bare.

I already wrote about leaving tonight. But it doesn’t help the reality that my room is now stripped bare, the white walls and boxes and bags stacked high in the aside the closet.

I can’t believe I’m finished with my first year at college! I want to laugh and sing, but I can’t. Because the truth is, I’m deeply and madly and completely in love with this place, and I don’t have an desire to spend any time way from it.

One might argue that it’s the people who make the place, and I think that is a valid statement. Without my best friends, this place would lack an element to it. A large element. But I’m not talking loving the place because the people I love are here, but rather, I love being in the contours of a location that has made me learn so much. Coming here changed me, and as hesitant I am to admit it, I have moved beyond where I was. There has been growth and change, and none of that has been, to be honest, particularly enjoyable. But it was necessary. And continues to be.

I’m going to miss the challenge that being here presents. The questions that are dreamed up by mid-day reveries and theological library ponderings and art that hangs inside Duke to inspire and continue turning wheels. There is beauty on this campus that I’ve never seen before: the rose garden in the dawn, the reflection of the moon upon the cross cornerstone bell tower of west campus, the line of pillars that seem to hold up the sunsets sometimes.

The reality is, I’m overwhelmed with how blessed I have been to have come here. I can’t think of a single place on earth that I would want to be than here.