The Beginning of the Adventure...

June 20—the day is starred and double-starred on my calendar. (“Star and double-star” is one of my special calendar code marks of enthusiasm.) I’ve been eagerly looking forward to it for weeks.

Why June 20? The days before it will be days of memories and exhilaration, red-letter days to be sure. The sixteenth through the nineteenth, twelve girls and I will be in Dallas together for the final stage of Advanced EXCEL—a journey begun in February. Final speeches, testimonies, rehearsals, private jokes, group pictures, black suits and business professional attire, a ceremony and reception, and more. They will be days of completion, of joy together in God’s faithfulness, and celebration of a job well done.

The days before June 20, I will be spending time with dear friends. I will be concluding five months of full-time study. I will enjoy deep fellowship, hilarious mealtimes, and matchless cheesecake. Those days will be a once-in-a-lifetime event.

But June 20 is the day I have starred: the day after all that is over. I will be home. No friends, no events. Why the stars and double-stars?

I love adventure. And the beginning of an adventure is the best part. The start of a road trip, the arrival at an airport, the first lesson of a new course, the first meeting of a new group—the rush of anticipation, the launch of something new. I even love the butterflies of uncertainty that occasionally flutter in the stomach. What makes an end sweet is the promise of the beginning of something new.

June 20 is the first day of a new adventure—summer. The nineteenth is an end; the twentieth is a beginning. The nineteenth will be filled with satisfaction and completion, and I will walk to the car to drive home in that solemn, quiet calm that always accompanies the end of a good thing. An end without a beginning, however, only results in aimlessness; an end with a beginning brings purpose, energy, and high exhilaration. My drive home will be the transition point.

As I drive, my thoughts will turn from “those things which are behind” and “ reach forth unto those things that are before.” Upon arriving home, I will vigorously unpack as much as I can and roll into bed. Memories of the afternoon will blend with anticipation of the morning.

When I wake up, appropriately late, the morning of June 20, I will feel as if I have been home for days. In the thrill of beginning, I will forget there was ever such a thing as Advanced EXCEL. After a breakfast on the porch, I will head to my room and spend the rest of the day doing what I have longed to do for almost a year: organize my closet.

That will be only the beginning of the adventure. In the following weeks, I will steadily progress through my room: after the closet, the dresser; after the dresser, the desk; after the desk, the bookshelves; after the bookshelves, the bathroom. I will practice music all the arrears of hours I have racked up in the past months. I will plan my studio’s next year. I will finish applying for college. I will lead a group of girls in a study of God’s calling on their lives and all its implications. I will immerse myself in French again, and spend time growing in godliness with lifelong friends. I will sew those skirts I have needed for the last year, and possibly the dress I have wanted for the past two. I will reorganize the family libraries—the books and the music. I will spend a week in the New Mexico Rockies hiking and relaxing with my family, with nothing to do but enjoy each other. And maybe I will even read those fifteen books I put down on my New Year’s Resolutions.

I will be no less busy then than I am now, but I will be busy in a different way. I do not desire to have nothing to do. I desire to do those things I have put off for so long. And June 20 is the beginning of the fulfillment of that desire.

Each adventure in my life adds richness to the next. I will bring the experience of Advanced EXCEL with me into the beginning of the rest of my life. I will chat with my dear classmates on g-talk, and catch up with them on the phone. We will always be in touch, I hope. Just because I go on to the new does not mean I forget the old. But just because I cherish the old does not mean I forget the new.

June 19 closes a chapter. June 20 opens another. I savor the close of this chapter, but I rejoice at the sight of the next. “Sometimes I get giddy!”, said William Wilberforce in Amazing Grace; at the sight of my starred and double-starred calendar, so do I.