It’s 10:49 p.m. on August 20th, and I move back to Nashville in 13 hours, 8 minutes, and 55 seconds. I will decorate a dorm room for the last time, and on Monday, I will have my last first day of school (well, at least for undergrad).
Every word of that paragraph is so final, and even though finality can mean sorrow, tonight I only see Christ’s faithfulness.
Seven years ago, a bad health flare unsettled the future I’d imagined. I wanted to attend college, study English, and keep writing novels. Instead, I became so ill I missed over 30 days of school in the 8th grade and enrolled in an online high school. I kept writing even as college seemed unlikely. I could rely on my writer’s brain, which was always spinning stories from overheard conversations in grocery store lines or curious statues in the yards of even curiouser houses, even as my body betrayed me. I found such joy in the creative process until September of my freshman year. I lost the ability to understand the speech of others or read after a bad medication reaction, and when the words returned, they were different. It took at least thirty minutes to read a page of text, and my writer’s mind remained silent.
The Lord met me in the ashes of my old life. And slowly, new flowers began to grow.
I began college two years after the medication reaction. I see the Lord’s generosity in that line alone, but I realize what a miracle He granted me when I recall the full circumstances surrounding my first day of college. My organs had started shutting down in January, I was hospitalized from March 6 until June 9, and I started college in August. Also, I was only 16.
It wasn’t my plan; He was too kind to give me what I’d always imagined, to provide the flowers I’d always envisioned. The two years I pursued my associate’s degree were some of the sweetest, healthiest, most joyful years of my life despite PTSD from my hospitalization. Nothing erases that suffering, but if I hadn’t lost every semblance of a typical high school plan during those fourteen weeks, I would have never been brave enough to try something new. The Lord left me no choice but to be brave, and the bravery led to one of the greatest blessings of my life.
Four years after the medication reaction, I transferred to my current university and declared an English major. There have been many nights I’ve paced in empty classrooms as I read papers aloud to myself, repeating the same sentence over and over until the words clicked. I took a class last fall on autobiographies, and when we created metaphors for our lives, I said my mind was and is a garden. Two gardens for two brains, each with distinct blooms. The old flowers were beautiful and so plentiful you could get lost among the petals. I never struggled to traverse the garden paths—read—or find the flower—the word—I sought. The new blooms are slower growing, but the roots run deep. I used to compare these petals to the old ones, wishing they were taller or brighter, lamenting their unfamiliarity. Now I just hold each flower to my heart and praise its presence. Even during the worst study sessions, I can’t help but remember what a gift it is to be here. Each word is a blessing. Each moment is a miracle.
In seven years I have seen more destruction and creation than I’d have imagined possible, but all I can picture as I write these words is how the Lord held me through it all. He saved me when the garden died. He planted new seeds while I mourned what was lost. And I still find myself in awe of the fields we stand in now.
All I dreamed of still happened even if it took the most unexpected, and unexpectedly beautiful, path to get there. As it currently stands, I’ll graduate summa cum laude in December with a degree in English Writing. And I’ll end with a sweet yet nerve-racking sentence, friends. On Monday, I attend my first creative writing class in years.