I’ve always felt so strange staring out the window of a plane.

It almost seems… fake? 

Like there’s no way I’m floating thousands of feet above the earth right now.

There’s no way that those itty bitty little toy cars on those plastic streets could be driving around Nashville or Dallas or Salt Lake below me.

I guess if you really think about it, it seems a bit alarming.

The other thing is I’m always shocked at how neat the land and the buildings and the farms and the cities look from up above.

When you’re walking along city streets or driving on winding back roads,

The layout doesn’t make much sense does it?

But when you’re above the clouds staring at our earth like a museum goer stares at a magnificent painting, it all seems to make sense.

There are shapes that are impossibly symmetrical. Roads that move effortlessly with rivers and lakes. Suburbs that look so meticulously planned out that it baffles me.

You wouldn’t even know how planned and intentional it all is unless you take the time to look at the entire picture.

Sometimes miles above and away from the picture itself.

I’ve always thought that that must be how God works sometimes.

The big life plan He has for us.

When I’m sitting in the trenches, it’s hard to imagine it being an entire predetermined labyrinth surrounding me.

This past year has felt like I’m right down in it.

Self sabotaging.

Healing myself and yet not treating my body so kindly at the same time.

It’s been a year of learning, heart break, confusion, pessimism, opportunity, drinking, loss of faith, loss of confidence, loss of will and yet there were some absolutely stunning moments wrapped up in there as well.

This past week, I moved into a new apartment.

I’ll be living all by myself for the first time in my entire life.

I’m not even sure I like myself all that much.

How am I supposed to hang out with my self all the time?

My soul sister is moving away after two years of spending every minute with each other. We were roommates, bandmates, best friends, cat co-parents, platonic life partners, etc.

And I really don’t think any of that will change,

But won’t it? 

After having someone there all the time to sit with me on the front porch while I cried my eyes out over some idiot to sitting on a stairwell in my apartment complex by myself is not the smoothest transition.

Looking back over the past two years with my best friend, we were truly given to each other as a extremely generous gift from God, I think. He knew what bull shit was coming up in our lives and He really did us a solid but sewing us together for so long uninterrupted. Also the fact that we spent 5 months in a tiny cruise ship cabin and never wanted to murder each other ??? and then still wanted to live together in a tiny house immediately afterwards ???? absolutely unheard of and it’s a God thing don’t @ me on this.

As the earth shifts into a post-pandemic world (God willing) I expect a lot of change for everybody really.

This week just feels like the end of an era for me personally.

I’m getting old.

And not very gracefully might I add. 

I don’t move through change well.

I actually avoid it for as long as I possibly can.

I’m practically tossed off the cliff of change.

I’m always the last to board the plane.

I’m always the girl who cries when the party’s over.

This innate sense of knowing when the end is has always been inside me.

Have you ever hugged someone or seen something extraordinary or heard something that almost gave you a feeling of nostalgia even if you hear it all the time?

Then you might have this sense too.

I know when I’ll never see someone again

Or re-live an old routine

Or walk down familiar halls for the last time.

And I grieve it in the moment instead of fully appreciating it.

Because of this bitter-sweet sense of mine, I grieve while I’m still living it.

When I had a goodbye party a few days before I left for the cruise ship a couple years ago,

I just sobbed for 6 hours during my party.

I was a complete mess.

Everybody thought it was because I was leaving and I was going to miss my friends, which was true,

But I was truly grieving the end of that era.

I knew I was going to lose some of those people by the time I came back.

I knew I was never going to step foot in that old house of mine again.

I knew it was the end of that chapter.

I didn’t know why or how it would all happen 

But I just knew.

And then when I was one the cruise ship, the crew members used to refer to me as “the crying girl” because I was crying in crew bar ALL the time.

Whenever one of my friend’s cruise contract ended and they were about to head back home, I’d cry my eyes out the night before.

Because I knew I’d never see them like that ever again.

In the same space living day to day, side by side with me and our clan.

Some of them I probably won’t ever see again in this life time.

And it’s devastating.

I’m not sure how to embrace change.

How to calm down this cruel sixth sense of mine.

Learn to enjoy the moments as they’re passing rather than grieve them before they’ve even left me.

I suppose all it truly takes is time and distance to see why everything happens the way it does.

The Artist’s choices are always intentional with every stroke of the brush,

sometimes it looks like a mistake or a random assortment of colors and shapes

but all you have to do is take a few steps back

or look down at the earth from a few thousand miles up in the clouds

and it all seems to make a little bit more sense,

Right?

-Becca Tremmel