No more class?

I know most of us can agree that class today was ...sentimental? Emotional? Natalie's presentation, her dad's guitar music, and Ben's poem set quite a mood.

But that fact that we as a class "came together," as Shelby said in her blog, was pretty cool.

On the first day of class I wasn't sure what to expect. I was excited to learn more about the Bible, although my reason was something along the lines of "now I'll be able to have good arguments when I talk to crazy religious people." Then Dr. Sexson walked in with his shaky hands and white hair and I knew that could mean either a very good or a bad thing. I was slightly intimidated by his challenge of reading the entire Bible, but I had a feeling everything would work itself out, and it did.

I'm not sure I've ever written a "term paper" before I wrote one for this class, so that's probably why mine was not so exciting. After seeing everybody else present, hundreds of ideas ran through my head and I could have written about many things. But as I have previously stated, I was afraid attempting to tackle something else would have been hard to focus and turn into somewhat of a ramble, like my blogs.

It seems like a lot of people are fascinated by the topic of suffering. This makes sense considering Natalie and Lisette's recent tragedies, but why? In reality, nobody wants to suffer. So this fascination with suffering must be a way of justifying it and making it more bearable, so in the future it will be easier to cope with. I don't want to toot my own horn here, but all of this death discussion has made me think about my past. My dad died when I was about 18 months old of a brain tumor (I'm glad Jean survived hers), so I never knew him. I never went through a grieving process that I can remember because I was so young, and I grew up with it as a fact of life. This made for a lot of awkward conversations, because whenever I would be forced to state the fact people wouldn't know what to say, and sometimes they would comment that I didn't seem sad about it. But what was I supposed to do? I watched my mom struggle with the loss of her husband while raising two young children, and I never fully appreciated it until now. I think growing up with no father, and the fact that he died, kind of made me hide my emotions about everything. I tend to seem completely unemotional at times, but I have also come to realize one reason. My greatest fear is losing somebody that I love. I have already lost a close family member who I never got to know... I lost somebody that I love before I even knew him. So I definitely feel for Natalie because her and her dad seemed to have a great relationship, and that makes the loss so much worse. Then again, she was lucky enough to spend a lot of time with him before he died, so you always have to look on the bright side.

"Things happen for a reason they say, but I say there's a reason things happen."

-Blue Scholars

I'm not sure where I'm going with this other than the fact that it's turned into a ramble, again. My point is that there's no use dwelling on the past and it's best to be grateful for what you have. I like to keep the above quote in mind whenever bad things happen because it explains well that you have to accept life's events, good and bad, and move on.

And on that note, it's been a good semester. I have grown up, too. Life's only going to get better...enjoy.