Graduating

It's graduation season!

Graduation is always a poignant time for me, of endings as well as beginnings. This year has been, shall we say, full of growing opportunities--big ones, like that one of my kids is now a driver and another is graduating high school, my sister remarried, my mom died last August after a painful and long struggle, and now my dad is remarrying in a couple of weeks.

It feels like I keep having multiple 6.0 personal earthquakes. I'm trying to grab on to something or someone, desperate to keep pressing forward even as the ground heaves.

I thought of these major life changes, and especially my mom, when I heard "For Good" from Wicked sung by this week high schoolers and the lyrics (again) touched me powerfully. (The words are below, or you might like also to hear it sung beautifully by Idina Menzel and Kristen Chenoweth on Youtube by clicking play below.)

The Parable of the Bed Frame

Mr. Jennifer and I were dissatisfied with our bed. It was creaky, so we propped it up on cinderblocks and lost all of the storage space underneath. It had a piece of moulding at the top that poked me in the head and made it impossible to sit in bed without hunching. It was pretty nicked from two moves and lots of kids and pets jumping on it over the years. We purchased this bed frame second-hand-in-the-first-place in 1999, so it had had a good, long life!

I guess over the years I became content to be discontent. It was easier to complain than do something about it. My frustration built up very gradually, but one day, I finally said, "Why am I putting up with this? Life is too short to spend 1/3 of my time in a bed I hate."

But new beds are expensive, right? Fear shuts down the desire for change before we even acknowledge the desire as a real thought.

I was brave. I pushed through the deprivation mentality:

• "I have to hold on to it, even if I'm unhappy, because at least I'll have something." 
• "What if what I want isn't out there?" 
• And even more scary: "What if I don't even know what I want?"

I knew I wanted change, even if I wasn't sure what that was yet. I looked on our local online ads. My exact bed frame was being sold by someone else--for $150! I said, "Well, no one would ever pay that for mine, but instead of hauling it to the dump, how about I throw it out there for $75?"