"I'm a wanderer I have no place or time..."

So here I am, a college graduate. Nothing feels different. It's like when you have a birthday and people say to you, "do you feel different now that you're 13?...16?...21?" and, even though each of these represent a milestone in its own right, the truth is, I never felt any different. I feel the same now. I felt the same on Saturday, graduation day, as I did the day I walked into my first dorm room when I was a mere 17 years old.

The only thing I feel now is frustration. As my entire life sits boxed up in a corner of our dining room, the only thing I feel now is frustration. This place, this house where I grew up, where I split my head open on the chair railing when I was 6, this place is supposed to be home. And, don't tell my mother, but this just isn't home anymore. Maybe it has to do with the fact that my bedroom has now been turned into the guest bedroom, or the fact that renovations have been done while I've been in school. But either way, I feel so "in between", so nomadic.

Now, I know I should be grateful for all the opportunities. There are many people who don't have the chance to go and be and find new homes; and some have the chance, but not on their own accord. I should be excited that my life is packed up in boxes waiting to go on to my next adventure, and I'm sure my aggravation will subside, but for now it's so frustrating! It is like my life is literally looming over me, staring at me, beckoning me to do something...and I just want to yell back, "I can't do anything! You, my life, are all packed up with no where to go!" I want to go straight to Atlanta. But I know that if I do that, I will be skipping an important part of my life. This summer has a reason and has a purpose, and, no matter how frustrating it is, I have to live it. I need to be happy for it and look forward to it. And for now, the best I can do is try...

here we are and there we go...

I graduate from college in 6 days. 6 days. That's it. In 6 days, I embark on a new journey. I am scared and excited and sad and overwhelmed. I know that this is how it is supposed to be. This is the plan that God has for my life, but I've become so comfortable where I am. I was meant to spend 4 years here, and I have done that. My life must continue. Mars Hill has become my home.

I've always considered home to be the place where you have most of your memories, most of your friends, and the place where you leave most of your heart, and, for right now, that place is Mars Hill. There is something about the way the entire campus turns bright orange and red in October, and the way it turns into a cornucopia of color in March...but, most of all, there's something about the way a professor from a freshman year gen. ed. course still remembers your name when you see him in the cafeteria. That, my friends, is home.

Home, to me, is a place where one can grow and struggle and cry and laugh and change. Most of all of those, I have changed. I never like embracing change, in fact, I tend to be quite opposed to it, but the changes that have taken place in me have made me a better person. I love not because I am supposed to, but because I need to. I care not because someone in Sunday School told me to, but because I want to. I give not because it's "the right thing to do" but because my time and money cannot be better spent otherwise. That, my friends, is home.

The love that I have experienced on this campus has taught me how to love. My brilliant roommate wrote an incredible facebook note all about love. About seeing God in people's character, not in the celestial greatness above us. I like to think of God as being synonymous with upper-case "L" love. God is Love. I have learned to see Love in the eyes of a homeless man when I give him my carry-out that I probably wasn't going to eat anyway...I have learned to see Love in the eyes of the drug addicted men and women attending church and finding peace outside of dependency. So much of this newly acquired vision is because of Mars Hill. That, my friends, is home.

It is hard to say, but we are merely nomads in this life. In 6 days I'll move on to a new home. Somewhere else where I can learn and grow and change into someone even better, even greater. But, I can guarantee, that none of that could happen without the foundation that Mars Hill has created. To all my friends, professors, and colleagues, thank you. You, my friends, are home.