Welcome Back (and Stay Back)
"Welcome back!" my teachers told me as I walked into my school today, a mask pulled over my nose, six feet apart from my friends. Today was my last first day of high school, the beginning of senior year, and I started it all with the smell of hand sanitizer and the beep of a temperature gun held to my forehead. Not the way I envisioned it all these years, if I'm completely honest. I expected fanfare, and hugging my friends, and laughing with my teachers. Life doesn't always work out that way.
If I am completely honest, this school year began with a lot of anxieties for me. It's my final year, and all I saw looming before me was a giant "End of the Road" sign, in a way. High school had become my comfort place, the friendly voices of my teachers guides through my academic life and my best friends my favorite people outside of family to see. I know the hallways like the back of my hand, and I know most of the staff by first name. It's a smaller school, and to be honest (as cheesy as it sounds when our director says it) it does feel like a family. So the idea of starting my last year, after which I will be thrust out into the world, was nerve wracking to say the least.
I quite literally felt like I was beginning to lose a lifeline.
To be completely honest, I struggle with living in the present. I get caught up in the future and all the what-ifs circling around in my head. Up until recently, I just chalked it off to 'how I am' and the 'hard wired problems' that came with me. I'm not completely wrong in thinking that, but I recently recognized why I can't just brush it off like that. I was reading C.S Lewis' The Screwtape Letters for school, which is written in the form of letters that a demon named Screwtape writes his nephew Wormwood about his "patient" or the man that he is in charge of tempting. In one of these letters, Screwtape tells Wormwood that humans must be kept unfocused on the present. That hit me hard. I'm rarely focused on my present. I'm so worried about how my future will pan out that I miss out on the here and now.
I risked that happening again when school started. I was so anxious about finishing high school I hadn't even really paid attention to my first day. And I realized that when I got there, I was happy to be back. Even if I had a mask on, even if I wasn't sure what was going to come next. God had given me the opportunity to go back to school which many don't have right now, and I had to make the most of it.
Life never goes according to my plan, but that's what makes it beautiful.
In the midst of my first week at school, I made a decision. I'm going to start praying that God will help me live in the present. That He will allow me to keep realizing that the past is over, the future is in His hands, and TODAY is the only day I have to enjoy. That's going to be my goal for this year, and I hope maybe you'll take it into consideration too. God made us beings that live in time, while He resides outside of it. Within us there's a need for balance in everything. Balance between the future and the past is found in the present. If we become preoccupied with either the future or past, we lose out on the opportunities God is giving us now, and we will be incapable of glorifying Him, which is the true purpose of a Christian.
Spiritual warfare is real, and one way the devil can try and keep us away from God is to keep our minds off of what we can do for Him NOW. He'll want to fill our minds with what-ifs, instead of "what is my next step?". My mom likes to tell me, "One day at a time, Kit." based off of a hymn, One Day at a Time Sweet Jesus. And I think I'll start reminding myself of that more often. One day at a time, with Jesus at our side.
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