The Light at the End

As I sit here tonight, with my son’s sleeping head lying against me and my wife resting next to him, I am spending a moment taking inventory.  It has been a rough week for my wife and I but it is almost over and things should be ok.  But on a larger scale, a larger stage of my life, I seem to be approaching a…..mark on my time line.  Just a couple weeks ago I created a quick time line for the class of kids I am student teaching that represented on a small scale, my life.  As I finished it, the realization came to me that I would soon be able to mark a new point on my time line signifying that I graduated from college.  Not just that but it will signify that I have actually followed through with a hope-a dream-an item on my bucket list.  Graduating from college and becoming officially able to be a teacher had always been one of those things you answer your teacher as a kid when they ask what you want to be when you grow up.  How many people can actually say that they ended up doing what they said or really even remember what they said at all?

It was hard.  Getting to this point took more strength and determination than the kid version of myself could have ever imagined it would have been.  What my kid version also did not understand was how profound actually accomplishing this is to me.  I can’t put my finger on it but it captures feelings within me that I have rarely experienced before.  I feel proud, exhausted, and somehow vindicated.

Did I ever really believe I could get here?  I am not sure I did.  I think always in the back of my mind I gave myself a last word when thinking or speaking of this upcoming event that said “Yeah, right!  That would be nice but you know better than that!”

Well voice in the back of my head, “Shove it!”  I am merely a handful of steps away from the finish line and I am fairly certain I am not imagining all of this!

The only thing is, everything else that is connected with this, with me, was not what I imagined.  I don’t exactly know what else I expected-maybe nothing thanks to that silly voice in the back-but I don’t think I could have imagined up anything better than how it all seems to be coming together.  I could not possibly ask for such a wonderful little world I have around me.  Most of the time I am pretty sure I don’t deserve it.

So as I approach that light at the end of the tunnel, with the fabled and incredible end just beyond the reach of my finger tips……….I stop for just a second to take a breath and glance at what there is behind me.

Who would have guessed?!