blank pages. //

almost exactly a year ago, I sat down and composed a post about finishing freshman year. I remember it like it was yesterday--sitting down with this same laptop, compiling my thoughts and concerns and excitement. I couldn't believe I had been at NSA for a whole school year.

and now, just like that, press fast forward and watch the days whir past and it's been another freaking year. I don't know how this keeps happening.

we sat in our last lecture of sophomore year this afternoon. I remember sitting in the first lecture for that class back in August, excited and nervous and with no idea what to expect. and now, I can't really imagine not having sat in the class sixty or so times, making awkward eye contact with my classmates during lectures on reproduction, surreptitiously eating cookies and drinking coffee, acting out photosynthesis and passing around turtle shells and coral. is this what all of life is like, beginning to end? just starting out and then, all of a sudden, being done?

I guess I could have known (probably did know) a year ago that I would inevitably be sitting here, a year later, looking back on another year spent. but this is what we do and will continue to do as long as we live. we look back on the past, and brace ourselves with excitement and longing and trepidation for the future. in five years, or ten, I could be (probably will be) sitting down at a laptop, typing up thoughts and reminiscing on years past. and this moment at the end of my sophomore year will not really be an end, but only a beginning. and I'll think to myself, as I'm thinking to myself now,

I had no idea.

this makes me feel sick and happy and sad all at the same time. I miss all the old moments, even the ones that just happened, and I like this moment, and I know in a second it'll be gone and I'll be a different person. and that by the end of my life, all my full years will just be a compilation of a million moments, 80 or 90 past years that blend and run together and form as a lot one cohesive, messy, hard, amazing story. there will be thousands of endings and beginnings and things that will never happen again and things that haven't happened yet, and that's the only way it can be. it's the only way it's supposed to be.

we'll never sit in that classroom the same way, or talk about the same things, or exchange the same looks. but I'll also never breathe this same air. I'll never live through another sixth of May, two thousand fifteen. these things have to pass on and away and make room, but they're never really gone. God knows where I was a year ago and where I am at this second and where I will be next year and the year after that. He creates and understands every single moment that passes, the good ones and the bad ones and the ones that don't even register. all the fullness of our lives and our understanding is wrapped up in Him, so that we can periodically stop, as I'm doing right now, and reflect on just a tiny portion of them. I know that this moment will pass, as will all of junior year and senior year and the rest of my life, but not for nothing--it's all etched permanently and meaningfully into my story, and there are pages and pages full of beautiful words and pictures, and many more still blank.

so let's get to it.