Break?

So, big secret: I hate Christmas break.

Before you label me a family-hating, school-obsessed scrooge, hear me out. My guess is that my compatriots who go away to school will sympathize, more or less.

When one spends the majority of one's year living in a college dormitory at least an hour away from home, one easily develops a second home. I am in my fourth year at Moody, and I've embedded myself in a very tight community of godly people who I am proud to call my friends. Some of them are so close that I eagerly call them family. In this world, I have a job. I am a full-time student. I love the tasks and people that occupy every moment of time, and I feel very much at home. Even stress and discomfort are workable, because it’s home.

Then I come home. Well, at least that's what I've always called it. What friends I had at home have moved on. They are either difficult to contact or hundreds of miles away. I haven't kept in constant contact with my family, so they don't quite know what to do with me when I show up. I'm not exactly the same person I was last time they saw me, having had many experiences of which they are uninformed. They know me insofar as they knew me last time I was home, which was not as well as they knew me the time before that, and so on. This is no shame to anyone involved, it's just a natural effect of going away to school.

The end of the semester always introduces a particularly difficult visit home, because it involves saying goodbye to those who have graduated or otherwise left. This time, my roommate graduated. I had a different roommate each of my first four semesters. The fourth of these I stayed with for four semesters, which was an incredible time of witnessing God's grace. He gave us inexplicable patience with each other as He worked on each of us. I cannot begin to tell you how much I grew in fellowship with this man, especially in the last six months. But, thanks to graduation, I said goodbye to my roommate this week. So far, it's been every bit as difficult as I expected.

My fiancée understands how difficult it is to geographically lose a friend, and hers have moved to the far corners of the earth. I'm very thankful for her compassionate hospitality towards me. Even if she doesn't know my experience perfectly, she understands key elements of it. That kind of compassion is particularly easy to receive.

I must be abundantly clear that I do not resent my home. I love my family to bits. They drive me mad, but if you refer to my very first post, you will see that I believe this to be an integral part of love. I don't begin to understand it, but I know it works because I live it every day. Anyway, I mean to say that the joy of family and of spending much-needed time with my fiancée is joy indeed, but it does not dissolve the grief of leaving my other home. It does nothing to assuage the disappointment of saying goodbye to my dearest friends.

I have heard horrible stories of thoughtless consolations given to those who have suffered the death of loved ones. "At least you have . . ." is my favorite. How, I ask you, is the presence of a spouse, a child, or even multiple children supposed to lessen the pain of loss? Now, such pain is well beyond my experience, but if my anticipation of marriage doesn't make me feel better about losing my favorite roommate, how can the joy of one child make up for the grief of losing another?

I tread lightly here, because I know that some of my readers in particular have suffered loss to which I cannot speak. You know who you are, and I trust that you know the reverence in which I write. I seek only to understand God’s grace more fully that I might better appreciate and articulate it when He drowns me in it.

Life is often understood by way of analogy. People enjoy relationships because they are an essential part of the image of God in man. God Himself exists in plurality (Father, Son, Spirit) unified by love (Trinity). Theologians often reference the German Dreieinigkeit because it is more directly communicative of three-oneness than English. I am no career theologian, but I am a thinking Christian and an unabashed lover of German, so there you have it. As God’s distinct persons are unified in love, we are able to unite to one another in His love.

So yes, relationships are fulfilling in a way. Why, then, are relationships so unsatisfying? I feel great in glorious fellowship, but why does the good feeling become empty when I’m only remembering the fellowship? How about this: God created us as essentially eternal, but we live presently in a temporal world. Thus, every joyful experience brings only limited joy complemented by limitless longing. I have limited joy at school, and I have limited joy at home, but each home leaves me with limitless longing for my eternal home.

I can’t remember where he first wrote it, but C. S. Lewis is famous for his description of this world as being full of shadows of eternal realities. That ontology made its way quite blatantly into The Chronicles of Narnia, at least once. If I’m not entirely mistaken, this is a Platonic way of thinking that finds solid ground in Scripture. A sinful reaction would be a docetism that despises the temporal world for its limitations. Much better is the approach in which I can thank God for what He’s already done in this world. True, I want very much to be rid of this nonsense and enjoy eternal love as God intended. But, eternity is not where God has placed me now. He has seen fit and good to place me within the constraints of time, in which He has also given me every grace necessary in which to live for His glory.

Recapitulating (in the spirit of a cohesive writer... ha), I hate Christmas break because it’s hard. It reminds me of the pain of ends. . . of temporality itself. I didn’t “finish” my relationship with my roommate (in quotes because the idea of finishing a relationship is meaningless), so I’m irritated that I can’t continue in it as it was. I’ve never “finished” anything at any home, so it’s always going to be difficult to leave as though I have and to come back as though I can pick up where I left off. These are terms that have meaning with Lego sets, not people.

So how does one finish a post on the meaninglessness of completion? Well, I plan to stop very soon, even if I haven’t finished a thing. I also want to say that I’ve been recently convicted of the need to pray more thanksgiving than petition. How often do we pray for God to do things He’s already accomplished, especially when we’re praying for ourselves? I pray for peace and rest, but God’s already given me all the necessary elements. Better to thank Him for those elements, to recognize the gifts already given, and to enjoy them. I thank God for today, for in it, He provided a fresh serving of joy with my family, with my fiancée, and with Him. I have had grief and frustration, but God has shown them to be glimpses of hope for eternity. As always, grace abounds.