On completing one of life's major milestones and not feeling much different...

Yesterday I received a special email letting me know that my final paper for my Masters degree has been passed with flying colors.

You would think that finishing something like this--the Masters degree I've been sweating and stressing over for two and a half years--would feel like a great release and a huge accomplishment. Yet, I don't feel much different.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that my class walked together in our graduation ceremony last summer, about 6 months before our final paper was due. I think I actually felt more celebratory then than now, which makes sense because the whole experience of wearing cap and gown, being hooded, walking across the stage, hearing speeches from fellow students and much-loved professors, and simply being together as a cohort in that special moment all works together to send my mind and heart and spirit the message that something momentus has indeed occured.

Lately, I feel a more subtle sense of change. I'm finished with my masters degree and Matt has all but finished his PhD (he sent off all the revisions today and now just waits for the degree itself.) In a sense, we've arrived at something, but it's really more like we've come to a place where God's giving us new directions toward a new destination.

Why is it that every ending, like these, seems to be more about change than about finishing?

I'm not upset about this. It's come to be normal to me. I grieve a bit about the changes (no more winter weeks in Thailand with my APU classmates, I'm even a bit nostalgic for paper-writing and sitting in class having stimulating discussions--I was always a school nerd!). But overall, I've just come to accept that life is always a series of lessons and we don't get to stay in any one season past the fullness of its time.

So, now we head into a new time of our lives. Matt will be more fully involved in the vocation to which he sensed God's call so many years ago and toward which he's been working all this time through his studies. I'll be taking a little break from teaching (though I'm sure I'll be back!) to explore the joys of motherhood. We'll be moving, hopefully, into a new community at the Baptist Seminary and our lives will be more closely intertwined with other believers in a setting in which we're all pursuing God together.

But before we rush into something new, I want to take a moment to pause and say, "Go me! I did something really big and it's worth acknowledging before I move on."