So Fortunate

At this moment, it is 12:05 AM. I'm sitting at a table in the library at my college, with books spread in front of me and an essay slowly forming. Said essay is due Monday at 4pm, and many pages remain to write, not to mention I have four exams to study for and a presentation for which to prepare. But because I stood in the road with a dear friend talking about the future, the pressure I felt lessened comfortably, and I can take a moment, surrounded with books and knowledge and a few tired and diligent students around me, to appreciate.

I am so fortunate that there are moments when I just want to cry from shame. What have I done to deserve such blessings? I look on my life, my conduct, my relationships, and often see what I should have done, what I did not do, where I failed. Yet my life is filled with love.

After a few hours of working and inevitably chatting at Starbucks, angling our laptops so we could easily share the small table, and occasionally sharing bemused laughs at Starbucks' choice for Christmas music, my friend and I walked slowly back to her car, laughing and telling stories. We reached her car--she was headed back to her house to do more studying, and I back to mine to pick up some notes on my way back to the library. Of course, we never just hug and say goodbye; instead, we find ourselves launched into a conversation about school, life, ourselves, our futures.

Somehow we ended up crafting this fantasy: one day, after she has been an artist and art scholar for a few years, and after I have taught high school English and (probably slowly) plodded away at a novel or two, the two of us will just call each other up, pack up, move, and open a coffee shop together. We'll make coffee, show art and host poetry readings, and go on pursuing the artistic dreams that seemed so impractical.

Whether or not that ever happens in the future is irrevelant, though I must say I love the idea. I found my throat closing slightly as we talked, knowing that the moment we were sharing, chatting and laughing on a street in Charleston, would be one I'd remember, not for what was said, but what was felt. I knew in that moment, that she was a friend I never wanted to lose, that God had planned for our paths for cross, that there were more important things than essays or exams.

And I thought to myself, God! Thank you! My cup overflows. I have had parents that encouraged my dreams, a brother who trusts me and would protect me, teachers that inspired me, friends that are as imperfect as I, struggling as I to be like Christ, teaching, encouraging, loving me as I never deserved. I have been blessed with peace that surpasses understanding, though sometimes I let it slip through my fingers, it inevitably comes back when I am utterly overwhelmed to reassure me that there is more to life than obligations or worries.

There are many nights when sleep eludes, when I wish for more than what I currently have. Namely, a companion; a man to challenge and affirm my faith, to comfort me, to pull from me the confessions I've offered no one but God and all the emotions I carefully guard, to hold me on rainy Sunday mornings, to encourage me, to need me in return.

But tonight will not be one of those nights, for tonight I stood on a street in Charleston under the stars, laughing and hugging a friend I love dearly, talking of God and art and friendship years down the road. It is because of moments like these that I know God has given me all I need and more.