Packing Up

The school year is wrapping up, which means it's time to do what I've done at least once a year, every year, for the past seven years: pack.

I really like packing. Packing is when I get to cull through my treasures, soaking in memories, smiling or puzzling over some little scrap that tugs at my mental libraries. I get to rewrite my history, occasionally tossing things which have lost significance, but always replacing them with a few new things I've collected. Some people have scrapbooks. I have an assortment of papers and odd objects that anyone else would put in a junk yard.

I came across my old study Bible tonight. It was given to me in middle school at a private international academy. I flipped through it with a certain fondness, noting verses I had highlighted or memorized. I smiled at the puzzled questions I'd written beside verses in Genesis. It's at least 7 lbs and the size of a textbook, but I can't bring myself to part with it.

In the front cover is my church membership certificate and three renewals of my local minister's license, material proof of being a certified, dyed-in-the-wool Nazarene. From between the papers flutter my dreams of going to seminary, being a missionary, preaching my first sermon. These pieces of paper once represented the core of my identity.

I won't be renewing my license this year. But my study Bible will still be in my unofficial memory collection for a long time to come, patiently waiting to whisper the past when I pack up yet again.