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* A gallery of grad-week pictures follows this post *
Graduation was yesterday, and though I tend to think I’m a bit of a sap when it comes to these events at BFA, I was comforted to read our director’s words this morning. I guess it hits us all in similar ways. Tim Shuman, who graduated his own son yesterday, wrote: “[I’m] trying to think of a word to describe this sadness, this excitement, this deep-down satisfaction, this emotional depletion, optimism, gratitude, this bonding and letting go, this exhaustion, and all these tears. What is that word?”
That word is love.
In a place like BFA, love comes with inflexible boundaries. It can exist—fully exist—only within the timeframe allotted to us, and with graduation, the love must transform into something different, something long-distance and usually changing. It’s the nature of this beast we call missions. All good things do indeed come to an end, an abrupt, jarring end, and the transglobal nature of our lives further broadens the chasm between what was so very real and tangible yesterday and is now a vestige of the past.
Several days ago, the senior girls were invited to a mother-daughter tea, and I was honored to be asked to stand in for Squirt’s mom. As we wandered around the Art Factory afterwards, I found these inscriptions on the walls outside, traces of passages that would not be forgotten as long as they were marked on unshifting stone.
I’m a firm believer in “marking moments.” Again—that’s probably a consequence of life as an MK. We experience so much and go through so many changes that it feels like we need evidence of joys past, of lives that have brushed ours and events that have shaped us. We need to be able to point at something and say, “See? It really did happen!” It’s the reason we sign yearbooks.
It’s the reason we leave messages on walls.
It’s the reason I have students leave their imprint on anything of mine that has meant something to them.
I need proof—visible proof. Because once the dust of something as momentous as graduation at BFA settles and those who have been such important parts of my life have vanished to other homes and other worlds, it often feels like there’s nothing left. And that void—that emptiness that used to feel so animatedly and lovingly FULL—becomes a yawning wound. There are exceptions. Thank God, there are exceptions. And Fiona’s return for this year’s grad was a balm and a promise for me. But I’ve been at this too long to ignore the fact that these relationships, these tandem-lives, will never be again what they were.
With Fiona
Graduation in other places means receiving a diploma, then wandering home and spending the summer with the same people who shared high school with you, waiting for college to begin and planning to see each other again on every break. At BFA? Well, at BFA, students arrive at grad like this:
And they know. They know that within 24 hours, they’ll have flown across the globe to places where their BFA experience will feel remote and surreal. So the aftermath of the ceremony is painful. The goodbyes are brutal. And for those of us who have been through 18 years of endings, they’re depleting.
I didn’t have the courage to mill around with the rest of the post-grad revelers this year. I’m ashamed to admit my cowardice. I sat in the open window of a second-floor English room and took pictures. My Canon is my barrier of choice when it comes to distancing myself from what is too achingly real. And these three (below)—these three whom I love more than I thought was possible—found me in my refuge. They came one by one to say their goodbyes and their love gave me the courage to venture down into the fray.
They’ve left their mark on the stone walls of my life in more ways than I can list. There’s a fan in my kitchen that Bear gave to me. He’d rush out of choir when he saw me “overheating” and return with it, placing it strategically to cool off his Tamoxifen-warmed teacher. It now says, in bold white letters, “The Giver of Life – Love, Bear.” Who knew that a fan could make me tear up every time I look at it?
But it’s the goodbye letters I read last night that mean the most to me. Those notes “my” seniors found the time to write in the insanity of their final days, their words of love and gratitude, they fill the aching void left by their departure with a welling joy. Because, you see, I often fear that though their names are engraved on my wall, I might have somehow misjudged my contribution to their lives. I might have failed to make a difference or leave a mark or guide them toward Truth or comfort them or cheer them on or challenge them or show God’s love to them in a way that might have jostled and deepened their faith. But the words I read yesterday…they comfort me. We will never be able to recapture what we’ve lived together, now that graduation’s milestone has passed. But what we did have was good—it was beautiful and significant and God-seeking. And those traces of joy and struggles and love that still surround me will remind me of His Faithfulness in making of this part of the journey something precious and true.
(Erin on her way up to say goodbye to me.)
At 2 am, last week, I sat outside against the wall of my house, staring up at the sky with three students and a saintly RA (who sacrificed sleep in order to allow the moment) while candles flickered in the grass. We were talking about BFA’s staff, and Erin—my dear, whimsical, sensitive and strong Erin—said, “I guess you’re paid to love us, aren’t you.” It wasn’t meant as cynically as it sounds… But I’ve learned one thing from working with teenagers all these years: if you take too much time to come up with a response, you lose credibility. So I fired back immediately with my heart’s best answer. “Nope—I’m paid to teach you. Loving you? That’s all me.” It’s not a job or an assignment. It’s the most natural and wonderful thing in the world.
As I posed with swollen eyes and aching heart for a few last pictures yesterday—a few last traces of what we’ve lived together—I realized that I have seldom loved more deeply than with these seniors this year. And if this day-after pain is a testament to that, I’ll gladly embrace it.
At the mother-daughter tea
Please pray for the graduates as they leave here today after a full night of goodbye’ing. For many of them, there will be a marrow-deep feeling of being adrift and bereft, at least until they get settled into their new college lives. Pray that they will seek God in the emptiness and follow Him in their pursuit of the future wide open before them. Pray that the Truths engraved in their lives by all they’ve experienced at BFA will continue to guide them and boundary them as they venture into an uncharted next phase. Lest you missed it—I love them. And I’d covet your prayers for them.
  PICTURES!
I asked Autumn for a quarter, so I could go out and buy myself a life... she gave me two. Yay. Two lives.  Sheer exhaustion.  Alumni games the day before graduation  Saying some tough goodbyes to staff on awards night.  Grad practice. Not much concentration there!  And now--life beyond grad begins in earnest. |
| | Posted 6/6/2009 2:41 PM - 63 Views - 6 eProps - 4 comments
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