48-17

Mind the Gap

My husband and I lead a small group on a campus near where we live. By near I mean under an hour drive [unless a van has somehow driven off the road and a state trooper walks in front of your car on the highway, hand outstretched, demanding the careful and quick attention of your breaks]. I arrived today without my husband. Early. Ready to talk about the articles for the week. I walked with and among the throng of lively young students, stopping for a couple on bikes riding down a sloping sidewalk. I walked into one of the student union. Where people come to socialize and study, for a snack or a performance. Two years out, I feel like a foreigner wandering through a crowd of strangers.

I think back to the years of standing in a doorway, knowing that what I did here was preparing me to walk through to the other side. I’ve been to the other side now, only to realize that I’ve simply found myself another doorway, waiting impatiently for the opportunity to walk through to the other side. But all of life is a doorway, maybe even a window at times. Pointing to what is beyond where we are, but never quite letting us get there.

As I sit listening to the murmur of hurried conversations, a view of food, iPod earphones, book bags and computers increase my distance. I wait for an epiphany that will not come. I realize how much I don’t belong and I wonder then where I stand. In the gap? Ah, but the Brits say to watch for that. The gap between past and present is a dangerous place to stand for too long especially if the past is filled with daydreams of a future unfulfilled and the present is a reminder that some of those fulfillments will never come.

The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.