adjustments

waking up this morning, i half-stumbled through our darkened dorm apartment and flipped on the light of the bathroom. my vision was blurry before the wonderful invention of contact lenses slipped into my eyes, but even they didn't help that much. my head was still swimming a little bit. trying to sort out if i felt ill or what was even going on, i felt my hand grasped by a familiar but unwelcome friend: fatigue.

she's my morning companion more often than not here at school, and the beginning of this semester is not that different. i have to push by her to clamber into the shower and fight her with cold water and coffee in order to start my day. she disappears for awhile but not before sucker-punching me and leaving behind dark circles under my eyes. she'll be back, she says, in the afternoon.

early mornings heading out to clinical placements are a common thread of my college experience. if you polled the nursing students here at bc at least, i think you would find that the overwhelming majority, if not all, of the soon-to-be nurses would tell you that the hardest part is the early mornings. and the late nights studying.

now, i wasn't studying last night, as school only began yesterday. in fact i was watching bc lose terribly to wake forest in basketball. still it was a blast to sit and yell and cling to that desperate hope that in the last minute and a half of the game we would surge forward fourteen points! (it obviously didn't happen). so i have no complaints if i'm a little groggy today.

but it's harder this morning. i spent the week before school being engaged in a five-day silent retreat out in a beautiful rural property out west of here. the forest reserve dipped down to the charles river, all blanketed in a thick carpet of pristine snow. i haven't seen so much natural beauty in a long time. the silence itself, while at times intimidating and overwhelming, became another friend. one like those dear to me at a distance, reaching out, a mutual longing to be together again, curbed by a tacit acknowledgment that things just can't be like that right now.

it's unfortunate that i have to adjust my expectations of things like sleep or time with god when the semester begins. but in many ways it is like a long-distance relationship. god is still present, we just touch base for a few moments everyday instead of lounging in each other's presence for hours on end, sharing whispered secrets and inside jokes.

i struggle to not be disappointed as i let that vision of god go for a time. i feel the freedom from god to be present here, to seek god in the dear friends in my life and the classes i take. but part of me protests against the separation. isn't there another way, my soul cries. but then the rejoinder simply comes: why so downcast, o my soul? the lord is marvelous indeed.