June or The Beginning of the End

I am supposed to be working on my essay so, naturally, I have decided to write a blog. There are multiple reasons I have decided to do this. I typically end up reading the blogs of my friends (and one or two friendly strangers) when I am looking for inspiration - or escape - or connection. Hmm. . . What more natural conclusion to the discovery that only one of my friends has posted since I last checked than to post myself. According to my dashboard, I last posted on 19 May. Now it is 3 June (and yes, I did just have to check the calendar).
June. . . there is a lot that can be said about June. Firstly, my birthday is in June - two weeks from today. I always think it is the optimum time for a birthday: six months between birthday and Christmas. It seems to have such balance. I know that friends and family will be sending my cards and perhaps a package or two. I am eager, not so much for the gifts, but for the tangible signs of love from those who care for me. Perhaps I am lonely.
Secondly, June has always felt to me like the first month of summer. I suppose it only officially begins on 21 June, or something like that, but there has rarely been a time in my academic life when June did not open with classes over and school work done. June signals a change in focus from mental/academic pursuits to things like mowing the lawn, cleaning my room, walking in the park and wishing it wasn't so darn hot! Even now I am remembering my friends for whom this June will be a milestone as they graduate and look on to what God next has in store for them.
This June will be different for me. My school work is not finished, and will not be finished this summer. I entered a 12-month course last September, but my grip has been slipping. The work needs to be done. In my head it make sense, but when I sit down to do it my brain seems to turn to water and I can't think of anything, positive or negative, aside from the swiftly approaching deadline. It is also highly likely that summer in Cardiff (from all I have heard) will not hold a candle heat-wise (is that a pun?) to summer in Northern Virginia. If this is true, than I am heartily grateful. As a matter of fact, I am sufficiently acclimatized now that a day that reaches over 22 degrees Celsius (that's approx. 72 F) is starting to feel 'hot'. Isn't that awesome???
Of course, the other side to June being the start of summer is that it is the end of the 'academic year'. In my mind, although I will be studying through the summer, that makes this the beginning of the end of my year in Cardiff, and although I hope and believe this will be the first of many such years, I am aware that the coming year will be markedly different from the year that is closing. In a sense, these last eight months have been a holiday - a vacation. I left life-as-I-knew-it and constructed a whole new context in which to live, think and work. For this period of time I have been largely free of obligations, living as an international student in a foreign context, able to disclaim interest in society, news, politics and to construct or reconstruct relationships within an entirely new context, choosing when, where and why to invest myself.
In making the decision to pursue a permanent life in this new context, I will be taking on new responsibilities. In deciding to pursue ministerial training, I will be committing myself to certain constraints and tasks that may not be entirely congenial. The process of growth and maturing will advance, but my year of rest will be over. Not that I mean to complain, or to borrow trouble, merely to acknowledge that this coming change looms large in my mind's eye, distracting me from the tasks that are now before me. My hope is that putting it in words will help me to acknowledge and thus get past this shadow and focus my mind again on the academic tasks at hand, and the remaining three months of "rest" before my new life begins.