A Freight Train Through the Abyss

"There is something beautiful about the billion stars held steady by a God who knows what He is doing. They hang there, the stars, like notes on a page of music, free-form verse, silent mysteries swirling in the blue like jazz."

-Donald Miller in Blue Like Jazz

My boat cuts through the water of Lake Wallenpaupak and I melt into the seat beneath my blanket as the wind filters itself through my hair.  The stars swirl in the blue like jazz above me and I embrace this moment I share with my family.  

I'm in Limbo.

Limbo is a place that I visit when concern escapes my mind.  It's like there are absolute value bars around brief periods of time where I don't have to think about anything at all.  Right now the bars are up because I just finished at my summer job, I don't have classes for a week, and I am at peace. It's like I'm in that infinite Limbo land from Leo's latest movie, Inception. 

Beyond my immediate state of being, I am also in a four-year long limbo between worlds.  The first is a world of comfortable familiarity, and the second is an exhilarating abyss.

I'm in college.  

In other words, I'm on a four year vacation from responsible reality.  The daunting truth about limbo is that you eventually need to come out of it. And that scares the pants off most people.  

Starring into the majestic night sky from my boat, I am reminded of the exhilarating abyss of adulthood that approaches like a hungry freight train.  I remember that all my life, I have associated darkness with unpredictability and excitement.

As Kenny Chesney puts it, "Everything gets hotter when the sun goes down."  The sun goes down and people dance.  They paradoxically wake up and live more intensely, because the darkness dares them not to sleep and do something more exciting before the mother sun comes back to check up on things.  

There are plenty of reasons for me to remain attached to pre-limbo childhood.  I am very lucky to have had a wonderful relationship with the first two decades of my life.  But as I creep closer to post-limbo independence and responsibility, I think about darkness, and how I'd rather skip through the dark than sleep through it.  

I'm not afraid to surface from my limbo.  I'm coming at adulthood like a hungry freight train, instead of letting the train threaten to crush me.  Adulthood is an exhilarating abyss - unpredictable, energizing, and pretty freaking cool.