remember

10 years ago today I walked across a stage and accepted my bachelor’s degree.

I remember it very poorly; my ex-fiancé had broken up with me only a few weeks before, and most of the time in between had been filled with coffee, packing, nightmares, canceling wedding plans, panic attacks, goodbyes, ice cream, returning wedding gifts, and finals. I honestly don’t remember which one of those was the frontrunner in terms of time, tears, or tantrums.

but my graduation day was one to remember, even if I personally don’t remember it well. I was so thrilled to have earned a ministry degree. my parents and brothers, extended family, and of course my classmates, friends, professors–I just wanted to soak it all in.
instead I barely remember it.

I remember we went to lunch after my parents joined me for my last undergrad chapel.
I remember the best bread pudding I’d ever had.
I remember a close friend who had finished his degree in December deciding last minute to come walk with us, and I didn’t find out until a couple of hours before the ceremony.
I remember my shoes hurt, a lesson I hadn’t remembered from my high school graduation, nor one I bothered to remember at my master’s graduation.
I remember sitting alphabetically, with two close friends, Hewett Hodgson Huitt, but that’s as much from classes taken together as it is from the actual ceremony.

I don’t remember the speeches or the order of the service. I don’t remember what I wore or who I hugged first afterwards. I don’t remember much of anything else.
I do remember the simultaneous freedom and fear waging war for headspace. I don’t remember any words of wisdom or anything anyone said to me. I barely remember who I spoke to at all.
but I did get my degree, not because of that specific day, but because of the journey. I had moments of great clarity in college, moments that gave me the energy and drive to keep moving forward when I wanted to quit.

I find it fitting that today, my 10 year anniversary of graduating from college, falls on the Feast Day of the Ascension this year.

if Ash Wednesday is to remember our mortality, then the Day of Ascension is to remember our hope of glory. and if I am to remember my accomplishments, I also need to remember the pain and the confusion and fear, the anxiety, the stress, the sleeplessness — the humanity — of the process. it’s an imperfect, latte-fueled analogy, but I think in a way, college itself and my college graduation, are a reminder of our life itself, in all its pain and sweat and tears and laughter and all nighters, and of our own coming day of glory.
and I think that even my imperfect memory of May 13, 2011, will be redeemed in that day.