I'm listening to snow melt and drip down rain gutters on this quiet Sunday afternoon. Although I've been counting for most of the semester, I'm coming to the realization that in just 6 or 7 short weeks, these last demands of school will conclude and life will be different. Despite this continual onset of realization concerning the transition that stands before me, I am learning that perhaps I ought not set my heart and mind so firmly upon my own ideas about what life looks like beyond the short threshold.

It feels that these last few weeks have been heavy with change and heavy with the voice of the Spirit within my heart. My student teaching placements are set and the personal decisions accompanying these somewhat definitive arrangement are far from determined. The radius of possibilities is vast and so are the questions about where to plunk down in their midst. Places to live for free and places to live for a small fortune and choices about family and friends and aloneness and relationships that I do not yet have any hint of and yet know I will quickly be in need of. And then there is the whole matter of getting too far ahead of myself.

I've been thinking a lot about this time in my life, being 22, being surrounded by friends (of all sorts of ages) who feel lost in purpose. And although I have a somewhat clear path ahead of me, the generalities are the only real guides in my case. The world is still fairly open and I begin to wonder what sort of life there is to be pursued outside the constructs of university life. The 9-5 life that is kind in its stability but dangerous in its potential for stagnation.

I've been thinking a lot about who I used to be and I've caught myself reflecting on whether or not my value has increased or decreased in the process of the last four years. I've been attempting to write essays about a spiritual and personal life that feels as though it has been ravaged by the daily shift of personality change. I've gone from child to student to artist to painter to this thing they call pre-service teacher, all in the context of this square mile. And I've been shaped and formed by this institution, I've been molded towards this end and then wonder what to do when friends ask me not to be that person in the context of our relationship.

I feel like things were a lot more clear a few years ago. And now they are complicated and I'm different today than I was yesterday and I find myself longing for roots. I'm ready for the day when things become more clear in retrospect. I'm ready for the day when I don't see so much of a stranger when I look in the mirror upon awakening.

Personal change is a funny thing. One moment you feel like your normal self and then the next moment you are wondering where your old self went while admiring aspects of a new face. Some parts of you become unrecognizable, other parts in which you placed so much stock are buried or erased, and you see in yourself a developement of something else that is some sort of synthesis of it all. Or so you hope.

It is difficult not to hang on to who you were and what you had a few days ago. It is difficult when you realize that you don't think in exactly the same ways and sometimes it is sad when you realize that you've left some old part of yourself on the side of the road along the way. It is difficult navigating a new body, a new brain, a new heart, while also navigating realtionships and rush hour traffic.

So I've been thinking and praying a lot about taking things one day at a time. Stopping and asking the Father for directions for the self that I am today. It takes a lot of grace and trust when you inhabit a changing self. You hope and pray that someone else is in control of this spinning mess.