the tide goes out and comes in, taking seeming expanses of time to accomplish a few yards of space. but there’s one moment when it all turns around. you probably can’t pinpoint the moment that it happens, but some hours later things seem to be reversing and you know something changed. the water reached that magic point, the moon and the sun were in the right place, and the spinning world’s oceans began to recede again. i can’t really tell yet, but this may be the changing of my tides. i’ve been treading water while the time passes, fighting my urge to make anything happen, to wait for the right thing. i can go out and have a drink, go out and meet people, go out and create some fun, but i know that the things i really want are things that i can’t create for myself. so i wait on God, for the unfolding of the next chapter of the story He’s writing with infinite creativity. sometimes i think i understand parts of it. maybe my illusion of knowing where things are going is leagues from the truth, but it rarely stops me from trying. so if you’d ask me to explain the way i’ve been spending most of my time lately, i could give you a guess at best. i think maybe we never met before now because God has separate places that he is sending us. i think maybe i got the chance to meet him now because God saw fit to give me a graduation present. or because he saw my hopes wearing thin and wanted to remind me of all the people in the world that i haven’t met yet. maybe there are a hundred reasons for this strange timing, for having four years to meet someone and then not doing it till twelve days before the end. but i’m sure the reasons are sound. i’m not going to argue. a gift is a gift, no matter how long you get to keep it.