How are you feeling?

About twenty friends and family gathered in Maggie's home this afternoon. Two hours of mingling, small catch-ups, and moving from one conversation to another. Classmates, alumni, small group friends, mentors, professors--all in the same place. Some I see weekly, a few I haven't seen for awhile.

My friends have been asking me how I'm feeling about the transition, the move, Sacramento--however you want to call it. And my long-winded response this afternoon can be summarized into this: The afternoon was good. Good. Not deeply emotional, neither sad nor overjoyed. Just good. Good to acknowledge that I was leaving. Good to really know that I am going. Good to have the people in the room know that they have been important to my life.

Sometimes I'm sad to be leaving the places I love, whether it's my quiet time bench by the rosebushes on campus or my favorite corner stool at Empresso. Sometimes I'm excited about being in a big city again, about driving on freeways and knowing different parts of town. Mostly, I think I just know it's going to happen so I'm waiting for each day to pass along. Although I have a feeling these next two weeks will speed by like nothing, and all of a sudden I'll be loading up my car and heading out.


We've finally put in an application for a place, and if that gets approved, then I'll officially have a place to live, and my mission of making it a home will begin. Many times I have to answer the question of when I'm moving, and the answer now is soon, oh so soon. Back in May, I had a rough night after I had picked up furniture from Linda and felt the urge to start packing. I didn't really, but I did start rearranging stuff in my room, and before I knew it, there was a stack of boxes sitting in my corner, waiting to be packed. When Darrell came over that night, I dramatically told him that everything was changing, everything. He shook his head in confusion and wondered why I was packing when I had two more months to be here.

Well my friends, I'm proud to say that I've held off for this long. I've collected packing boxes and I've mentally planned how to pack, but I haven't put together boxes and haven't put things away. Until today. Today, after I got back from the goodbye party, I read some heartfelt cards and thought, hey, let's put some things away. I taped together a couple boxes and put away my binders and moved my board games from my over-sized Rubio's tote bag to a box (Don't worry, still easily accessible for a game night). I started clearing my walls: the scripture paintings I had done on a Sabbath last semester, timelines and collages that contain expression of life at that point, race bibs from the half marathon and 10k last year. And other than the three huge chunks of paint I accidentally took out of my wall, it just feels right. Not a frantic impatience, not a rushed closure. Just a recognition of the change that I'm sitting in.

I'll have to hold back from packing up the rest of my life just yet and make sure I still focus on work to do this week. I haven't decided on some of the things to keep and to get rid of. My trio of half-insignificant but favorite glass bottles: Starbucks Mocha Frappucino, Pomegranate Izze, and Martinelli's apple cider (D and I shared this on our 3 year anniversary last year)--they carry so little weight except that I love the size and I've had them sitting on a shelf this past year. Do I get rid of it for the convenience, or keep it for the piece of home that it is? Is it time to lose the discounted black photo frames I bought three years ago in lieu of other decor?  When do I look for furniture that I know I'll probably want (I'm currently working with a lot of extra surface area from the extra dresser and wall shelf)?

 In the meantime, I'm also slowly figuring out what's helpful and what's not in all of this. We had a three-part goodbye shindig when the students were still around, and while it was tons of fun, I realized in hindsight I didn't quite get the goodbye I needed. I didn't realize I needed to be able to say, "Life together has been good, and I am thankful for who you are. You are important to me." I thought implicit would be enough, explicit would be too cheesy...but it turns out that that would have helped a lot. So we did that today, cheesy and awkward as it probably was. And I'm learning to just go with my gut in some of these other friendships and circles. To say, "Hey, I've loved getting to know you, and I'm leaving in a couple weeks, but could we have coffee before I go?" To have hangouts and stay out late with friends and to soak up all this good company.

Two weeks really isn't a lot of time. I feel like I have enough goodbyes to last a month, and yet there's a part of me that's already ready to go.