Grown-Up

I've been deep in the midst of writer's block, having nothing to say, wondering if maybe this was the end of the blog entirely. I haven't felt like writing, and even when I have had the time, haven't felt like working on my book.

Some of it is the "crash" that inevitably happens when one finishes school. I have graduated...I have persisted and for once in my life, I have actually finished the race. A miracle if there ever was one!

There has been a sense of "emptiness" that grew over our last semester and has continued to grow through our final class weekend, and got worse after our actual graduation ceremony.  

Once again, I have a sense that I am only a child playing "dress-up". I look around at my house, my car, my debt, my impending graduate loans and my undecided but probable Vocation and wonder, "How did this HAPPEN!?"

I want to run to someone in authority and explain that I am not old enough for all this responsibility, someone should contact some sort of guardian on my behalf, and save me from this mess in the midst of which I reside. 

It doesn't matter that I have been responsible for myself since I was 15 or so, probably even prior to that. It doesn't matter that I have survived for this long. What matters is that, well...I don't actually remember "growing up."  All I know is that it happened and I still wonder if perhaps somewhere along the line there was a miscalculation.  

Today I realized that it's been awhile since I have contacted my chosen "Theological experts" for assistance.  Certainly I have been involved in deep theological discussions, and at times, was answering a question or two posited to me. Yet only a few years ago, I was the one posing the questions to my own personal experts, people I still look up to and will always look to for guidance. Yet somehow, I can't look to them as often, nor do I need to. 

Instead, now, when I have a question, I go to my own shelf, I go to my own resources, and I look up the answer. This isn't always easy, and I recognize now that these questions I'm asking and answering now, especially those that require work, are the same types of questions answered by my friends and "experts" when I was too green to even know which current to follow. 

I've begun to see how much love was involved in answering my own questions, and the knowledge on the part of the people I pestered that, hopefully, that charity would grow within me as well. 

I can only hope that it has. 

I miss asking questions. Sometimes I wish I could still just email my friends so that they could answer the questions for me, but, no; now they would tell me to use my own resources. Some of them have begun to turn their own questions to me, not as a superior, not as a teacher as to a student, but as a friend to a colleague.  

I am intimidated as I know that as a "Master" I don't know nearly enough, but, apparently, I know just enough to go out on my own, to recognize the questions that NEED to be asked, knowing there are answers, but now...the weight upon me is to find them for myself out of the treasury I have been given. Yet there is still  a greater obligation; that of other souls. I have not been educated for myself, but on behalf of the entire Church, maybe the entire world.

But I am only one person. 

A person who can't possibly be grown-up enough to handle such a responsibility. 

Dear God,  have mercy on us all...I'm just a baby!