To Gratefully Belong
As life vastly approaches and my time as a college student nears the end, I am brought to a corner of gratitude and yearning. Gratitude and yearning: a complicated and messy union.
I am grateful for the friendships, memories, professors, churches, adventures, lectures, hardships, mistakes, and accomplishments that my college years have graciously given me in a brisk four years. All of which have fostered the young woman I find myself to be. I am grateful for the immense changes college challenged me with - because with that change, I grew. With that change, my world grew.
Along with my gratefulness, I yearn for more. I understand that college is a very specific time in one's life. Where you are still in between childhood and adulthood. You have a bedroom at your parents while you have your own apartment. "You don't have your life together? That's fine, no one really expects you too... yet." I understand that my future years will be nothing like my college ones. And with that understanding, I yearn for more time. For more memories, more change, more youth.
Yearning and gratitude. Is it possible to truly experience both simultaneously? If you're truly grateful, what is there to yearn, to desire, to want? Shouldn't it be enough? And if you're truly yearning, how could you truly be grateful for the present circumstance?
A friend of mine and I frequently take drives outside of Manhattan to stargaze and have "heart-to-hearts" throughout the school week. I am grateful for her friendship and this ritual we have built together. Whenever I go home for break, I will occasionally go on a late-night country drive by myself to stargaze. There are never as many stars at home.
But I know more exist.
Although my late-night country drives at home are as never bright as the ones in Manhattan, they are sufficient. They are sufficient because I know the stars I see are infinitely outnumbered by the ones I don't - and that thought in itself is enough to be grateful for.
What I have come to learn is to be grateful while accepting the inevitable human nature of yearning. If one were to wait for desire to subside in order to truly be grateful - one would never be grateful. As humans, it is weaved in our being, in our nature, to desire. But despite this sinful nature of desire, we are given the gift to be grateful.
And although I believe on this side of heaven it is impossible to extinguish our desire (because desire in itself is our sinful nature), I do believe the ability to be grateful, despite the circumstances, forbids our sinful nature of yearning to dictate how we perceive life and discover joy.
When we are able to be grateful for the stars we do see, rather than yearn for the ones we don't - yearning subsides and gratefulness rules.
I pray that as I make the transition from college to adulthood, I am able to be grateful no matter my circumstance. I pray I will be able to live out gratefulness. I pray for the ability to believe full heartedly and live out courageously that despite my circumstance - I belong to God. Despite my living situation - I belong to God. Despite my finances - I belong to God. Despite my worry - I belong to God.
I am grateful for the friendships, memories, professors, churches, adventures, lectures, hardships, mistakes, and accomplishments that my college years have graciously given me in a brisk four years. All of which have fostered the young woman I find myself to be. I am grateful for the immense changes college challenged me with - because with that change, I grew. With that change, my world grew.
Along with my gratefulness, I yearn for more. I understand that college is a very specific time in one's life. Where you are still in between childhood and adulthood. You have a bedroom at your parents while you have your own apartment. "You don't have your life together? That's fine, no one really expects you too... yet." I understand that my future years will be nothing like my college ones. And with that understanding, I yearn for more time. For more memories, more change, more youth.
Yearning and gratitude. Is it possible to truly experience both simultaneously? If you're truly grateful, what is there to yearn, to desire, to want? Shouldn't it be enough? And if you're truly yearning, how could you truly be grateful for the present circumstance?
A friend of mine and I frequently take drives outside of Manhattan to stargaze and have "heart-to-hearts" throughout the school week. I am grateful for her friendship and this ritual we have built together. Whenever I go home for break, I will occasionally go on a late-night country drive by myself to stargaze. There are never as many stars at home.
But I know more exist.
Although my late-night country drives at home are as never bright as the ones in Manhattan, they are sufficient. They are sufficient because I know the stars I see are infinitely outnumbered by the ones I don't - and that thought in itself is enough to be grateful for.
What I have come to learn is to be grateful while accepting the inevitable human nature of yearning. If one were to wait for desire to subside in order to truly be grateful - one would never be grateful. As humans, it is weaved in our being, in our nature, to desire. But despite this sinful nature of desire, we are given the gift to be grateful.
And although I believe on this side of heaven it is impossible to extinguish our desire (because desire in itself is our sinful nature), I do believe the ability to be grateful, despite the circumstances, forbids our sinful nature of yearning to dictate how we perceive life and discover joy.
When we are able to be grateful for the stars we do see, rather than yearn for the ones we don't - yearning subsides and gratefulness rules.
I pray that as I make the transition from college to adulthood, I am able to be grateful no matter my circumstance. I pray I will be able to live out gratefulness. I pray for the ability to believe full heartedly and live out courageously that despite my circumstance - I belong to God. Despite my living situation - I belong to God. Despite my finances - I belong to God. Despite my worry - I belong to God.
Despite how many stars are made visible - I belong to God.
Despite my yearning - I belong to God.
And for that I am grateful.
Nicely written, again. And the article flowed. And your heart was revealed. And God is praised. May I respond theologically? Desire in itself is not sinful (or else you would be more Buddhist). Desire I think is part of the image of God creativity he has placed in us. Desire can certainly become sinful and self-centered, etc. But in and of itself, it is not sinful. In fact, It points to something "other." It was this object of desire that so intrigued the atheist CS Lewis that he concluded that we must be made for "something else," or else we would not have the desire/longing/sehnsucht. He likened this longing to us being mortal creatures who were made for immortality. We are not after all, as fish who have no desire for the world beyond the water.
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