Know Who

I spliced a million different portions of lyrics out of "Closing Time" by Semisonic for this blog, with the title, and chose what I chose because it almost looks like a palindrome...but isn't. There should be a word for that, for phrases that have enough similar letters and enough similar looking letters that they almost look like palindrome. Maybe a "malindrome."

But I didn't do that all for nothing.

This is my last post from Ohio.

It might be my last regular post for awhile, because I don't know what my internet situation will be in Hillsdale.

Indeed, right now, I know very little about the life that treads, always, two or three steps ahead of me.

If you remember "Closing Time" you remember two sets of lyrics "I know who I want to take me home" (although it should be whom...) and/or "Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end." If you don't remember the song at all or have never heard it at all get informed.

I probably haven't made as much of the fact that I'm going to be living in a different state for the first time in my life as I could. It's strange, because I'll be living closer to "home" in Hillsdale than I did in Wooster...but it won't be Ohio. I guess, maybe, it's not a big deal, and Michigan is a beautiful state. But it's strange to adjust to just living in another state, or thinking about it, I guess, now, not doing it yet. I can't really even bring myself to say it....I'm from Ohio, I just am...and I always will be.


But I'm stepping out into the life, or perhaps just stepping into, like a large fur coat, that I've been heading toward for the 22 years, 1 month, and 19 days prior to right now. That's always true, but it feels like a real shift...like more than just the way every day is the continuation toward eternity...like this is a real step, and not just a mark time...but both are important. I've learned that.

I will admit though, that sometimes, I want to run the other direction....I want to run toward what would be easy, what would be seemingly more secure, what would be more, at least, tangible. But that is not the life to which I have been called.

I have no doubt that life will be better in Hillsdale, because I'll be doing what I've known God wants me to do, but I also know it will be far from easy.

In the long river of it all, it's hard to believe that this is all, ultimately, just a stepping stone although the leap seems large.

In any event, it is always true that God never pushes us off into the river....he makes sure we can make the leap first. That being said, it would be a lie to say he doesn't let us get our feet wet and sometimes, even, in our hesitancy, to splash around a little bit. The metaphor is going to fall apart at some point, but even when things don't go according to plan (and believe me, as far as I was concerned, waiting til January to move was far from "according to plan") things can't go anywhere but according to God's plan, in the end.... and I know I'm far more prepared for the leap now than I was in August.

Eventually, through all of this, I'll be prepared for the next leap too.

***

I had a dream between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. (yeah...I'm kind of a slacker...I didn't wake up til 10 this morning...). I was watching a movie in the dream, and at some point, the DVD froze so I had to watch a few minutes of it over after I cleaned the disc...after I put it back in, I somehow became one of the characters in the film, or at least that's what it felt like in the dream.

That's all unimportant actually...the point of the dream is that I don't think it was a real movie at all, but it's definitely going to become, if nothing else, a short story by me. It was a remarkable film.

-Zack

"when all the flames came rushing it was so beautiful still i wanted something more to say as i spread this blaze so i left that fire and started a new one (and then another one)"
-Mae