When Life Changes Overnight

the heaviness of leaving a sacred season

Life is so funny sometimes.

Just a few days ago, I was walking across a graduation stage with my best friends, the same people I’ve been doing life with for the past four years, in front of a community that has poured into me in ways I could never fully express.

And then this morning, I woke up in my childhood bed in Seattle and walked upstairs to an empty house, my parents at work and my sisters at school, everyone continuing on with life as normal.

I don’t quite know how to process such drastic change.

It was different when we went home for breaks and knew we would always be coming back to Pepperdine soon.

Now, I don’t know the next time I’ll ever see my school again. And even if I do, I’ll be seeing Pepperdine the institution, not the place where the people who were there during my college years changed my life.

I guess this is what you would call a major life transition.

I’m moving on into full adulthood.

I’ll be starting my first real job this fall and beginning graduate school. I’ll be moving across the country to a place still mostly unfamiliar to me, far from where all my family and friends are. I’ll be beginning afresh in a new place and, in many ways, as a new person.

…a new person.

It’s kind of bittersweet and unsettling to imagine that the people I’ll meet from this point on will only know the version of myself that I have become.

In some ways, I think that’s awesome. I love the me that I’ve become much more than the me I used to be. I mean, that’s the beauty of growth, right? We grow for the better.

Yet, at the same time, I grieve the fact that those I meet now won’t automatically know the story of how I’ve gotten here. They won’t know the history, the people, the interactions, the moments, the events, the growth that has formed me and changed me.

They won’t know the me that my college friends know.

Something about that is incredibly sad to me.

And it makes me recognize the sacredness of having people I got to know and who got to know me during college.

My college friends have seen it all.

They’ve seen my stumbles as much as my victories. They’ve seen my weaknesses fully and vulnerably, and also witnessed me work through them and come out on the other side stronger. They’ve seen my moments of sorrow and my moments of great joy.

Not only that, many of them have walked through it all with me. We’ve grown and changed and seen and witnessed and loved together.

That’s a beautiful thing.

When I reunite with my college friends throughout the years, I’m sure it will always feel like reconnecting with family. With people who know you to a depth and extent that perhaps the people who come next might never fully understand.

How precious and bittersweet that is.

It’s hitting me now… the sadness of these goodbyes.

I’m sitting in the heaviness of it all.

And still…

I hold onto the words one of my college pastors always says:

the best is yet to be.

I really do believe that.

And so I move forward with the deepest gratitude for my college years,

as well as profound expectation and anticipation for all that God has in store.

Life is indeed a beautiful thing.

“See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?”
—Isaiah 43:19

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