Oxford Report Card

Today is the last day of the Oxford term. In a few hours I will be done with my last lecture, last night I turned in my last essay and a week from today I will have finished my final paper and be packing my big purple suitcases to come home. With only a week left of this study abroad experience I am starting to ask myself... have you learned your lesson? Its like I am a third grader waiting for their report card, hoping that I can bring home an A+ in growth, hoping for at least a B in independence, and not expecting much more than a C- in homesickness. Have I learned my lesson?
I had all these great expectations and hopes and promises to myself that I would grow this semester. That even though growing pains are just that, painful, I wasn't going to let them hold me back from coming home all grown up. The first few weeks I cut myself some slack, realizing that everything around me was new and that I was still homesick. Then I think I stopped caring quite so much. It got easier, I got comfortable, and the sleepless nights and tears were fewer and further in between. But then, as the semester started rushing to the end, I started thinking about grades, and wondered, would I have a good report to bring home with me?
And when I was two weeks away from being home... I cried on the phone with Aaron about being homesick. I couldn't sleep that night because that same question was rolling around in my head- have I learned my lesson? Wasn't this supposed to get easier? I was supposed to grow and be independent and come home all grown up and confident, so that people would look at me and say, 'wow, she really changed...' So that people would look at me...And that's when it hit me.
I am so afraid to be weak.
I am so afraid that if you look at me, you will see the cracks in the pottery, that the imperfections will be glaringly obvious, that I'll look weak.
But if I think I am fooling anyone, I'm crazy. Of course I'm not perfect. And no one but myself expects me to be.But I couldn't help but ask myself, wasn't there something more that you were supposed to learn? I want to come home and be able to answer the question, 'what did you learn?' with something more than, 'Ann Radcliffe was the first female Gothic novelist' or 'The oldest standing building in England is a Cathedral built in the 12th century'. I want to say that I learned something about myself and that I let God change me. So why I am still scared? Why do I still care so much what other people think of me? Why am I still so afraid of being weak? Haven't I learned my lesson... yet?
But just like a little kid who wants to be taller, you can't make yourself grow. I can't put a weight on my imperfections in the hopes that I will be taller in the morning. I can't make a check list of things I will be good at after living in Oxford and hope to check them off one by one. I cannot make myself something I am not. I am who I am, and if God made me short, then all the stretching isn't going to make me tall. But who said short isn't beautiful? If God made me a home-body, then all the separation in the world isn't going to stop me from missing my family, and counting down days and minutes and seconds until I see them again... But the homesickness that I am still trying to conquer will not hold me back. And who says that missing someone can't be sweet? That the very people I miss, can't be the strength that reminds me why I am here, rather than a weakness?
All I can do is live, and let God make me who I am supposed to be. He is the one who tells the little kid that he may never be six feet tall, but that doesn't mean he can't love basketball. I will have faults. I am imperfect, but that doesn't mean I can't continue to learn. There would be nothing to work towards if I had it all together. I am going to fall down, I am going to mess up, I am going to be weak, but that doesn't mean I won't get up, I won't keep walking, or that I stop trying to be the woman God is making me to be.
Have I learned my lesson?
The truth of the matter is, I have learned so much. I have grown in confidence, and goofy-ness, and even in my imperfections. I learned that I am not as put together as I think I am, that I don't have all the answers, that I am still afraid of so many things. And the funny thing is, that with a week left to go, I cannot actually put a finger on what that 'lesson' was supposed to be. It might be two, three, twenty years down the line when I look back and say, 'So, that's what I learned at Oxford!' It might be on the plane on the way home, it might be as I ride my bike down the hill in twenty minutes to go to my last Oxford lecture. I might have learned my lesson in week two and I just don't realize it yet. The important thing isn't that I learned my 'lesson' but that I learned. That I am still imperfect and still willing to grow. That I am still afraid of somethings and that I conquered others. That I come home in a week and don't stop asking and searching and seeking growth in the same way I did here in Oxford.
In Oxford, they don't give report cards, they don't even give grades on papers. You get notes in the margins that tell you what you did well and what you need to work on. That's what I am going to do with this semester. No grades. Just the acknowledgement that I did well in some things and that I will always, always, always, have something more to learn.