I saw a message on the beach yesterday,
and it’s stayed with me ever since.
I took a half day yesterday, and as I
was strolling in the sand before the rain hit I saw that someone had
written, in rather large letters, the phrase “I miss my family”.
If I had to place a bet on who wrote it, I’d guess an NMU student,
someone who’s just left home for the first time, and has discovered
that living on your own isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I mean,
think about the first time you moved away from your home town and
your family, and how you felt for the first couple of weeks. I know
how I felt; of course, I actually moved all the way across the
country, which, I’m sure, compounded things even more.
The message actually got to me a
little, and made me wonder about who wrote it. I just hope that
whoever did write the phrase in the same realizes that it WILL get
better. Pretty soon, you’ll settle into a routine, you’ll get to
learn more about Marquette and how great of a place it is, and,
hopefully and most importantly, you’ll find yourself with what
amounts to a surrogate family--friends, co-workers, other people who
are in the same situation as you. That’ll make the loneliness
you’re feeling right now a LOT better. Just give it a chance.
I know change is hard, especially when
you're doing it on your own for the first time. It's scary. You're
doing stuff you've never done before, and whatever support system you
used to have isn't there anymore. But humans are great in one
regard—we adapt. We change. We grow. We handle whatever gets
thrown at us. I just hope that in a few days or a few weeks or a few
months you're able to think about what you wrote in the sand, and
realize that you've been able to adapt yourself.
And if nothing else...that's what
phones and Facetime are for, right?
*****
You know I wrote a few weeks ago about
how every single person we know keeps asking us it if seems weird
that we're not getting ready to go to Europe? Well, today's the day
you can stop. Today's the day that we'd normally be hopping on a jet
plane and heading over there.
And yes, it DOES feel a little weird.
So maybe you were right to ask.
8-)
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