Fast. It went by so fast. It was a year filled with new things, hard things, sweet things, funny things, loud things & crazy things.
I want to list everything I did this past year, like graduate high school and start college, but I find myself unable to put into words the things that have happened. It wasn’t a single activity or occasion that I look back on. I look back on 2016 as a string of small moments. Moments that I didn’t recognize would shape me the way they have.
I sat on the floating dock, my back leaning against the outer wooden frame. No kids were swimming; only the wake moved through the water. I watched it. It started across the lake at the base of the hillside, a small ripple that looked powerless to touch me, to affect me. As it drew closer, I found myself mesmerized by its strength. The wind grabbed a hold of the wake and threw it forward with more force. Then it hit. Lifting the tiny floating dock, the wake traveled underneath and was gone in an instant.
My face was a sun-beaten red and my hair a matted mess beneath my cap. My lips were dry to the touch and stung whenever the wind brushed across them. My shoulders sunk forward slightly and reminded me just how tired I was. I am tired. I am so weak and weary. Those thoughts ran through my head, but not when the wake hit. Not then.
In the instant the wake hit, I had no thoughts. None. My body was engulfed in peace and I couldn’t think. I just felt.
That is such a small moment. So minutely small that I would never look back on 2016 and choose that as a mentionable moment. Yet, it is. Every moment was. The ones I fight to remember and even the ones I try to forget. I am in no way the Celeste of 2016. I have been gradually changed by the small things. The wakes that look powerless but later leave me different, changed in some incomprehensible way.
I am thankful for 2016, so thankful. It went by fast and I want to stop it-- “Hey, wait!…Can I say goodbye?” But I can’t and I don’t need to because 2016 has become a part of me. It was the year I turned 18 and officially became an adult. It was the year I learned how much more dependent I need to be on Jesus Christ. It was the year that I understood better what love should look like. It was the year I learned how to grieve properly. It was the year I sat on a floating dock and watched the wakes.
Goodbye 2016.
Comments