JSYK32: Importance

We've entered the point of practically no return. Our entire lives have been wrapped in cardboard and sealed with brown tape, stacked into towering walls that fill rooms and block hallways. Each containing a word that sums up all that it contains: shoes, blankets, toys, other. All that they left are hooks and some wire, and the house seems bigger, colder, and yet full of possibilities.

Yesterday, the order was put upon me, "Get everything you'll need to live for the next week and stack it in that corner." My mind immediately collapsed. I couldn't leave anything behind! What if something should occur where I would need that little scrap of paper in that obscure notebook tucked beneath my dresser? Then I realized the question: what do I need? I walked into my room and surveyed the walls I had come to know so well with the artwork taped perfectly straight, the fuzzy carpet I have listened to so many new songs on, the sun mirror that is always too small to see anything in, and I realized I could carry out of that room what I needed in my arms in one trip. All my comforts of home were really just that, and it surprised me.

I stared at my small corner in what used to be the dining room, clothes and purse and suitcase, and felt there was something missing, but I could not think of what it might be. It wasn't until I walked up the front steps of the school the next morning and was immediately given dozens of hugs like I always get. Suddenly, however, they were more precious than gold and my corner seemed even more empty.

Throughout my day, school work that I had been so bent on completing just to be the first and the best became pointless if a comrade approached with a story to tell, even if it wasn't a good story, it was worth listening to just to here that person's voice. Path's that I had taken to get places faster seemed lonely and useless if I could walk even a few feet with the girl I didn't even know wanted to be a writer someday. Everything was put into perspective so fast, it almost knocked me over.

I asked myself how many times I had gone through this same mindset. The sudden realization that the way I think about the world everyday is flawed in the fact that I think I have all eternity to enjoy everything. And yet, at the same time, you get a feeling that whatever you do, it will never quite be enough.

When I arrived home, the house was boxed up, but my little brother ran out to greet me with a huge hug, exactly what I had needed. I smiled at his not-so-little face, now eleven years old and still growing, and wondered how he would look in two years as I drove away to college. I wondered about all the family jokes I would miss while I sat in my dorm room focused on the next exam. And once I'm long gone, and my body goes back to where it came from, I wondered if I would be able to say I had done what needed to be done and I left the world content.

All this weighed upon my thoughts throughout the day until I lay down it my almost empty room and looked out at the moon. There was only one thing I would never have to let go of, and that's the God who made that moon cast its silvery shadow over my red plaid PJ's. Of all the things I can trust in, I can trust in him the most, and this simple thought gave me the most peace I had ever had.

I'm off to a new place, a new me, a new chance to begin, but I have myself, and I have my family, and I have the Lord. Though it may seem dim now, I can't believe things are really that bad, because all things work together for good, and I'll bet all of these boxes on that.