Packing up all my stuff for school is exhausting. There's so much to be done, and it's weird to see all the objects that are me in an organized pile on the floor of my childhood bedroom.

I'm looking around my room at all the things I keep. The small things I want to remember and save. How it all accumulates. Journals. Pictures. Books. They make me think about all that's happened in my life and what might have been. I am the result of all of these memories and experiences. Relics. Symbols. If what I did then equals who I am today, then what I do now equals who I will be tomorrow.

Moments teach, and grow, and scar, and heal. Moments come indefinitely but leave eternally. Once they go, all you can do is relive them. Riding shotgun in my brother's truck in high school. Sitting around a bonfire in the Missouri countryside with friends. Wrecking my dream car. Going to a foreign country by myself. Those are moments I can't change, can't go back to. Already, they are part of the equation. They are a part of my sum.

It's melancholic, to see all my life's materials laid out in front of me, to look back on an empty room with my dog snoozing in the corner, unaware. Man, I'm going to miss my dog. This summer, with all of its small revelations and feelings, was important. Yet, "there are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind." - C.S. Lewis

I look forward to more of those indefinite moments that take my breathe away. I ask for the Lord to multiply my sum, increase it, by showing me more of himself. I look forward to a school year where God reveals to me more the purpose I have, the passion that drives it and the girl that lives it.

We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect. Anais Nin