What it feels like to be on the cusp of change . . . again

The end of summer is always bittersweet, but the reasons are a bit different this year. In the past, summer ending meant mourning the loss of endless Lake Michigan beach days, the end of camping season, no more trips to Silver Lake to play on the sand dunes, no more Saturday mornings at the farmers’ market.

Last year, I didn’t even notice the end of summer, because I was just plain incapable of doing so. I was a new mother, which meant new family dynamics, plenty of sleep deprivation, and a bit of postpartum depression as well. I had just relocated halfway across the country to a new state (and a new culture-within-the-culture). I was living in my sister-in-law’s basement, learning to work from the kitchen table instead of my office cubicle back in Michigan. Summer ended, and I barely noticed. I was just trying to get a grip on a new and drastically different season of living.

This year, though, I’m noticing summer’s end approaching, and it feels bittersweet in yet another way, because it means we’re already halfway through this unique time we’ve had of all being home together while E is in school full time. I can already see the end coming – he started an internship a few weeks ago, and is now getting dressed in a shirt and tie two days a week. In seven short months, he’ll be graduating and beginning the new career he’s working so hard to prepare for. L, who already spends time every day he’s gone going to the window to look for him, saying “Dada coming?” in her sweet little voice, will have to go through another major transition when he’s gone five days a week instead of two.

With the exception of the spring of 2008, when I quit my teaching career without a job to replace it, acting 100 percent in faith that God had something else waiting for me, I’ve almost always been able to see five steps ahead of myself, have had plans made for my immediate future, have known what’s coming. Now, things feel like they did then – wide open. Where will we be a year from now? What will we be doing? I honestly can’t say. All I know is God paved the way for us to be here, and he’s provided for us every step, so I’m sure he has a plan for our next season.

In a way, not knowing what God has planned is nice – like the night before Christmas, when there are already presents under the tree with your name on them. You can’t open them yet, but you know that there are good things inside and that soon, you’ll get to see what they are.