A New Street

When I started this blog, I noted that in some ways it was a chronicle of my journey into the "real world," as far as I understood that at the time.  The first entry was over a year ago now, written the day after I turned in my last paper and shut the door on college.  The journey continues to be a long and strange one, and although I'm still not sure I know what the real world is, I believe I'm taking the next step towards it.  Tomorrow begins the one year lease of my first apartment, my first time out from under my parents' roof.

I have lived in this house where I sit right now for 19 1/2 years, which is a pretty high percentage of a life of only 23 1/2.  There are memories in every corner of it; in some ways it will always be home.  It's time, though, and it's been time for a while now, for me to move on.  I think it will be a spiritual change just as much if not more than a physical one.

It's funny, because for a long time I've thought of autumn as a time of new beginnings.  I know everything is dying and falling and such, but it seems to me that new things are always beginning in this time.  Maybe it's just that every school year offers the elusive possibility of a fresh start, but even now that I don't have that on my plate, things still feel new around the fall.

I have no idea what God wants to do in me in this season, but I want all of it.  He's giving me a new road to walk down, and I don't want to miss any of it by taking unnecessary detours.  I love my parents, and I'm blessed to know that I'll always have a place to return to if I need it.  But for now, God is sending me to be a light on a new street.  I look forward to writing again from there!  For now, I'll end with a poem I wrote a long, long time ago that somehow feels very fresh and new to me right now.  Things always cycle like that, I'm finding.  Out of death comes new life; out of old things, new things are born.  And fall doesn't really begin until you drink apple cider around a fire :)

Deeper



Floating in the same wind that brings
impending autumn, surrender
and freedom awaken together.
With hayrides and first
days of school
comes the dream that this fall
could be different,
the restless replaced
by anticipation,
a promise beating back
the patterns circling
viciously around—
a fall deeper, into one
transcending the changing seasons,
more faithful than the turning
leaves, who bears me in
their opposite direction,
resting in pursuit
and drinking apple cider
by the fire.