(Sigh of Relief)

I'm back!
That's right. The year for schooling is coming to a close. I have already completed most of my finals. Spring Fling is over. No more performances. No more after school activities.
As for the things I am going to miss. No more youth group on Sundays. No more home group on Wednesdays. No more seeing my friends every day at school. No more eccentric Reedisms (pernt, missoura, lawr). No more singing sweet choral music.
Back to the good side of it all. No more paper crams late at night. No more dead lines. No more projects.
I have made it through my first year ever in public school. And though this experience has been a stressful one, full of joys and sadness. It has also been a tremendous lesson for me in the sovereign power of God.
It's almost a faint memory, but I do remember the beginning of the year. The loneliness. Being separated from my old friends, and not having any new ones (yet). The fear of all the school work, and not being able to meet up to the standards. Looking for the end of it all as though I was looking through a seemingly eternal tunnel.
And now that end has come. I have more friends than I could have hoped for. I have better grades than I ever thought I could possibly achieve. (Take that Martha Grace Josie. I am a good writer and I bet you knew it all along. You were just holding me back, weren't you? Well thanks for "trying" to help. I did learn a couple of things from you that did help a bit.)
I look back after coming to the end of this terms finals, and I see definite and apparent works of God in my life. At the very least there have been the miracles that he has pulled at the end of every term, when I have had a billion things to do and no way that I knew of to actually finish my finals projects. Every term he has brought me through my finals successful and unscathed.
Each term has been more than just a change in classes and routine. Each term has built me up a little at a time, each one preparing me for the next. And I see this not as the great work of the schools planning staff and counselors. I see it as the divine plan of God for my life.
It hasn't been all fun and games. In fact most of the growth I have undergone has come in times of great distress. Times when all I had to fall back on was God. No one else was able to help. No one else could understand.
As I look back I see that it has been a very hard year. And one that I would not want to do over again next year. But I do not regret in the slightest having done it this year. I rejoice in every step of the journey. In the good times, as well as the bad, I rejoice unto the Lord. For it is because of him that I have become the person I am today. And it is because of him that I look forward to the journey it will take to become the man he desires me to be tomorrow.

Attention: Days of school left, 3!
Senior count: TERMINATED!!!

Haha. Sorry. I couldn't help myself.