Chapters

The other day, I found myself crying on the phone to my roommate.*  It was confusing.  The day had been a good one—I had been on routine and things had gone smoothly, I had gone to the gym, we had prayer night (one of my favorite L’Arche things).  I had even turned down an invitation to go to a bar to hang out with some of the other assistants (mostly because of the very early mornings and the fact I sometimes have some old-woman sleeping habits).  And yet I was crying on the phone, missing my…my what?  My friends?  My family?  My life as I used to know it?  Part of what was upsetting me was that I couldn’t figure out what was upsetting me.  It had been a really good day.  Really good days should not produce tears, right?

This spurred quite a bit of reflecting, some really good discussion, and a few more tears.  Then a bit of self-awareness/understanding hit me.  This is my life now.  And let’s be serious, I am incredibly blessed. The L’Arche lifestyle is fulfilling to me.  I was basically handed community and family and a social network on a silver platter.  I feel confident that this is where I am called to be right now. My life is really, really good.  But it is finally beginning to hit me that this is my life.  Like my real life.  This isn’t a summer internship that is going to end in a few weeks.  This isn’t something I am doing until I return to my other life.  This is my life.  And that is scary because it marks a definitive end to the “Notre Dame chapter” of my life.  It isn’t that those people will be gone from my life, because they are still very much a part of me (technology is a wonderful thing).  It isn’t that I won’t carry my time at Notre Dame in my heart forever, because I will.  It’s just that when I have a good day now, it doesn’t end with me sitting on my floor in McG eating pretzels with Nutella recounting the good things that happened.  And that, my friends, is scary.

So where does this revelation/understanding leave me? It leaves me with four years of memories that shaped and formed me.  It leaves me with a wonderfully supportive family and life-long friends.  It leaves me with a really good life, now.  And yeah, I miss being with my friends who really know me.  And yeah, I wish I could have taken Luke’s picture before homecoming.  And yeah, life would be way easier if we could just figure out that whole apparating thing.  But I had a really great chapter that led me to another (at least I can speak for the first 6 weeks) really great chapter.  And that is not so scary, right?

**Disclaimer: I hesitated to post this, because me crying usually makes my mom worry about me and I didn’t want to do that.  But we skyped today, Mom, remember?  And you saw my face and I am fine 🙂 Love you!