Saturday morning when I graduated from Liberty University along with the 17,500 other people in my class of 2015, I was in Elmira picking up trash and trying to not look like a criminal while doing so. The sky was clear, the air warm, and my cutoff t-shirt and sneakers were a lot more comfortable than regalia. And I was with friends. We were helping out with a community wide project to clean up the city a bit for spring.
When I got home, I hid in the kitchen and sent Misha to our room to grab my swimsuit, notebook, Toms, and headphones. I did not want to have to walk through the living room and face a certain authority figure in my life who is waiting for me to make a decision about the future. I just wanted to get to the lake.
As soon as Misha got back from the reconnaissance mission, I stuffed everything in a grocery bag and drove up to the lake. It was freezing, so I only went in for 1 minute. But that is 45 seconds longer than when I went in last time, a month ago. I don't think the water was any warmer—it still took my breath away the moment I went under—but my sisters were watching so I wanted to impress them.
The rest of the afternoon I just laid on a beach towel and ate watermelon and thought about the 4 year degree that I had crammed into...5 years. All well. Time loses meaning when you meet people who inspire you.
(It's colder again now, and under armor on top of a sunburn is not a good combination, but such is life when the seasons change.)
I didn't find time to watch the graduation ceremony on YouTube until a couple days later. I popped open a 4 euro bottle of cab franc I'd brought home from Italy and had been saving for a celebration. That and some baci chocolate, and the feeling of satisfaction finally started to kindle a little. Former Gov. Jeb Bush gave the commencement address and he was light-hearted. I almost wish I had been there for real, but not quite. Being part of a family and a community, swimming in a lake and drinking wine made from grapes that grew in the same soil that I was blessed to call home for 6 months, is more real to me than a university campus. Some days I'm not sure I'm okay with that, but it's only the days I'm feeling entitled or am comparing my life to others. So really, it's all okay.
We're all unique. The pursuit of happiness, the pursuit of meaning, will look different for all of us, and will be dictated by different forces. We have to make tough choices, sometime change the object of our happiness, and work creatively to channel unwanted forces in the desired direction.
Yeah wow. Now I'm sounding like Depak Chopra. In other words, pleasant and socially acceptable, but (accordingly) insurmountably vague. (Essentially disgusting.)
Jesus was not vague. He is clear about what it takes to follow Him. Admittedly, "take up your cross" and "live life abundantly in me" can seem vague and contradictory to some of us millennials, or to anyone anytime in the post-Roman world, and they can be hard to apply to daily life. The number of "how to discern the will of God for your life" books is testament to that. But you can't dance around the Father's moral will. And when you make it a point to pursue Him by understanding what the Cross is, and what it entails—following His commands (grace is my favorite word and the biggest gun in the armory, but sometimes you've got to use the "rules" word)—suddenly the path narrows.
We're still unique—more so than ever. We will go different places in life. But if you believe, wherever your path takes you, that path will be narrow. My path is narrow.
...Limited in breadth, yes, but not limited in height. Look up. The sky is vast and blue and gorgeous. And sinner? you are free.
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