Do You Remember the 26th of September?

Something I love about Google Photos (and also sometimes hate) is how it never lets me forget the past. On any given day it sends me a notification reminding me of where I was, who I was with, and what I was doing on this day for each of the past eight years. It can be a laugh to see bad haircuts (that often I gave myself), very small nieces and nephews who are now taller than me, and the minutiae of everyday life–things that seemed important six years ago, but their significance I now struggle to remember. But some days the pleasant nostalgia shifts towards the bittersweet, even the painful as the faces of friends I no longer talk to appear, as I am reminded of the homes I made for myself and had to leave, as I remember a particular joy I will never recapture.

There is little reason for me to remember the 26th September in particular apart from the fact that it was the day I arrived in 2019 in Ireland for a two-year apprenticeship with Serge. The date itself would be unextraordinary, I realised this morning, if it were not for Google Photos' reminder of this day and the remarkable way it provides a snapshot for each year of my life during an era of constant change and profound growth. So let’s go back.

At the end of September in 2018 I had just moved in with my sister and her family in Pittsburgh, started working at the Shadyside Gap, nannied for a family in Fox Chapel every Monday, was searching for a church home, and in general felt very at sea in a strange new post-college world. I walked a lot, ate many peanut butter and honey sandwiches, cried, played nearly constant hide-and-seek with Alice, and took a break from writing, my first of many.

In 2019, I arrived in Dublin airport early in the morning of September 26th. I had flown from Wichita to Philadelphia to see my newest nephew (born just a few days earlier) and say goodbye to my mother who had flown out to Philly before me to help my sister. In Philadelphia I connected with Jennifer, my fellow apprentice and soon to be great friend, boarded a late night flight, and alternated between anxiety and excitement for the whole seven hours across the Atlantic. We were greeted in the airport with such joy from our team, who fed us and walked us 10s of thousands of steps around the city to set up all the basics of a new life–sim cards and bank accounts and transit passes–and kept us awake after multiple days of extended travel and little to no sleep. That night, in an AirBnb in Smithfield, I wept with the enormity of it all, being so far away from everything and everyone I knew. And the next morning I was fine. I never looked back.

In 2020, after a, well, globally traumatic year, September 26th saw me recently moved into flat on Palmerston Road (my third or fourth address in Dublin since arrival) with a dream of a roommate and a new taste for hospitality. That night we had friends over. I made pizza and Taylor made a Guinness chocolate cake. If my memory serves me, we laughed a lot and they sang to me when we realised it was my one year anniversary. That night, like much of that particular season, I reveled in being at home, in the lovely little life God had built up around me.

As September neared its end in 2021, I was nearing the end of my apprenticeship and getting ready to leave Dublin. I didn’t know if I would ever be back, at least in any long term sort of way. It was weeks of finishing up, saying goodbyes to jobs, people, places. I went for a hike in the mountains, took a boat tour around the bay, met with the people I loved. I walked the same route every evening around Rathmines, hoping no one would notice when I broke into tears. The 26th was a Sunday, and so a pub night with Jen at the Cobblestone--our first Dublin pub and our favourite. We chatted more easily there than anywhere else, enjoyed the music, bantered with the bar staff. We lost track of time and I missed the last Luas and had to walk to the quays for a bus home. It was late, dark, but Dublin at night held no fear for me. The city was finally coming back to life after a year and a half of the pandemic. People were laughing, singing. The wind was cool, the river sparkling with reflected light. It was the most at home I had ever felt and I couldn’t fathom leaving even as I watched the day draw ever closer.

It is now September 26th, 2022. I have just returned home from a college wedding/support raising trip to Pennsylvania. I have had lots of both weddings and support meetings since being back in the states, each surprising me with a complexity of emotion. I went to the gym for a run this morning. This afternoon I returned a huge stack of books to the library and consequently brought home a new slightly smaller stack. I caught up with emails, wrote this, and prayed as the Spirit led me. I’ve struggled in this season to find a purpose for a year of displacement and confusion, to ever feel at home, to be an integrated self. I’ve tried to be content, I’ve failed, and I’ve tried again. I see a counselor. But mostly these days I simply try to be present and still, even while my heart longs to move on. I am full of excitement at the prospect of moving back to Dublin, a miraculous answer of God to heart-wrenching prayers of last September, but I am trying to hold my excitement loosely. I am slowly untangling a whole lifetime of knots drawn tighter upon my return to the States. I am delighting in the gentleness with which God holds my soul.

I sometimes wish I knew more of how God is working in my life and world, of how all these stories will end. I wish life was a straighter line and sanctification an ever upward trajectory. And yet, looking back, there is nothing of these last five Septembers I would sacrifice for clarity. This year, 2022, has been a bit of a fallow year, one of silent, slow solitude with little to show for it besides a couple bridesmaids dresses, more grey hairs, and heightened anxiety. But I trust that God is working his mysterious redemptive/restorative alchemy in the soil of my heart and life, and that someday this year, like all the years before, will bear fruit. The wilderness will rejoice.