Here I sit, final finals of my undergrad career. My papers are as finished as they ever will be and submitted; I have crammed the greatest amount of information into my brain as possible before today’s finals. Kids are taken care of by Daddy and tonight is the variety show where the middle kiddo will be performing.

Today I will write for four hours. Tomorrow I will have no pending assignments – for the first time in 2 years.

Friday I graduate.

And Life goes on.

I know people graduate all the time, but this feels huge for me – bigger than I believed it would. I have a tendency to downplay momentous events and I keep attempting to minimize how I feel about this, but maybe it is exciting and important.

Another life event that just moves me forward to the next things.

I don’t have much to say today, just that I’m thankful to be here.  Thankful for the support I’ve had from friends and family.  From my husband and my k ids. Thankful for the direction that my life has taken and the path I’ve trudged to get here.  Thinking back on all of the life lived between my graduation from High School and my graduating College is just kind of amazing.

What have I done?

Married my best friend

Gave birth too and continuing laboring through the lives of my 3 children

Attended a slew of classes, some of which I felt were unnecessary to achieving my goal, but I’ve come to appreciate the influence that each class and teacher has had on my life.

I have owned a business

I have learned how to pray and to listen

I have learned that each struggle has a lesson; and I have likewise learned that I will not always like that lesson, think it pertinent to my well being or feel that it has made me stronger, I will often feel that the struggle has instead broken me down – but it’s the breaking down that helps me to recognize my humanity and the reality that each one of us struggles, and breaks and keeps going if we can.  The way we choose to keep going is the only real control we can exert over our ability to overcome these moments.

I have made and remade wonderful friends who sometimes understand me better than I understand myself.

I have a professor this semester who challenged the class not only to do well because it is what you should do to get through college – he actually actively encouraged people to choose a different life path if they were in college just for the certificate – but he challenged us to reflect on our life, our interactions with other people, and whether our life as we practice it and our projected purpose overlap.

I am thankful that for me, I think, they do.  I have learned many interesting things in my college career, including many things which will help me become the fantastic English Teacher I aspire to be, however, in the past 12 years I have learned how to better be aware of how my life effects other people and though I know I still fail constantly, I hope that I will be able to reflect and return the love and support my friends and family and teachers have shown me, back to them….

The same professor mused once on prayer and on love – in similar fashion, so I’m paraphrasing.  He reminded us to treat love like a gift with the awareness that when we give a gift, we do not stand waiting to have a gift given in return, but that we give gifts with the intention of honoring someone else.  Likewise with prayer, he challenged and reminded us to remember that God knows what we need – so don’t ask for things.  In praying, recognize that we are gifting our love through prayerfulness by giving time – which was given to us by God – back to God – a gift.

There are many more thoughts I have to write, and I’m not even sure if the ones I’ve listed make sense, but I guess I’ll leave with this –

I wrote a while back about inspiration and thoughts keep coming back to me about that.  One thing that has been circulating constantly is this:

Inspiration can be defined as a breathing in and we’ve been discussing in the Faith Takes Practice series at our church how the Holy Spirit is the “breath of God” breathing over us….In my practicing being inspired, I’ve been constantly reminded that the inspiration is a mirror reflection: Gods breathing out and our breathing in, and as I move forward from Graduation(and really every other ordinary day), into the abyss of whatever comes next I will continue to attempt to remind myself of this.

Hold me accountable?  Let’s keep breathing together.