Summers tend to linger in Southern State. Labor Day passes and September with it, Columbus Day and most of October, and then some time around Halloween we get around to realizing that it shouldn't be 90 degrees anymore. With the hot skies and lazy breezes lingering so long, it can often be easy to think that time might have stopped, that the bright sun cresting the clouds won't ever change.
But Fall came early this year.
It seemed to sneak in right around the first week of September, creeping up on us with chilly evenings and days that were just a whisper too short. Summer is usually a moment that stretches out towards eternity. This time around, though, no one can doubt that something new is coming on the crisp winds.
I made my therapist cry last week. I didn't do it on purpose, nor did I provoke her tears with harsh words; I just told her, in a matter-of-fact way, about my life. Who knew it was so interesting?
"You have to know that people care about you," she said. "That I care about you. You have so much to offer. And you would be such a waste."
That's the down side to the juncture at which I currently find myself. But it's only one potential aspect, one face of the many-hued ruby now flipping through the air. For I truly am at an intersection of possibilities--a crossroads of the most dramatic kind. What comes next could be horrific. But it could also be great. And I have to believe in that greatness, as the hope of it is one the only things I have left.
In a fitting development, the members of Our Family will soon leave this awful yellow house; my parents successfully purchased the home they'd had their sights on, and we will all be moving from here some time in the middle of next month. Where exactly I wind up going will heavily depend on the events of the next few weeks, which also promise to have an outsized impact on my life in general.
I know that many of you aren't believers, and for that reason I have often opted not to discuss my faith on this site. But you should know, in the interest of knowing me, that through all the peaks and valleys of the last five years my conviction in God has never been fully beaten out of me. I've come close a couple of times, sure--but in the real defining moments that stubborn belief has flared without fail. This moment being what it is, I've spent an awful lot of time praying lately.
I just hope He listens--and I hope He shows some kind of mercy.
