding into blank, inscrutable whiteness. The ceiling rises silently away from me as the room grows in emptiness. In my heart lurks a feeling that is almost grief.

Next, heroically, I attack the bookshelf. Now, you must understand- I am an unashamed bibliophile! I came to college with a loooot of books! Due to a random combination of gifts, text-book hoarding, and used book sales, I now have even more books- many of them large and heavy. So this book packing is still a bit tricky. Especially since I keep stopping to read them, trying to decide what to leave at home, and what to bring back with me next fall...

That is where things stand at the moment. I will have to finish the job tomorrow.
But I have to finish this summary tonight. After tomorrow, I will never again walk down the hall to Leaverton 2018 C. I will not sleep- or lie awake puzzling over life- on that hard, slippery blue mattress with its striped sheets. I will not sit typing at this desk. I will not sing in that shower. I will be gone so completely that I might as well have never come. And when I think of this- that tomorrow I will walk out of this room for the last time, a flood of detail sweeps over me, and the tears are springing to my eyes again. Not so much for the room, but for the life I lived in it. For the friends who've come and gone here- the things I've learned here- the lessons burned on my heart here. When I leave tomorrow, my last physical connection to all of these things will be gone forever. Something- I hardly know how to say what- will have ended, and vanished into memory, or, perhaps, forgetfulness.

On Monday, during the storm, I was sitting cross-legged on the bed with my notebook, trying to explain my feelings about the semester's close. This is what I wrote:

"I see the wind-tossed maple tree just outside my window- its leaves bunched like wet, green ruffles, fluttering with a wild and frantic charm. And all that great expanse of sodden grass, stretching away into a dark wall of trees. Rain falling from the grey sky to lash against the grey road. A pooling of glimmering, cloud-reflecting droplets on the pane. These are the things that bound my world today. I dare not think beyond them- the helter-skelter of the bookshelf, Shakespeare leaning in drunken cameraderie on George Bernard Shaw- 'Jane Eayre' jockeying primly against Maugham's 'Complete Short Stories' for space. The crazy, childish colors in the quilt Aunt Caroline sewed. Papers strewn everywhere. Lightning flashing from time to time on the prisoning walls. Thunder rumbling, like a crescendo of percussion, in time with Ralph Vaughan Williams' 'Folk Song Suite for Millitary Band'. Here is the last safe, famliar place in the world, and I am leaving it forever in two days. For what? For a farther venturing into yet another unkown? On Wednesday begins the mad transition from one reality into another. If only life had some halting places! Spots like stepping stones, on which one could pause and consider the next jump. But it doesn't work that way, and still the stately, mysterious procession of Circumstance continues its intricate dance.
So what can be said about this year? There were days of miraculous strengthening- days when I felt too ill and tired to walk across the room, and yet was able to walk all over campus- days when my heart was trampled to pieces- when I was torn in half by my own uncertainties- when I was drained dry and wrung empty by the world's hunger, and yet, somehow, when God opened the opportunities for sharing, He gave me what I needed to give as well. I learned things- both in and out of the classroom. I caught glimpses of a Love so burningly exalted above mine that I could only fall to my knees before it.

There were those special, piercingly sweet moments- the week I was sunk into discouragement and self-reproach because people kept on talking about what a 'good person' I was, and how 'moral' I was, with never a word of Christ, the consuming passion. I was convinced I must have failed utterly as a missionary, that whatever I was doing had only drawn attention to my own efforts rather than God's power, and was depressed and broken to tears over it for days, pleading for transformation; then a girl, not a believer, but a seeker, came to me needing encouragement and a hug, and after we'd prayed together, and cried a bit together, she put her hand on my arm and looked me in the eye and said: "You are the only genuine Christian I have ever met in my life. I don't know if what you believe is true or not, but you live it- and you don't just do good things, either, I SEE your God in you. I SEE Him in your face. I see you doing things that you could not possibly do on your own. You have wisdom that none of the psychologists and specialists they took me to knew about. You have been loving in a way no person could be, and I know that your God is powerful in your life, and truly your Lord."
I was dazed. I knew, all too well, that what she said was not true. There was so much sin in me of which she was unaware- so much pride creeping into my efforts. There had even been frustration and lovelessness toward HER that God had been rooting out of my heart. But I WANTED to be the person she described- and moreover, my agonizing doubts about my ability to be light in darkness, and plead the cause of Christ rather than my own merit suddenly fell away. It didn't matter how weak and clumsy I was- she had seen Christ in me! Surely He could show Himself through me to anyone else as well! That was one of the glory days.
Another came when, as, under a great deal of stress and discouragement, I was feeling that I didn't 'fit in anywhere', that there was no ministry or work that I was really 'suited' for, and I wished desperately that God would show me what I was able to do, not even daring to ask Him for the explanation of it all- and then, my TESL professor took me aside and said, "You were created to teach children. It's in your blood to teach children. God gave you an instinctive gift for teaching that I have encountered very rarely. Don't give up!" It answered so few of my questions, and yet, it was just the thing I needed to hear in order to get through the disappointments of that week.
I could talk for hours about God's faithfulness this year, about the things He is teaching me. There were days when it seemed His training was too harsh- even days when I resented it. But, seeing the year in review, I am overwhelmed with gratitude for the humbling, for the heartbreaking, for the cutting away of the human supports I leaned on, and of my own self-sufficiency. At the beginning of my first semester, a friend sent me an article about Samueul Rutherford. Here is what Rutherford wrote while imprisoned for his beliefs:
"If God had told me some time ago that He was about to make me as happy as I could be in this world, and then tell me that He should begin by crippling me in all my limbs, and removing me from all my usual sources of enjoyment, I should have thought it a very strange mode of accomplishing His purpose. And yet, how is His wisdom manifest even in this! For if you should see a man shut up in a closed room, idolizing a set of lamps and rejoicing in their light, and you wish to make him truly happy, you would begin by blowing out all his lamps; and them throw open the shutters and let in the light of heaven."
After reading that, I went out into the field and prayed, "Lord, blow out all my lamps!"
I didn't know what I was asking. I don't know if I could have had the courage to ask such a thing if I had. I don't know, even now, if I have the courage to continue on with it- this grinding process of lamp-extinguishing, and I have only tasted the edges of an answer; God is very merciful in His dealings with my weakness. But I will close my freshman year with the prayer that began it: "Lord, blow out all my lamps! I would see Thee in all Thy radiance!"
This drab dorm room- my haven against storms and attacks for the past eight or nine months is the lamp which will go dark on Wednesday. A new set of roots are being torn up.
Yet I finally realize, marvelling, that it is a place more soaked in prayer than tears. That my memories of this once faceless room- returning on Wednesday to facelessness- are more of unimagined glory than of unimagined pain. And I know too, in this brief flash of perception, that there could not have BEEN the glory without the pain, the prayer without the tears, the victory without the breaking. It is finished, and He was sufficient! And I? What can I be but thankful for His chastening love? So let the years come!"

The Undiscovered Country:
'Lord, for the erring thought
Not unto evil wrought:
Lord for the wicked will
Betrayed and baffled still:
For the heart from itself kept,
Our thanksgiving accept.
For ignorant hopes that were
Broken to our blind prayer:
For pain, death, sorrow sent
Unto our chastisement:
For all loss of seeming good,
Quicken our gratitude.' -William Dean Howells