The One Thing You Need to Know About Graduating

Death snuck into my small town one year and plucked teen after teen. Families excited about their graduating suddenly found themselves planning funerals instead. Accident, disease, a party game gone wrong, for so many different reasons, all with one tragic outcome.

They were suddenly gone.

Now graduation month is upon us and there are fewer cap tosses and parties than there should have been.

Four years ago, I graduated from home school. Two years ago, I graduated from community college. A month ago, I graduated from university.

My life has been a series of goal posts to hurdle, and I have come to the end of the line. But it is only the beginning. Yet I am staggered by some not even making it this far…

There is another type of graduation I look forward to, because as much as I’ve looked forward to these post grad days (no homework really is wonderful), my heart is not the happiest it could be. Because there is death like this. Her ponytail no longer swings; his jersey hangs in the closet, bereft. Mothers weep. Fathers don’t know what to do. I struggle to make sense of it all.

Then I acknowledge there is no sense to tragedy.

Not when people who are bundles of potential and possibility, who dreamed of the opportunity to go on to college like I did are snatched away…

What if I died tomorrow? That question smacks you when someone years younger than you has a funeral.

The answer? I’d be glad to go be with God where there is no more death. But my second thought? I won’t have even enjoyed this homework-less existence for a whole summer yet! What of my dreams of being an author, getting married, having babies, all the things I want to do before I die?

Trite, but true. When I’m Home, those things won’t matter. Here they do. Here hearts hurt. Here I sigh for the friends of those seniors. Left behind to move on and do all those things their friends won’t ever do.

When I’m Home, I will no longer war within myself. All struggles, sins, and sorrows will be swept away. The real happily ever after will begin.

That is the one thing you need to know about graduating–it is only the grand rehearsal for a far different commencement ceremony in which we will not receive a diploma or a degree. The Graduation of the Ages.

In memory of the ones we lost.