Moments to minutes

Again, I find myself with no time to actually write this entry, but these thoughts have significantly lodged themselves into whichever part of the brain handles memories and emotion enough to shake me up.  Something urges me to make some meaning of them.  Hence, putting the chaos of synaptic connections into some type of order, into symbolic language.

As the last floor meeting of the year unfolded early last night, my mind began to wander.  Pink sheets, yellow and blue, were handed around the circle, but I was staring at the inside of my own mind.  My RA was talking about how we should be conscientious to find her only when we are fully ready to check out so we don't waste time, as time is hard to come by these days with the last homework assignments and tests being finished, finals to study for.  She said, my time is valuable like yours.
Like yours.
And when she prayed for us, she laid blessing over this coming week and over the summer, over people who are leaving Wheaton, who are never coming back.
Never coming back.
And I wondered which moments, which collection of minutes, had made them decide that Wheaton wasn't the place for them, that they would graduate elsewhere.  And which moments, which collection of minutes had made me decide that I would.

I have "wasted" enormous amounts of time in preoccupation, in worry over grades and upcoming assignments, impending doom, I mean due, dates, over broken relationships, premature endings, new beginnings.
New beginnings.
And I laugh at thinking any of this time was wasted outside of the anxiety surrounding.  Because time wasted means not thinking about these things.  It means living apart from your own heart.  It means turning your back to darkness when there's healing to be had, when if we just reach a little deeper into the pitch black, we will hit our hands against a single light particle that is slowly expanding, expanding so slowly that the naked eye cannot detect.  This is when we realize that it was never really pitch black at all.  Perception.

I have never thought about maturity as something palpable, but it is--not tangible, but palpable.  I can feel the way I respond to conflict now, the shift.  I don't claim to have reached the apex of maturity.  Dante's picture of will is much more accurate than maturity happening in our earthly bodies.  But I can feel the tightening of my own soul, the closing in on myself, and watch as the string of truth from my roommate's mouth dispels the pressure, as the breath of God through the Holy Spirit collides with the air.  Don't worry about metaphysical distinctions.  This isn't one.

So this two year compilation of moments is fraught with emotional angst, confusion, frustration, doubt, interspersed with joy, peace, patience, and some goodness.  It's not a weighing of the two, though, that makes Wheaton worth it.  It's not a pro-con list.  It is the deep connection that happens in the spirit of the search.
It is the promise that when we encounter ourselves, the depth of our depravity, that someone, anyone will be with us groping through the dark.

I learn to hold onto the fear of God.
This is my experience.  This is my compilation of moments.  This is...our, very human and exhaustively exclusive struggle.  The analog click ticks forward, circular.  The digital clock passes the seconds, the minutes.
The time is drawing nigh.
My time is valuable like yours, they are never coming back,
of minutes that made me decide that I would,
beginnings,
new beginnings,
at all, perception, distinctions,
this isn't one,
the search...
...will You be with us groping through the dark?
This is not a question, for this is not perception.  It is promise.
It is promise, children of God.
It is promise.