nos vemos

every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.

thank you, semisonic. last night i continued the process of making an end in the face of a new beginning (t-minus 6 days in chapel hill). i had dinner and a movie with my beloveds, rachel and kristen, which we enjoyed despite the fact that betsey couldn't make it. when she arrived, rachel hugged me in a way that felt familiar. a simple hug, like one you'd give to the cousin you see every other weekend or to your best friend down the street circa fifth grade. then i sat in my same old seat at kristen's table, we ate kristen's bread & my salad & rachel's cookies as per usual. then we started chatting about goodbyes. how do you say goodbye to a person? to a place? i admitted to them that i usually cop out at saying goodbye because it feels too final. by pretending that i'm going to continue seeing someone just like always, despite the fact that we're going our separate ways, i remove the painful parting process and it instead turns into a gradual fading away. the problem is, that gradual fade thing usually becomes quite permanent. the painful stuff is what you've got to do to maintain stronger relationships. and here they were, two of the last people in the world i want to say goodbye to, helping me recognize that our time is coming to say goodbye, and i won't get away with fading them out.

are our lives just cycles of what is comfortable and what is unfamiliar? i was comfortable at home for 18 years, then college happened and i had to completely readjust everything i knew. now i'm quite comfortable at carolina, but it's time to leave and begin again. it is time. it may (it will) be awkward and transition-y in kentucky for a couple of weeks, but i know that before too long, that will be my home and that will be community, and i will be comfortable again. but this time it' will only be a year--then i'll jump into something else unfamiliar. i think eventually i'll stop moving for a more significant chunk of time, but right now, though it's a little scary and, in fact, uncomfortable, this is living! sure, i could stay in chapel hill forever and meet with rachel and kristen and betsey for dinner once a week and ride the CW bus to our beautiful campus and laugh with amanda in our room before we go to sleep. but then i wouldn't meet all these amazing youth in kentucky, and i wouldn't see what God has for me there. if i had turned around and headed back home because carolina was uncomfortable at first, i never would know the blessings that i am so reluctant to leave now! i was so nervous about co-leading with rachel because i'd never so much as talked to her in our first 3 years at carolina, and now she is one of my favorite people EVER, a genuine friend. what promise God has in store for us, if only we can make the jump into the unknown!

in all fairness, i actually have some extra assurance that this whole kentucky experience is going to rock. this past weekend, with my chinese leftovers i took home 3 fortune cookies, and all 3, yes count them, 3 , promise an exciting future:

• You are about to embark on a most delightful journey!
• New and rewarding opportunities will soon develop for you.
  
• Many successes will accompany you this year.
  

In my opinion, these are all a step above the normal ones you get, which aren't really fortunes at all: "you are a quiet soul" or "the dog needs walking" etc. now i don't know if God deals in fortune cookies much, but since He created the universe, i'm pretty confident in saying He could probably manage to get those little pieces of paper inside the cookies, thereby sending me a 3-fold assurance that this adventure upon which i'm about to embark is going to be stellar.

(i also know how to say "cherry", "how much", and "autumn" in chinese now--likewise quite useful)

i'm going to fayette-nam this afternoon to spend the night with kwood! i know this is a big one where i need to explicitly bid my farewells, so i'm going to try...but maybe not with goodbye. i think the hispanic culture has it right--a kiss on the cheek and "nos vemos." i'll be seeing you.