Seasons Change
It’s mid-afternoon and I’m taking a break from studying for the bar. Just forty minutes ago, as I momentarily glanced away from my timed criminal law problem set, I saw sunlight streaming through the air, interrupted only occasionally by shadows of tree branches swaying in the summery breeze. Turning back to my work, I released a tiny sigh and shook my head to no one in particular, amused that the powers behind weather.com had been outsmarted once again. PM rain, my foot.
That foot is now proverbially entering my mouth. For almost as suddenly as a brightly lit Broadway theatre is dimmed before a show begins, the sky outside my window now has taken on a gloomy, overcast, and slightly ominous quality that makes me feel like today is the winter solstice again. Only the birds, still insistently chirping outside, remind me that we haven’t reverted back to December in some random time warp. And now, a peal of thunder — an audible sign of the inevitable storms that will follow. Spring has its charms as well as its costs.
The manically rapid changes of weather outside remind me of the season of flux in which I find myself right now. Even as I enjoy the solitude of this moment, tapping away at my laptop, seated at the corner desk in my bedroom, I know that the next six months of my life will be filled with all sorts of change.
To begin with, this room will only be mine for the next four days, and then I will move again — it will be my fifth move in the last twelve months. I have been a nomad for the last seven years (through college and law school), moving at least twice (and sometimes up to four times) a year, every year, and it isn’t until October that I will again be able to really call someplace “home.” In the time being, I will set up tents in various places — down the street, at friends’ apartments in the City, in a host of locales in China, in the Bay Area, then back at my parents’ home… until I shop and find my own place to call home in the City in the fall.
Other changes abound, the most significant of which is the shift in social scenery that will take place, first over the summer, and then permanently when we all scatter from this place to our respective destinations around the country and the globe. It’s a scary proposition.
I hardly remember what it was like to be a 1L, when I didn’t know or care about or love anyone here. All I recall is that first semester was difficult for me because I felt I had no real connections. But second semester kicked off a new beginning, the dawn of deep friendships and the sprouting of sapling relationships, some of which have since grown into what appear to be mighty oaks, in a short amount of time.
As surely as summer needs occasional rain to keep the grasses green, my last seven terms here at school endured their share of bumps in the road in these friendships. But it was summer all the same, full of sun, warmth, comfort, freedom, growth, and rich abundance. Next week is commencement, which strikes me as a partial misnomer, because “commencement” means “beginning,” yet for me it will mark a significant end to what I consider nothing short of a golden age.
And what then? It is time for the tides to turn, for the next chapters to open, for the next … well, pick your favorite metaphor. My dear sister Rachel once told me, “Living life is a team sport.” And it is. I know I couldn’t have survived even half of the trials I went through in law school (no pun intended) without the wisdom, steadiness, prayers, and company of brothers and sisters who walked beside me.
I wonder what the future will bring, how God will provide, and what my next team will look like. I have my hopes, but I also have my serious doubts, about what my social circle in New York will be like. I have trouble believing that it could begin to equal the caliber of spiritual strength and iron-sharpening-iron that I have almost taken for granted here.
Yet I know I have chosen to be there for a reason; prayer and circumstance have led me there, and for those reasons, I remain fairly confident in my decision to make that city the site of my next step. It is an exciting place, the central seat of many events of national and global significance, and the logical starting point for an aspiring attorney. That, and its unmatched diversity fill it with inhabitants and cultures that promise to endlessly fascinate. The flip side, of course, is that the city is also largely dominated by warped values, a tantalizing but destructive hierarchy of priorities, and a frightening level of consumerism.
*pondering*
I suppose the thing to remember at this crossroads, at this juncture, is that God is in supreme control. He calls us to follow Him, regardless of where He may lead us. And He calls us to trust in Him, regardless of the season into which he may usher us. For every spring, He will provide an umbrella. For every autumn, a harvest. For every winter, a fire. And for every cycle of seasons, He will also provide a summer.