Why didn't I plant the mustard seed?

I don’t want my romance and idealism to be too squashed by increasing encounters with adulthood and the generally unromantic world surrounding, but I am realizing what a fairyland the past nineteen years have sort of been, especially the most recent one. At least in the face of what might be ahead now. My dreams were so rosy until the past month. Even the struggles and hardships I had forseen to accompany my ambitions were hazy around the edges with a quixotic kind of lustiness, and I was so eager to keep running ahead into future days. Something about the way this summer is passing seems to be giving me a taste of what it would be like to have my education cut off, my plans redirected and changed. Get that flavor off my tongue.

An old man knocked on the front door and startled me, but he was asking to photograph the black eyes susans underneath our window. “Thank you for this,” he said.

I thought that life seems to become less and less romantic in many ways, but perhaps at the same time, it is all a matter of what one wants to see in the world. I want to see charm around me, I will look for it and feed it and make sure maturity doesn’t live in the window box alone. I'll knock on someone's front door and ask to photograph their flowers. Thank you for that, sir.

My Gordon email address isnt working and its hitting me that not returning to Gordon might actually become a reality. I don’t want to leave the community I have there, I don’t want to stop what feels like such progress…I want to study art, to be guided in philosophy and reading and theology, I want to pray and be prayed for and walk by the pond and stay up late writing a paper because I spent too much time in the kitchen with Kaethe and Megan eating brownies. I want to hear the speakers in chapel, I want to slosh through rain and snow on cold dark winter days. I want to meet someone with a vision, but even more I want to grow in deeper friendship with the radiant young women there who I respect and love, who already see a flicker of purpose and calling in themselves. I should remember it isn’t Gordon that sets up my future and orchestrates my present, but you are. If I am not going back to Wenham, I will cry and cry more and then look around and see what other thing you have purposed for me. I once thought I wanted to attend Westmont more than anything. You gave me Gordon instead. Now I think I want to spend three more years in New England, travel to Salzburg for a summer, and talk with my friends while it snows outside more than anything. Keep next to me, and remind me what matters every second.

Someone in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me."
Jesus replied, "Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?" Then he said to them, "Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions."
And he told them this parable: "The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. He thought to himself, 'What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.'
"Then he said, 'This is what I'll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I'll say to myself, "You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry." '
"But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?'
"This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God."