Graduation

It was one week ago that I was buttoning my shirt, looking out my window onto the sidewalk that runs in front of our dorm apartment. Down the sidewalk were small families of two's or three's walking around with rare, unreserved smiles on.
The soon-to-be-graduates were scurrying about, their excitement clearly warn along with their black cap and gown. I was running a bit late, but I wasn't in too big of a hurry. I knew the drill, we had run through it so well the day before. We were to all go into Neufeld Hall auditorium, sit in our assigned, alphebetical, marked-by-number-order seats, while Michelson Center gets filled with parents, relatives, loved ones and friends. Then we were to descend from our assigned seats in an every-other-row to opposite door order and walk across campus with a rose in our left hand to the awaiting graduation ceremony. Since I had it all memorized, and since LCC is notoriously late with any event, I stood tying my tie in ease, watching my fellow classmates run past my window.
Ceremonies serve as signs that mark certain days, and in doing so those days in some way become sacred. They allow you to reflect on the growth and gain, on the loved and lost. I realized that this day was a ceremony which encompassed the past ten years of my life -- it was a closing of many things in my life which I have kept open for a long time. My openness has led me through the past ten years. It was as if I were going wherever I pleased. I made many plans and shared many dreams, but no one could tell where I was coming from or where I was going.
This way of living may very well have led me to become a permanently open and utterly unformed person, but I found the opposite happened. I have been molded. I have found a center and boundaries. I have lost family members. I have found true friends. I have committed to marriage. I have been given so much, and what I was given was exactly what I needed. I was given love by those around me and by God. And that love came in the shape of pushing and pulling. If it were not for that rising and crashing of these years I would not have become a man who can identify up from down, right from wrong. I would not be able to stand at that window, Becky's and my window, in Lithuania, watching the gathering of a community of which I am a part.
In the stage of life which was closing before me, I became aware that I knew how to stand for the first time--how to stand as a son, as a husband, as a friend. And it is not by strength of self. I learned that one can only stand in the midst of others. One will only stand because of others, for others.
I didn't know it then, but this awareness was soon to become only more poignant when, later that night and over the next few days, Becky would hand me a stack of letters from what would amount to nearly everyone from back home. How could I have foreseen the filling up of my heart, and the accompanied longing for home which was to come? How could I have known my inability to express my gratitude? How could I reflect all that I have been given for so many years?
And as I put a light cotton sweater on over my shirt and tie, and then my cap and gown on over those, I could feel that I was standing. And I see now that standing was, in itself, what I could do to reflect what I was given. I can be present for all the people in my life. I can be there for my family and friends. I can be a source of love and support for Becky. If it were not for all of the people surrounding my life, I would not know how to do any of these things. I could not stand if I had not been picked up so many times.
As I walked out the door, I felt the loving hands of my parents from my childhood, from my friends which I've had for half my life or would give my whole life for, and the enormous amount of others, pressing against me, keeping me standing up and giving me the desire to stay standing.