Friends,

I was in mourning when I graduated from college in 2009.

For me, life was hard in Middle School and High School, but when I arrived at Sewanee: The University of the South as a freshman, I felt I had finally found a place where I belonged. If you don’t know Sewanee, then you haven’t met a Sewanee Graduate, because we are well-known for being unable to shut up about that magical place on a mountain in Tennessee. I had a plan for what was next after college, but moving away from my community and my friends was an isolating experience. Sewanee was only about an hour away from home, and I had a girlfriend (who is now my wife) who was a junior at Sewanee, so I would often go back on the weekends. As time went on, it was clear that it wasn’t the same. Instead of being the place I belonged, it became the place I once belonged to.

Yesterday, a neighbor whom I like but do not know well started running around the two-mile loop at the same time I started, so we became accidental running partners. He turned 40 last year, and I turn 40 in December, so being old naturally came up. He commented that other than everything hurting, he largely feels the same as when he was in college, and this statement resonated with me in a big way. In my core, I still see myself as that recent college graduate trying to understand how the world works with a head full of evolving ideals. While I remain the same, the doctors, police officers, and other “adult” type people start to look younger and younger. Sewanee is a profoundly beautiful place. I had the chance to go and visit Sewanee with my brother this past spring, and we hiked a few miles of the trails as the wildflowers were in bloom. We saw some current students cramming for their finals, and they looked like babies. I cannot believe I was that young when I walked those paths on the way to class.

Inside, I still feel like a recent college graduate, but that feeling is a lie, and I thank God it is a lie. Things were exciting then, and of course I can get all nostalgic about the past, but I was an absolute wreck! I was painfully insecure; my relationship with Leandra was still in its infancy; I had no idea how little I knew, and normal, everyday things just felt so hard. I may still feel like I’m 22 on the inside, but I am so thankful that I am not. Weirdly, I am thankful for my aches and pains because they motivate me to do something about them, while at 22 I took my amazing metabolism for granted and was prone to being slothful and boring. While I am no expert in doing adult things, I am no longer a helpless novice. There is no way I would exchange my sore ankles to be that twenty-two-year-old again.

I am no longer that person, so why does the sense that I am the same persist? Perhaps it is because we were so good at reinventing ourselves as teenagers. I was dramatically different going from one year to another. As a senior, I definitely did not feel that I was still the same as I was as a freshman. College seemed to be the phase where an identity finally took shape, but internally, my soul still expected to be reinvented every year. I have reinvented myself, but it happened so slowly that my soul felt as if nothing had happened, keeping my perceived internal identity in stasis. Going back to Sewanee and realizing it is no longer mine can feel heartbreaking, but it’s just proof that I have grown. Of course it is no longer mine, because it was built for that person who grew into me.

The idea of home is so interwoven into our sense of self. Leandra and I have made a home here in our corner of Fort Hunt, and I am old enough to see its imperfections. It doesn’t feel like my home on Redpole Dr in Dewitt, Michigan, which felt so perfect as a seven-year-old. If in 20 years my boys get all nostalgic for their perfect childhood home, then I will know we did a good job. That feeling of perfection in a home isn’t for those who make the home; it’s for who they are making it for.

Thinking of the homes I have had and the dogs that defined an era, I wonder how Jesus sees me. In the first chapter of John’s Gospel, he makes it clear that Jesus existed in creation, well before Mary. Our Savior travels through time differently than we do, and maybe this makes more sense than it sounds. Apparently, physicists are skeptical that time is linear. Many think that time isn’t even a thing, and that everything exists all at once, and we have no choice but to experience it linearly based on how we are made. I hope Jesus sees me all at once. I could not be who I am without being that naïve graduate who still inhabits my internal image, nor could I have been him without all the different identities I experimented with in High School, and so forth. I have no choice but to figure out who I am now, but I think God might see something deeper.

This place is also ever-changing. You may have that one year where your time here felt charmed, or when you finally felt called to do something, and that thing became part of who you are. Aha! This is what St. Luke’s is. Then there may be a year when you look around and see that this place is no longer the same. People leave, and people come, and the new person who sits next to you every Sunday doesn’t even know about that one thing that means so much to you. Unlike college, this place is still meant for you, but it will still change. Home is a fleeting thing, and if this place where we pray no longer feels like the home it was, it can still be the home for who you are becoming, and all you have to do is show up.

Blessings,

Nick