an advent of the burnt-out soul

As I sat at my computer this afternoon, thinking about class and homework but paralyzed, incapable of doing anything but organizing my music in iTunes (a new distraction for me) and working on my wedding website, I realized something: I am burnt out with school.

I can't wait to get to Baltimore tomorrow night. I love being in the apartment, doing the mundane things like folding laundry or cooking, and I get excited about spending quiet evenings with Matt. Even doing homework feels better when I'm in a place that feels more like home and less like a bedroom. I really do like my dorm room this year -- it's clean and roomy and I like the way that my things fit into it. It's a great space, but the knowledge that it's still school impairs things a bit.

Each week, I do my field education responsibilities -- meetings and youth group, worship and singing, living the life of a "church person" -- and it feels so trite or insignificant to be doing homework when I feel like I could and should just be living the life I'm ready to lead.

I am in a period of waiting. Sort of like Advent...though it gets harder and harder each day to live in anticipation. Instead of eagerly anticipating my wedding, I am begrudging the fact that there are still five weeks to go. Instead of getting excited about moving down to Baltimore completely this summer, I resent the spring semester of school that I have to finish first. Instead of relishing my time here at PTS and looking forward to the rest of my time here before I graduate, I am annoyed that this is a 3 year masters program, and that I have a year at Philly before I am actually done with school.

These days, I wait by trying to idly pass the time. Lots of sleep, lots of movies and tv, lots of computer-time...keeping this blog is even some sort of subconscious attempt to waste time in order to make it pass faster.

Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus. -Philippians 3:12-14