Transition

It's the strangest thing to see that life goes on without me.
I spent a lot of time in high school thinking about what college would be like. I think I spent even more time in high school trying to avoid thinking about it. College was this frightening other-world kind of place. It wasn't quite real, and in all honesty, I regarded it the same way I regarded heaven; sure, it existed, but it was so far away that I would never really get there. It was a scary place where the workload was supposed to be so much that normal humans wouldn't function under the stress, and spend their days eating Ramen noodles and having stress attacks about the next test. It was a scary place because I knew that a lot of the people that I had closest relations with wouldn't be there any more.
Then I graduated. In all honesty, all of those thoughts about college sort of left my mind in the transition. In those summer months, I didn't think much about the high school world I left behind, or the fact that I was going to my dream college in a few months. Things became sort of surreal and at the same time so incredibly real. I moved into my ministry house with girls that I had known for years that had all graduated before me - I had dreaded and looked forward to this moment as well. I loved these girls and had missed them terribly when they graduated, but it was still the scariest thing to have to grocery shop for myself, to buy my own toiletries when they ran out, and to manage to figure out how to buy text books and get to class on time. One big change happened after another and it was all so much that it didn't even register to me what was happening.
Now, I'm in my second quarter of college. Life has developed an approximate, if slightly rocky, routine. Finally, I've started to look back on the life that I left.
And realize that other people are still living it.
A picture was posted on facebook that made me think this. It was a webcam photo of, I believe, Kevin, Jill, and Kelley. The three of them were all in my high school homechurch, Alpha, with me. Kevin should be a senior this year, and Kelley and Jill should be sophomores. They are in this world that I left behind, and they seem to be thriving in it. Back when I was in Alpha, relationships were a bit shaky. The group had just started growing my senior year,  but people were still getting their bearings, figuring out what kind of role they had in the group. I remember - it seems like years ago now - that one of the things that Joe and I (the two seniors of the group last year) worried about the most was what would happen when we were gone. We were the two leaders of the group, and the juniors at the time did not seem anywhere near to stepping up to fill the spots.
But I guess something changed. I don't know exactly what, but I know that that group has continued to grow. It's gotten better, even without me being there. I know a few college students that have stepped in as leaders because the group is so big, and it looks like people are actually starting to relate to each other more. Kevin, one of the two now-seniors, has at least stepped up to the point of being more than willing to drive people to Alpha this year, which is so much more than he was doing last year (and needed too, because in the past Joe and I were the only ones with cars). I don't know the details of Alpha anymore, I did graduate after all, but I hear updates every week, little accomplishments from the group, how it keeps growing, the breakthroughs that people have. It's amazing, and really weird to think about. I mean, I'm no longer there. Alpha is no longer my home. Yet often I have the thought that I'll be going there on Sunday, just like I did for those four years of high school. Like nothing ever changed.