Great Expectations

I will never forget how the girls waited in the front yard while I emerged from the house—again—with my arms full—again. Dad was waiting at the restaurant to depart for Dallas with my allegedly packed and ready car but here I was inside the house, remembering something else. Maybe I left those things out on purpose, wanting those armfuls to keep me there, just a little longer.
I will never forget those girls bowing their heads together by the curb of our dirty-blue house, how Beth prayed over us, over me.
I will never forget those dear women leaping and waving their arms wildly with unexpected joy, as we drove away, producing in me sudden unbearable pain and heart-wrenching fondness.

And so we parted, leaving in memory what is too often referred to as the best years of one's life: college. Why do people say that? Is it the freedom? Freedom from worry, from time, from responsibility? Or the community? Common spaces with one's closest friends, every hour of every day? Those mornings when you decide to combine your resources with the roommate to create a breakfast masterpiece, waking the whole house with a coffee grinder and the favored french singer crying from the iHome, or an evening after several days of sleep deprivation and someone can't get out of her clothes and into her nightgown so you fall to the floor laughing until someone else runs to the room screaming excitedly that everyone is home—an anomaly for our house of six over-scheduled senior girls—and the sudden burst of Beyoncé brings everyone energetically back to their feet.

On those rare moments when I allow myself to mourn, it is not for the loss of freedom, but the loss of that community. But it is not lost forever. My great expectation is to live with these girls again, and until we bring our years and our families together, I intend to make the preceding years as incredible as our last four years together.

So, here's to those meetings spread across the years, when time and distance will show no wear on our reunited joy! To our unity in our faith in God—from whom we can expect great things—and the love that he demonstrated to us through his Son! May we strive to honor Him first in all things.