It's summer. Well, it's the school-year rendered version of summer, per the Hillsdale College academic calendar. There are certain aspects of my job that make it feel more like a job than it often does, and when I think about the summer, that becomes one of them...it's full-time fundraising time once again.
But Fund Raising, I'm learning, isn't as bad as it sounds or seems and Faith goes a long way. It might be the most "job-like" thing I have (depending on how you define "job"), but it can be one of the most exciting. It's a risky, vulnerable business, but it's also highly relational and it's fun to get to catch up with old friends and family members as part of my job. I also kind of like the regularity of my daily schedule. It's not something I could or would want to do full time forever, but I am, at the end of the day, thankful for the seasons of life, even, as it may be, the seasons of fund raising in my life.
It helps, too, that this fund development season has a set end when school starts, unlike last year...of course, that's largely because of the work I had to do during that indeterminate season on my life last year following graduation.
And as I re-enter this season of my life, I remember what life was like this time last year, and even more what became my life by the end of the summer and the end of 2009; it is drastically different, to say the least, and ultimately, it is better.
There's a sort of adolescent growing period immediately following college graduation. There's a lot of adjustment that, at least for me, had to take place in moving back home, but even more, there's an adjustment to the idea that college is over, that life of some sort or another is beginning again, much like it did when college started, but somehow bigger, somehow more powerfully so. At least that's how it felt for me last year...and I'll admit that I simply didn't have the best immediate support network for all of that when it all started after I returned home from Chapter Focus Week last year. Things were changing and things were hard and there was little I could do but turn inward and upward for support because everyone I knew was elsewhere in the world and going through much of the same as me (but, of course different and sometimes including marriage and or coming marriage). Maybe it's ironic, maybe it's just exactly what God wanted for some reason, and probably it's both, but I definitely do have a much stronger immediate support network now, so to speak, and it's much less necessary for my emotional state going into and going through this summer, one summer removed from college...very much the same but intrinsically different from last summer.
Being tied to the school year is like a science experiment; there are certain things that always stay the same, and it's by them that you can measure the changes. In the past year, much has changed, but here I am with some key similarities nonetheless....as I look at where I am now and where I was then, I can look on, look back, look forward even, and say that while the past year was one of the hardest I've ever lived, it's brought me to a great place. God has brought me to a great place. Maybe it's because of that very fact that I feel like things are more than fine right now; God worked in and through so much in the last 365 days, how could I not make it through what feels like so much less (but could very well be so much more if I look from the right angle) if I made it through, better on the other side, everything that has happened in the past year.
Thank you all, to whom this applies, for your prayer and support in the past year. I couldn't have done it without you. If you don't know if it applies to you or not and think it might not...it probably does...knowing my parochial readership.
One of the first students I met at Hillsdale (when I visited before accepting placement during my senior year) got married on Saturday. I don't know if that symbolizes anything but in a way, it makes me feel old. In another way, it makes me feel like Hillsdale only masquerades as a school without religious ties (and it's not the only reason I feel that way...), and in a third way, it makes me simply feel joyful.
This Saturday, a woman is getting married that I met long, long ago, many years before she met most if not all of her wedding party. We used to talk a lot but now, other than the stand-in-for-conversation that a facebook friend request acceptance is, we've not talked since those years (about 8 of them ago). She's mostly a friend of a friend now, even know neither of us knew any of those mutual friends all those years ago. I don't know that any of that means anything at all..it's just interesting and I like writing about interesting things and seeing if something more interesting emerges. I don't think it's happening right now.
This Sunday, I hope not to disappoint. It's a bit of a rigged jury though...I could fail miserably, and I've a feeling I won't disappoint.
I don't know why I share such vagaries. I just do.
-Zack
"He brought me to a spacious place. He rescued me because he delighted in me"
-Psalm 18:19
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