the end of the beginning

“They all seemed to feel that life was beginning to grow serious; and even while they enjoyed those lovely summer days together they were conscious that they were children no longer, and often in the pauses of their fun talked soberly of their plans and hopes, as if anxious to know and help one another before they drifted farther apart on their different ways.”

—Joy’s Boys by Louisa May Alcott

This soothed my aching heart this summer, because somehow, when you read words that spell out your heart, there is comfort in it. I felt the heaviness of it all in my heart this summer. The expectancy of the adventures that are on the brink of being born. The hesitation of what going on the adventure means giving up and setting aside. When we drove home from Alki beach in the last light of the day, I felt it. When we came home across the golden water from my cousin's wedding, I felt it. When I stood on the train quay this morning, waving goodbye to my friend who is leaving for two years to help spread the gospel all over the world, I felt it. When I sat on a green couch in an open barn talking to two friends who are getting married in six short months, I felt it. When I sat at a scarred and well-loved wooden table in a mountain village, surrounded by friends who were there giving their time and their love to children in need of it, I felt it. 

There is an eager anticipation in it. We can taste the adventure, the freedom, and the holy, good life changes that will come about. Sooner or later we all need to pack our things into a suitcase and drive away from the place we call home and strike out a life of our own. But we know too that the last chapters of our childhood are being written, and we mourn that. This is the end of the beginning. It’s the end of a time that can never be relived, only remembered. Once we step away, there is no turning back, not really. Even when we come back home, we will have known that other, different thing—breathed its air—and the sculpture of our lives will be changed.

The tide is turning. It’s a hard time of life, but it’s also a bright and exciting time. It is the end of the beginning, but also the threshold of all that it seems we have been preparing for our whole life through—adulthood. And here it is, taking us into its arms, pulling us out and into the world and we wonder if this is perhaps the time for which we have been created.