There are only three ways to pack to go home from college:
1. The "I had to make a list of my lists so I remembered everything" packing job:
- Prep time: 6 hours (and that one time when you wake up in the middle of the night and remember to put "face wash" on your "bathroom items" list).
- Ingredients: Every pair of socks you own (just in case, and gosh you can't have too many), five pairs of shoes, your phone charger, the printer, the bed, and the squirrel sitting outside your window.
- Yields: A suitcase that one cannot close, and an overwhelming amount of things to repack.
- Bonus: You lost the list.
2. The ever-popular "Quickly throw everything into the bag and assume everything is accounted for"
- Prep time: Approx. 4 minutes
- Ingredients: "I need...socks..yes socks..." and "Oh, right...deodorant would be pleasant wouldn't it?"
- Yield: Arriving to destination with only socks and deodorant.
and of course:
3. The PERFECT pack.
- Prep time: 30 minutes or less.
- Ingredients: The perfect combinations of clothing, toiletries, and God's blessing.
- Yield: The PERFECT pack. Nothing missing, nothing superfluous.
I have personally experienced of all of these styles. I take a full trunk to camp, carefully checking off each thing--only to end up with way too many things and I ALWAYS lose the list. I tried to pack for a week in New York the summer before my senior year, and I suppose seventeen-year-old Ellen decided jeans were not necessary. I have never been more cold in my life than riding a ferry in shorts.
"Are you cold Ellen?"
"No."
"You sure...because its cold enough that we can see our breath."
"Can we? Wow."
"Ellen... you are obviously cold, your legs are purple."
You can only play it cool for so long when you have purple legs.
But, this Thanksgiving break, I have achieved what I thought was impossible:
I have achieved the PERFECT pack. Not a single thing out of place. Nothing extra, and I am already close to having it packed up.
Now, there is a lot more to carry home than just luggage. More than a back pack. More than the pile of dirty laundry you are hoping to clean at home so it does not carry the distinct smell of dorm washers. The second time home, a typical college student is carrying home expectations. It has been discussed several times among my friends and I that have returned home. "Which is my home, here or school?" we ask. Our expectations of what home will be like, or what our friends will be like, or how it will compare to school are tested over the holiday.
In my fantasy world, I think I hoped that college would be a perfect situation where you get to have your cake and eat it too. At school, I would yearn for home. At home, I would yearn for school. I wanted Flower Mound to fulfill me in the same way it had when I lived there full time. Students carry the anxiety and guilt that feeling "at home" at college is dishonoring their original home, leaving it behind, or forgetting it altogether. At the same time, we feel okay about it, because it is natural to want to move on to the bigger world.
As someone I trust told me recently, "At home everything is chosen for you, by your parents, your community, but it's not your choices that determine your life most of the time. Going to college means that for the first time, you are making decisions that build a life that is completely own. If you miss college and want to go back, that probably means you made some good decisions."
I have been struggling to reconcile my feelings between feeling "at home" at Hendrix, and realizing Flower Mound does not play the same role in my life that it used to. I have found that it takes recognizing that Flower Mound gave me gifts and people that at one time, built me up and loved me in the exact way I needed. Even if it does not feel the same now, Flower Mound served the exact thing I needed in my life--the way Hendrix serves me now. Flower Mound serves a new role, but it is not the main setting for my latest average adventure. I am thankful to God for every single moment when Flower Mound was used to shape me into the person I am. I am thankful for each day when living there was a new and exciting adventure. I am thankful for friendships that taught me how to love other people and put them before myself, even if they are distant now. Most of all, I am thankful that Hendrix is carrying me forward into a new chapter that includes Flower Mound as a place where I can reconnect to my roots, even if it means it plays a different role in my life. Which relieves the anxiety that I am dishonoring my time spent in my hometown. I can fearlessly embrace my new experiences at Hendrix without worrying that they are taking up more space in my heart.
God's greatest blessings carry over between chapters and seasons though. No matter where I live I am thankful for my family, my best friend, and FMUMC for being the sustained blessings that keep me going while I am all the way at Hendrix.
Texas weather is easy to pack for. But, I know that upon my return, the upcoming week will be rainy, and I will miss the beautiful deep southern sunshine.
I love Arkansas rain for one reason alone: rain boots.
Rain boots make a girl fearless. Want to walk to the library? Go through the grass. Giant puddle? Walk through, or better, stomp through! Regular shoes can only go so far, and even once they have drowned in several puddles, your toes are soaked cold. On a campus which often turns dormitories into water front property, I put on my rain boots the minute there are more than four clouds playing chicken in the sky.
There is a great moment when after a day of carrying a heavy backpack, and my back is sore, that I step in the mud on campus. For a brief moment, the ground absorbs the shock of the weight instead of my ankle, and I feel like God has used the Earth to relieve me of my weight I carry.
Gratitude does something similar I think. While our lives are being renewed like the Earth under the rain, gratitude makes us more fearless. Each obstacle becomes a new path to get where we are going. Perhaps even when we carry too many expectations in our back pack, God's Earth will absorb the weight and the shock. And hopefully we will remember, once again, that we have been--and will be--blessed all along our journey.
LET GOd,
Ellen
