Battlefields in the Dark

You know, everything with regard to school is going much better than I'd thought. In fact, I think that such a good time justifies a list.

Good Stuff about Gettysburg '06

1.) New friends, especially flirt-happy David and football-crazed Katie. Love these guys and our late-night war councils!

2.) Being infinitely more sociable than last time. What a difference time and transformation have made! Now I don't have TIME to mope around. . .too busy scrambling to finish assignments, playing board games, making Wal-Mart runs, working part-time, working out at the Y, and goofing off in general.

3.) Walking on pitch-black battlefields at midnight. So quiet, so requiring trust, so good with a companion. And lemme tell ya, these folks are absolute fiends about walking. A quick jaunt to Lee's statue and back takes an hour and gives you a lot to think about.

4.) Okay, I'm all about ecumenism, but it is nice to be among Lutherans and to get each other's jokes, especially the really pathetically common ones about green jello and Lutefisk. Yeah, I've heard 'em a million times, but at least we're all on the same page.

5.) A grab-bag of other experiences: dining with Dominican monks, hurling Greek jokes at one another ("What does Johnny Depp say when he plays golf? 'GAR!'" and "Idou! A squirrel!"), memorising the hours of the Beer Mart, the kazoo band for our flag football team, hours of Risk and creative procrastination. . .I'm really enjoying myself here.

Of course, add to all this the relative pleasantness (and pain) of a crush, and what do you get? Impending heartache, I'm sure. But for now, I'm just going to live and sing and get in some good belly laughs and learn a lot more about myself and God working in my life.

In the meantime, I miss you, tiny Hebridean island. I miss you, Lauren, and Sam, and Marie, and Moses, and Hannah, and Pip, and Ben. Matty, Hazel, Rhiannon. . . So many people my heart yearns to be close to again. But perhaps at Christmas. Christmas.

Wistful Anniversary

[Visual: faux-French menu from the Aberly dorm dinner this week (note the "Jello vert. . .liturgicalement correcte")] :)

So externally everything is peachy. Especially this: I got a 99 in Greek. Definitely fantastic. . .I passed with flying colours.

Tomorrow I'm preaching at Martin Luther in Bergton.

In order to get there, I'm driving all by myself for a two-and-a-half hour road trip home.

When I return to Gettysburg, I have friends here waiting to greet me warmly.

Amazing things that I never would have predicted a year ago. Driving?! Preaching??? Friends after two weeks? That doesn't sound like me. And yet here I am, myself still, but doing things the former Melissa could not have imagined for herself.

Why, then, am I melancholy? Why are you cast down, O my soul?

It's because it's the one-month anniversary of me leaving Iona. I'm scared of not seeing anyone for a while. I hate the idea that now half the vollies there have no clue who I am. . .not that they need to. I wish I were still in the midst of that experience, that I could have it again. But I can't, even if I forced it, because my best friends cannot be there any longer.

I talked with Katie a little last night about moving past the gift of Iona, which helped, even if she feels like I was talking myself in dark circles of depression. Last night was indeed bad, but here I am this morning, having refrained from making destructive decisions in the meantime. I hope that that's at least something.

Anyway, time for my journey home. God, please keep me safe, and help me grow rather than curl up and wither. I may be returning home, but I don't want to go back to where I once was.