Hey Mads!
We’re finally back to school after FIVE months away, can you believe it?? It was starting to feel as if I had simply imagined my first year of college. For much of the spring and summer, I reflected back on all of the amazing people I met and the experiences that I never could have pictured a year ago. I would play in my mind how I imagined coming back to campus and my community and my coming into independence again. I likened it to slipping on an old school dance dress, unleashing the flood of happy memories from just a short time of wearing it.
With this shiny idea of arriving in Ames, I was unprepared for the reality. I moved in the most 2020 way, a few minutes before a Derecho whipped through town. With straight wind speeds of up to 100mph, trees were falling, stop lights went dark, and power was out in my apartment until late in the night and remained out in areas of the town and state until much later in the week. Already, my sophomore year was off to a completely unexpected start. As I slowly started to see my friends again, I was overwhelmed not only with the joy I experienced seeing their faces (although behind a mask, I was so thankful it wasn’t behind a screen!) but also by the waves of grief that would crash as I walked up to them, crash beneath the smiles and laughs as though no time had passed, and crash again when I would go back to my apartment at night.
I’m curious if anyone else has gone through this in seeing those you love again and felt the weight of all the time you lost with them, the what-ifs about where your friendship would be, wondering if you checked in on them enough, or in some cases, if they even still remembered that one freshman they played cards with once in the student lounge.
For the first week, honestly Mads, I let myself cry about what this virus has seemingly stolen from me. From the friendships that never really got to bloom, the activities that look a lot different (or are even non-existent for the time being), the underlying fear that all I know could be ripped away again without a warning.
Feeling the duality of joy and grief in a single moment has been confusing, painful, and exhausting. But it has taught me so much. The future I was so excited for and held onto was never what was going to happen, the image in my head of what I dreamed and wanted for my college experience was never what was going to happen. I cannot control the future, but I can place my trust and hope in the one who does. God is so good, he is there with us in the joy of seeing a friend after so long, and he is there with me as I weep over all I’ve missed so dearly. He knows not only the number of our days but what they hold within them as well. Everything that we walk through he is holding our hand and offering to us how we can grow in trusting and relying on Him with our whole selves. While this pandemic and social distance has been incredibly painful, it has taught me to value each moment I experience with the people around me, whether I know them or not. There is an urgency to show love and remain present to those around me that I haven’t felt before.
As always, looking forward to seeing you again!
-hp
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