Leaving the Dorm: Thoughts and a Prayer

"You Can Never Go Home Again"
I explain this concept a lot when I talk with residence hall students about returning home. After several months abroad, with unfamiliar food, less-than-clean bathrooms, loud roommates, and boring Sundays, they have in their heads an idealized version of what being at home will be. They imagine the simultaneity of all their favorite things. They imagine being able to control their lives, only sunny days.

I have learned that home is growing even while we're growing in another place. We (who "we" are, precisely, I'm not qualified to say) have this tendency to complain about wherever we are, then to idealize it when it's gone.

It seems right to attempt to disabuse them by explaining the phrase, "you can never go home again." (And I promise I don't whisper it in a raspy voice, like a threat...)

The Menial and the Repetitious
Last night, as everyone was headed to their halls around 10 pm, Wendy (a tenth-grader) and I sat on the floor in the hall, and talked about our impending loss of each other's company. We agreed that even though I would visit next year, "It just won't be the same." What is it about how things are right now that's so good? How is the menial and repetitious so sacred? And why don't we notice it in the moment?

What do I mean by the menial and repetitious? Just the normal stuff.
The people who live here just do normal stuff together:

- We say goodnight five or six nights a week. 

- We eat breakfast together once or twice a week. And when we are sitting there in the cafeteria at 7:20 am, we barely say anything. There is nothing to say. (We clearly stayed up too late last night, and every night.)

- We take the trash out together late at night.

- We laugh at Youtube videos. 

- We complain about the weather. 

- We talk about food, teachers, classes, and homework.

- And on a not-so-rare occasion, we talk about the heart and its workings. 

Next year I'll be on the outside of it all. I'll be back for visits. But it won't be the same, because life is built with the menial and the repetitious. I know that I have already lived some of my greatest moments, and am unaware of what they were: it was something I said, did, or did not say that a student will remember forever, that may change the way he or she treats his or her own kids... and who knows where that ends!?

A Prayer
God,
I'm humbled when I think of the impact of all those interactions, for better or for worse.
If there is glory to be had, may it be yours alone!