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A few nights ago, Stephanie, Ellie, and Anna sat with me around a table. A bowl of freshly-made cookie dough and a sweet tooth were the only things that physically separated us in the midst of a vibrant conversation.  Each girl talked about her plans for the future– college, marriage, a new phase in life.  Me?  I looked at the girls intently as the reality sank in that I would be coming back to the town of Laurel, whereas they would be moving on.

My mom is always commenting on how I don’t handle change well.  When we first moved to Laurel from Maryland (years ago), I would sit on the steps of our new house, wailing and crying as I screeched the words, “Where are my stairs?”  Later, Mom would find me in the kitchen, wailing, “Where’s my kitchen?”  This ritualistic outplay of my drama-queen tendencies would continue on in each room until I had covered all my ground.  My house in Maryland was gone, and this place, well, it just wasn’t the same.  In some ways, I’m still that little girl, clambering to hold onto a past that I have placed my mark on.  It’s the curse of a sentimental nature and of the historian in me.

…But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. -Paul

Today, I turn twenty-two years old.  The older I get, the more I am able to grasp the “fleetingness” of life.  This may sound funny to say, but ever since my twentieth birthday, I’ve experienced major crises each year concerning the brevity of it all.  I’m hoping that the feeling will wear off by the time I hit thirty (the typical time for a crisis to occur), but I have a feeling it won’t.

A scene from a movie keeps replaying in my mind.  Since I’m a sucker for period dramas, what better to allude to than Gaskell’s North & South?  The heroine of this series is a girl named Margaret Hale, who experiences a reality jolt when her father uproots her family from the agricultural south of England (Helstone) to the industrial north (Milton).  Throughout the film, she experiences a constant inward struggle, desiring to make the most of her experience in Milton while comparing it to her idealized past in Helstone.  At the end of the film, she visits Helstone again, but she doesn’t find what she expects.  Things are different.  Life has moved on.  And, she is suddenly disillusioned by what she once thought was sweet.  The flowers lose their luster, and the memory of her innocence seems empty when it is echoed back to her.  Suddenly, she is clambering to get back to Milton.

One disservice the Romantics did for humans was looking backwards when their sights should have been set forward.  The other disservice was in teaching them to idealize the past in their search for an ultimate existence.  They were looking in the wrong place.

Have you ever longed for something that you once had, then, when you returned to it, found something different than what you had left behind?  God is showing me how ugly the once-familiar can look when I revisit it.  How out-of-place and foreign and uncomfortable it can be.  And, although we are not called to forget, we are entreated to move on toward an upward call.  This, of course, requires a balancing act of emotions.  I’m reminded of the Israelites.

Right now, I’m reading through the Old Testament, and the revelation of it all is so refreshing and… new.  If you ever start struggling in the books of Numbers and Deuteronomy (which is a very easy thing to do), give yourself the task of counting the number of times God tells the Israelites to Remember.   You will lose count, I promise.  God is constantly reassuring them of His love by calling them to remember what He has done for them in the past.  So you shall remember and do all my commandments, and be holy to your God.  I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt to be your God: I am the Lord your God (Num. 15:40,41).   It’s a sin to not exercise one’s memory, but it’s also a sin to live in it.  God called on the Israelites to remember in order that they would conquer the land.  And, in doing so, they would conquer their fear of an unknown future.

A two-fold command: Remember and Conquer.  The word conquer gives off a sense of forward motion, don’t you think?

Moving forward isn’t dandy.  In fact, it’s hard.  And, just when I begin to settle into a new stage of life, it’s time to move again.  This, I think, is to make me appreciate and realize that my home is not here.  I’m a citizen of another realm, and this other realm is a perfected blend of the old with the new.  Some things of the past we can’t wait to leave behind, and some things of the future we hesitate to approach for fear of losing a precious moment in the past.  The older I get, the more I realize that the beautiful moments of the past really aren’t beautiful.  In fact, they’re really only reflections–mirages that point to a deeper beauty.

C.S. Lewis once said, If I find in myself desires nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.

Why would I hold onto vapor and air?  The things that make the past beautiful lie beyond this world, and an ingrained knowledge of their ultimate existence hints to me through earthly forms.  It seems that Plato was onto something.  An ideal.  Something more real than what I experience everyday.  A love more real than the relationships I foster now.  A home that will put all my nomadic attempts to put down roots on this earth to shame.

But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city. – Hebrews 11:16

This gives me hope, but not in the sense that I discount everything in the past (or even the present).  I recognize these experiences to be fuel, driving me toward an ultimate reality.  A favorite artist of mine once referred to this reality as “the aroma of the new.”  The term has stuck with me ever since.

My coming back to the Helstone of my past will be sweet.  It will be sprinkled with new people, a new stage of life, and a new outlook.  I am coming back a different person, and I plan to leave as a different person.  The old, encased in the aroma of the new.