Overwhelmed

It's that season again--all the outdoors is decidedly autumnal; the orchard is ablaze and the grass has greened up again since our first rains arrived last week. It's foggy now in the mornings, and cold. I leave early for classes, and my poor little defrost doesn't even clear the glass until I get past the bridge headed towards town.

I want to enjoy this season, but it's been so long since I had an autumn free from a heavy classload, I can't even remember what it's like to slow down and savor October's pleasantries. I rush from class to class, putting in my 18 hours of in-class time and 25+ hours of studying each week. Nursing school is rough stuff.

I'm so overhwhelmed. I find it ironic that this most beautiful of seasons weighs me down and makes me dread the coming winter, all the dark days and icy rain, relentless assignments piled on our already sagging shoulders.

So I wonder, is it worth it? Do I really want to be here? Five years of work to get where I am, so close to the end, and yet it seems so far away. Springtime. It may never come. And if it does, will I have finished strongly? Or will I have given up somehwere in the dark fog of winter, left beside the road, unable to go on?

I will finish. It may take everything I've got and then some, but I have begun this thing and I will finish it. And I realize, one obstacle is replaced by another, and life is this way--carrying on, carrying on, pushing through the last brutal piece of road with a shred of strength . . . and then the trial ends. Relief, sweet relief, and rest. Enough to build up the courage to step foot at the bottom of the next high hill.

A Short Confession

I am almost done with college--well, if nine months yet to go counts as "almost." Some days, it seems forever. But I know it is coming. When this scene of my life ends, and the curtain falls for another act to begin--what then?

Will I be able to find a job in this chosen field of mine? Do I even want a job? Actually, I couldn't care less. Five years of hard work, and a lot of money--I must be really crazy if I confess that I would happily forego the glittering future this education has earned me--and trade it for a simple life. To be the wife of one good man who fears God. To live in a little one or two room house on a bit of land and grow a garden. Raise chickens. Be an integral part of a sweet little church that's filled with people who truly know God and overflow with his grace. Have a whole troupe of our own children and school them at my kitchen table. And grow old this way.

This is the life for which I yearn.

And this is what He says: Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart...

So I try--failing, yes, many times--but every once in awhile, in a still moment when I sit at my desk in the wee hours of the morning, before the sun is up, I catch a flickering glimpse of what this contentment is. To be wholly satisfied only in knowing Him. He becomes that desire. And oddly enough, just when I teeter on the brink of being so lost in Him that nothing else in this world could matter at all--it is then that I'm given a quiet confidence that these things, these sweet--albeit earthly--dreams, will come to pass--when the Lord's hour is at hand.

And so I wait.