Sparks

What a summer.

Ups and downs, sideways and backwards. The wheel never stops turning, and all those other artistic-y phrases that say something about how we humans keep trudging on through the days and weeks and years before we look back and realize where we've come from and how far there is still to go.

I'm going to try and get back into the habit of writing on here again. I do want a record of my life and thoughts -- they can be pretty revealing! For example, I just stumbled across my old livejournal that I wrote in when I was sixteen and stopped when I was eighteen. My thoughts were so different then, and my mannerisms are utterly changed. Dang, I was cute! All bubblings about clothes and hair and how grown up I was becoming. How did you guys stand in the face of my bubbliness? But I can still see me in the bubblings, which is a comfort. I certainly laid a lot more of myself out there in the open than I do now.

This has been the longest summer of my life, I believe. It's been fun and memorable for many reasons. Now I'm looking forward to my new life at Union University, which begins in nine days. It's so funny to be having a beginning when I'm technically at the end, namely, the end of my undergraduate years. When you graduate high school, you believe that that's the end of life to a degree. I don't mean death of anything, but you can't really see yourself ever getting older. That's still true. I look at myself and marvel at the fact that I'm moving out, even if it is only for a brief time. This is the beginning of true adulthood, not the sham independence that I've been experiencing.

I guess I'm still bubbling about clothes and hair and how grown up I'm becoming.

One of the greatest lessons of this summer has been about -- surprise, surprise -- the phoenix. I guess I forgot that the phoenix doesn't experience victory over death just once. It has to do it over and over again. Every time of darkness is a chance to learn about how the sparks will never truly die. Not really. As long as there is a Savior, as long as we know that Light that can pierce any darkness, then anyone can rise out of the ashes of their despair or troubles. Nothing that traumatic has happened to me, mind you. It's just something I've learned. Even when a way of life is ending, like mine is at Crichton and even here at home is, there is always a new beginning.

During this summer, I got to see a tornado first hand. I've caught up on Supernatural. I've been on my first date. I've learned about packing tape and moving trucks. I've gotten closer to my friends. I've learned that being strong for others never stops and that small Baptist churches still exist.

Let the learning continue.