Chapters

No this post is not about a Forever Changed album.

If you don't get that joke, you are missing out. They were a great band.

Yup. WERE a great band. They disbanded. Broke up. Went on to other things. Apparently the lead singer made a deal with his wife that if they didn't hit it big by a certain time, he would give up the band, settle in one spot and do youth ministry with his family. Date came, things changed, they all moved on.

I hate finishing books. Especially series.

i love finishing books. Especially series.

Its kind of a love/hate thing.

I love it because it is the climax of a story and the final curves of the character arcs. You get to know the ending, finally, and see what happens to the people and places you have been following for weeks, months, even years (yes, Harry Potter I'm looking at you). I hate it because when you know the ending, it is just that-- the end. There is no more story. There is nothing else to read, know, discover. The ending is the End, and as many times as you read the book hoping that this time, this time there would be more, that it would keep going-- it always ends.

You have to move on.

Life is like that. With stories that begin and swell and climax and conclude. It has chapters that open and close and End. And once they are done you never get them back. As much as you want to go back to that time or that place or that story, you can't. You have to move on. You have to say goodbye.

I have been thinking about this in relation to my time here in China. Its not time for me to leave yet. But with people I know leaving, and my original contract beginning to wind down, I realize that one day this chapter of my life is going to conclude. It is going to conclude. I don't like that. But its unavoidable. Stories have chapters, and how can you ever live the next chapter if you are stuck in the one before?

So heres the rest of this chapter. May the end be as good as the beginning.

~J.L Smith