I Pick You

My front garden turned from drab to fab, with these giant purple irises.

They're beautiful, but it's difficult to compare when I have a history with flowers loved on and planted by David: see here . 

When I pulled open my door, though, I saw this one, and a memory with David sprang back to life. 

 It was a damp, sunny spring morning in Belfast, and I was running late to school about to miss the bus. Running through the kitchen, I saw a beautiful tulip on the counter waiting for me. 

I lived alone, so it wasn't as though someone had picked a tulip for themselves. 

It was a present for me. From a man who knows I love flowers, a man so proud of his flowers (but so British he would never have been able to say it) that he wanted to give one to somebody he knew would appreciate its beauty as much as he did. 

The flower was lovely, but it was the man that made it precious to me. 

David, my man, hardly spoke at all, pleasantries at most, but there were many days where I felt as though David was my very most dear friend. He took care of me in such a practically compassionate way. 

At Christmas, he brought me out of my darkness to decorate. 

In the spring, he wanted to show me the flowers. 

He put up a shelf in my room. 

He teased me when I would make my entrance to the world at noon or past (and always made sure to be extra quiet if he thought I was asleep). 

He took me to uni when the bus didn't come that late day in April. 

He made pleasantries with me. 

He showed me the golden finches. He loves the golden finches, "First time in ten years they come back here, them". Even said "you're welcome" when I thanked him. Yeah, it was a huge deal to him to share the finches. 

David is gentle and kind, without a bad word to say about anyone. The one who gardens in his pleated trousers with button-down shirt, sweater vest, and loafers. 

Tireless. 

Humble. 

A big fan of tea. 

I ran out of the house to catch my bus that day, and David was hard at work edging the garden. When I called out a thanks, he told me he had found the tulip downed in the garden: "Musta been a nail or somethin' break it...Thought you could talk to it."

An american would have been making fun of me, but not David. 

He had entrusted one of his broken baby flowers into my care. And since I know David's love for his flowers, I felt the love of the gesture. 

Ear-Splitting Offspring: When Faith Fails

Last week in Bible study, we talked about the 400 year period of time in which God was silent with his people.

Silent.

Have you ever gone through a period of your life in which you felt the absence of God's voice?

Do you feel as though maybe you've never heard his voice at all?

Then you know the confusion/doubt/anxiety/stress/hurt that comes along with hearing nothing.

Looking back through the histories, we see the way in which God worked it all out for his glory, his good (Oh Jeremiah 29:11, how you plague me), but that is a very long time.

My question back to my bible study leader was this: "How did Christianity survive?"

His answer made sense to me, but I am still pretty cynical about the whole thing.

Christianity survived because there were those who kept up, with obedience and faith, the practices of the church.

But for 400 years?

Of COURSE there were Pharisees by the time Jesus came around, and how could we blame them? They had centuries of works with no relationship to spur them on. Eventually, yah, wouldn't that lead you to legalism?

They explained this as well by telling me that there were both Pharisees as well as those still truly filled with hope, holding fast to the assurances of the scriptures.

They kept up their faith on a promise, though they didn't have firsthand knowledge of the content of that promise.

Once, when I was in Belfast, I met an ex-Christian. It was a rough day, and I was in no mood for a fight, but maybe I needed to have that semi-fight.

In the midst of him telling me how silly I was to believe in a God and questioning why I would, I told him that sometimes, you just need to. Not out of compulsion but because, sometimes, you need the lifeline possibility that there is a reason for:pain/suffering/death/divorce.

That “sometimes” introduction can be the beginning of a really beautiful thing. Not every relationship has a book-worthy beginning. Jesus doesn’t really care how we come to him, though. He cares that we come at all.

What happens when faith fails, though?

What should our response be in the times that suddenly everything feels false, where prayer feels one-sided, when we ask for a sign/answer/direction and receive nothing?

I don’t know.

In times I have felt that way, I have continued to pursue all options on the hope and determination that God will start shutting doors if I just start moving forward. 
But what if all the doors open.
Or all the doors close.
What then?

Should I assume that the answers are all around me already if only I would sift through my own perceptions and bias to see them?
Should I assume God will bless wherever I choose?
Should I assume that the correct doorway has yet to appear?

When faith fails...it's time to redefine faith. Or, rather, to give thought to the definition of faith.

Faith: noun: complete trust or confidence in someone or something. 

Complete trust or confidence. 
Man, I think the last time I had complete trust or confidence in someone was before I was aware enough to realize what I was doing. 

As a baby, you may not consciously decide to put all your cards of faith in with your parents but, given your behavioral responses to them, it is evident that you do. 

As babies, when we get hungry or are afraid, we cry. 
If we did not anticipate a response of food or comfort, we would not cry. 
Because we trust in the goodness and consistency of our parents, though, we know intrinsically that our tears will bring them immediately to our side. And, if not immediately, we know they will be there as soon as humanly possible, if only we will hold out for them. 
The times our parents don't come are when they understand their children's tears enough to know when a response is not required, when it would ultimately serve their child best to self-sooth, even if it kills mom and dad to hear them wailing. 

Maybe that's how it is with God. 
Maybe he hears us cry and knows its time for self-soothing, to be empowered with the training he has already given us to reach our own conclusions. 

For now, then, that's how I'll answer. When God seems silent, my spirit should reflect and turn quiet as well, looking, watching, and waiting for something I may not otherwise be able to perceive in my hysteria. 

The Israelites cultured a spirit of faith, fed with promises, to sustain them. 
Then, as he said that he would, their father, Jesus, came to soothe, save, and sanctify. 

Crucified at the Crux

We are a culture and a people of extremes.

Obese or anorexic.
Unshutupable or brick silent.
Dramatic or dead pan.

When I go to my work twitter or Facebook and read all my students posts, they are full of the feels. Just...all the feels. All screaming, "Notice me notice me notice me!!!"

They post about:
Loneliness
Not fitting in
Feeling stupid
"Love"

I am not saying their posts don't reflect their reality, but I think they make us believe that we're seeing the total reality.

Because the kids we're hearing from are the ones we expect to hear from, because they're the ones who never stop whining about how lonely they feel instead of wiping off some of their makeup and trying out their own skin. A lot of times, it's part of their identity to be misunderstood.

Don't get all huffy; I'm not being a jerk. If you find me offensive, it's probably because you were once one of those kids. I work with kids, I was a kid, I am a kid. I know kids. Let me talk.

What we don't get is the honest look at the structural identity of other human beings.

We either stigmatize to the point of normalcy or we cloister problems into oblivion.

Let's have an honest discussion about what happens when you come to "the crux."

"The Crux" has been on my mind today because we have been going through our promotional material for re-vamping. Several of the smiling faces on our shining boards are students I knew very, very well.

And they aren't here anymore.
They didn't graduate.
Their cruxes crucified them.

That doesn't make them lesser people, and that doesn't make them failures. They just lost that one particular round of mental monopoly.

Yet there they are, smiling, holding a stack of books, pointing to a white board, reading with friends, about to sing another original song.
They are literally our poster children.
I'm sure they can think of nothing more ironic.

In one sense, it's the perfect example of "putting on your church face".
We obliviate their stories with glossed on smiles, whether that's our goal or not.

At the same time, I don't find it ironic at all for them to be our poster children. I actually love that we didn't choose all the seemingly perfect students. Because that's not who we are. We're all broken people. Their "cruxes" just made that more obvious.

"The Crux" is the moment when what you have been taught and raised to be drops off, and you have to grow new skin all on your own. The Crux is when you are faced with something so personal, so intimate, that 20 years of "life lessons" are insufficient to suffice for an answer.

We search. 
We listen.
But who do we listen to?

Though we would like to say, "God", like a good Sunday schooler, often we can't.
It's hard to admit, but we can't listen to him. We aren't ready.
More than that, maybe we truly do not yet have the capacity to hear the decibels he's speaking in.

Who do we listen to?
Them.
Whoever our "them" is.
And we "run to the things they said could restore [us]//restore life the way it should be".

And it doesn't work.
It doesn't work and doesn't work and doesn't work, and we're trapped in this horrible Dante-esque second circle of Hell running running running .

It breaks us.
It broke my friends.
It broke me.

Brokenness is ugly and unspoken.
In our shame, we hide because that's what feels correct to do. Because a snide "nobody loves me" comment on Facebook is one thing, but the genuine vacuum in our hearts, the kind that feels unrecoverable, isn't one you can post.

We publish the present.
We present the version of ourselves that we feel reconciled with, even if we don't love it. We can deal with it. We can stand by it.

The intimate pain is something we can't own because its muchness has too much muchness. That means, when we are sucked under the current, drop out of school, overdose, attempt suicide, no one sees it coming.

In times I have felt the most alone, the most broken, I have ached for someone to tell me they've been there too and not another God-awful repetition of Jeremiah 29:11 or a "I felt sad once, but I'm better now".

I wanted to read someone else admitting, with humor, hope, and honesty, that they were there as well.

At the same time, I am most usually unwilling to be that person for other people. The closest I've ever come to it is attempting to speak the truth of myself in my posts.

We're broken, but we retain such a capacity for forgiveness, for partnership, for love, and for redemption. We are capable of connection, to make pain into partnership, to turn someone's "I hope I can do this..." to "We can do this. I know we can do this."

How often do we opt to halt our thinking about our public images in deference to thoughts of how we can love other people through letting them in on the truth of our pain and of our regrowth?

We need the in-between.
That's what we're missing.
No more attention-seeking, connectivity-defying Facebook statuses of how nobody understands but no more hiding either.
Rather, with patience, with humility, and with discernment, let us all practice letting people join us where we stand. Or sit. Or kneel. Or are crawled up in.
Let's practice letting ourselves be seen.

Get Squeamish: Blood and Guts

I'll bet the majority of women spend their periods wondering how it is that women, for centuries, have been able to survive such a substantial amount of blood loss each month.

I was thinking about periods today as I was reading about the woman who bled, who reached out to touch Jesus, and who was healed in her faith.

Bringing up "that time of the month" can be really uncomfortable. Even my sweet daddy, who has been married for a bazillion years to my mom, gets stuttery when he tries to be polite and ask me if I need to pick up any "personal things" at Target when I come home to the "big city" and get stocked up on life supplies (small town struggles).  

I'm sure I lost many readers in the opening sentence even by mentioning that taboo subject (Is she really writing about THAT?).

The Bible sure doesn't shy away, though. It brings up Aunt Flo several times throughout its 66 books. That brings us to the gospels, Luke 8, and the woman who bled. 

This lady had a straight up 12 year period. 

What a miserable existence.

And often, I'll bet, that's where our thinking about her ends, with her blood and with her faith.

God never just stops at the physical though.

You ever pause to think about what her plague entailed?

Women in those days were considered unclean during their periods, banned from the intimacy of relationships. Periods are good, though. They represent a woman's capacity of inhabiting life, even if they didn't take that month's egg up on the option to. 

For our Luke Lady, though, it was a 12 year symbol of death, separation, and shame.

Can you imagine that?

We have nightmares of being turned down for a date, of standing naked in front of the class, of being singled out for our big noses, but those are all pretty fleeting moments of shame.

Picture being known by your qualifier for more than a decade. For her, being known for being "unclean" for 12 years and what that must have done to her personal sense of identity.

Men are thinking, "I don't have a uterus. I can't get there to empathy." So picture just this much: No physical intimacy for 12 years. Nothing. 

It hurts to the bone to go 12 days, 12 weeks without so much as a hug, I would know.

How excruciating that must have been.

And yet. (With God there's always an "and yet") And yet, how beautiful, how wonderful, what an ecstatic sense of relief and glory it must have been to have had that bloody old self ended in one desperate touch. In one desperate move toward hope.

That is the promise of Christ.

That is what we live for: to know that no matter the degree of our unclean existence or removal from dignity, humanity, God is capable and willing to touch us, love us, bring us back to complete selfhood. 

Supposed to be Happy

Three times in the past two months, I have felt shame.

It shouldn't count, I know it shouldn't. I should be able to shake it off, shake off my "image" and embrace the reality of who I am and what I have been.

And when you're in the midst of it, sometimes it's easier to embrace it because you are incapable of fabricating another reality for yourself.

When you're out of the middle, you deaden the memory and try to live as though it didn't happen, try to prevent those around you from knowing the full extent of your darkness.

The worst part is, unlike drugs and alcohol addiction or eating disorders or the like, depression doesn't look good on a Christian testimony resume.

Depression makes people nervous.

They don't know how to respond.

Partly because it's not something that ends; it's something that becomes managed.
The potential for it to rear back up induces anxiety.

When we speak, we are not seeking for your pity, we are not seeking for you to feel bad for us retrospectively or to "hurt" with us. Not usually. And if we do, it's not to make ourselves feel better but to help you get some perspective as a human being.

Don't look at me like I'm a limping puppy on the side of a highway.

We're speaking the reality of who we are.

Belfast.

You have been my friend and enemy alike.

Students who don't know me want to follow my example and follow me to the Emerald Isle.

And for the fourth time this semester, I have been asked for my advice and to speak on my experience.

The first time, I was in the class I'm auditing. The topic of the day was clinical depression, and the professor (who is a friend of mine) asked me to speak on the "Dark Night of the Soul" and my hole of depression. Of course I spoke, but I was shocked, as I was speaking, how clearly I began to re-feel, though I had shut those emotions down for so long. It was like muscle memory. I spent my night wrecked, absolutely wrecked, near to the point of vomiting with grief. Took me completely off-guard.

The second time, a student who had been there with me asked for my advice.
While there, I had been so cloistered and such a whipping girl, that they did not understand me nor what my experience was like as compared to theirs.
I do not speak to those students.
The person who was their RA is not me. It was this weird depressive alter-ego of me that only existed for a year. I can't face them. I am ashamed.

We met and talked for multiple hours, as I explained to her the different levels of thought she needs to consider before making the same move as I did.
She's seriously dating someone. How serious is she about that? Because you can't make half-baked life decisions that take you across the globe without taking them into consideration or hearing out their opinion. It gets messy.
She's prone to depression. That concerned me. Climate is a HUGE aspect of living there.

You can't just think about the academic program and the "adventure" and the story you'll be able to tell people. Life is not a fairy tale. You have to live it day by day, hour by hour, both with those you love and completely alone.

And, while I tried to remain objective in speaking about the different categories she needed to think about, my own life colored behind the facts, and she looked at me with this face...

The third put me on a panel of other graduated and post graduated English majors (JBU graduates) in front of the English faculty and current English students.

We spoke on the process of applying to postgraduate programs and what they are like to be in.
They were specifically interested in me, the international student.

The moderating professor, who knew me well as a fiery student with enormous plans and enormous love, pushed and pushed and pushed with very specific questions, first to the whole group then to me personally, until finally I had to admit my whys.
Why I had had to come back home for a bit in December/January.
Why I was no longer dating Noah.
Why I was back at JBU and not at Denver Seminary.

And the whys are just so messy, and even without admitting any of the specifics, admitting to people I had been viewed by as so strong and passionate, was shameful.

Then it ended.
Then the looks.
Then the gentle hand on my arm.
Then the car ride to Fayetteville to Bible study and the gush of tears and shadows I couldn't help.

Such pieces of me I want to forget.
Such pieces of me, if forgotten, will recur.

I needed to change, and I needed Jesus so badly to wreck into me.
But there are things too sacred even to remember, especially to admit to people who cannot possibly understand the heart of what you are trying to communicate.

God is good.
and maybe also, Think clearly about enormous life choices. 

That is my message.

You hear:
Depression sucks. Feel so bad for me and my misery. 

The fourth is yet to come. I've just received an email from a student, on referral from her history professor. What am I to say?
Her mere email is enough to bring tears to my eyes, in anticipation for the way it will drag my heart through its own muck.

My mother and boyfriend would chastise me with something to the tune of, "People don't need to know everything, Jamie."
Duh. I'm not some kind of self-named martyr with an agenda to broadcast her past wounds, but I am honest. And I answer questions with honesty.

Sometimes, though, that honesty makes me feel very small. Very very small.

Rain and Other Miracles

Each of my workmates wore their cute business casual footwear to day two of our preview day, except me. Though skies were rather clear, I wore rain boots. In my mind, it was just going to rain, despite what the forecast said.

And, upon leaving on my tour with my Texans, the storm began. Sometimes faith is rain boots. Even if that faith borders a bit on desperate hope.

Three of my seniors joined on this Preview Day, and all were undecided. In fact, one had already closed her application then reopened it in order to visit two months after. I call her my resurrection student. By the end of the visit weekend, I had three yesses, and they had one delighted counselor.

It is the very best when students visit. All students really but especially students that you're currently working with.

No matter how many texts, emails, or phone calls you make, the truth is, they are a file to you. A faceless, electronic file.

Then they visit.

And suddenly, all the random facts you know about them and their family have a face and a personality and a life to attach themselves to, and I am also no longer a voice and a texter and a mass emailer to them then either. Suddenly, I also become a person to them, and all the random facts and information I've told them for months have people and places and a me to attach themselves to.

It's a great feeling.

We really take these students home with us mentally, emotionally, spiritually. Say a student applies in early June. That means that by the time they end up coming to JBU the next August, we have worked with them for 13 months, contacting them in one way or another a minimum of once a month. That's a lot of time. Shoot, that's more often than I talk to some of my closest friends.

We hear about their family lives, know what's going on at school, are the confidant to a whole lot of things really. We learn to truly value our students not as numbers but as people and, more than that, people of vast potential in our university and to their lives beyond graduation.

Then March comes.
Financial aid award letters go out.
The conversations begin.
The nitty gritty comes out.
Decisions are made.

We know how hard making college decisions are, no matter how calm and collected we are on the phone.

When we hang up at the end of a long call, we are burdened with lives that we know so much about. Not a heavy burden (usually) but just the burden of caring so much about individuals we know so well. We want them to fit. We want them to make choices that will benefit them long term. We want them to love Jesus well and to learn how to deepen their understanding of what that looks like in every realm of their existence.

We pray for them.
We take their stories home in our hearts.

And when they close their files, especially when they close them for reasons we can't buy into, we are so sad.

Because we envisioned such a future for you here. And yeah, maybe that's a little selfish on our parts, it is your life after all, kid. But, in painting you a picture of what your life could be here for months and months on the phone and on visits, we saw it, too.

The death of an idea hurts. We know it hurts you, but know it hurts us, too. You are not a number. You are loved.

Each student is a miracle.
From how they learn about our university to how they are accepted (by committee or traditionally) to how they scrounge up tuition and housing deposit to interviews to paperwork to financial aid struggles to registering and move-in day, all while balancing home life and high school (during senior semesters). Every piece had to work exactly, like cogs in a clock, in order for their arrival to occur.

But then they're here. And wow. To see them on campus in the caf or playing frisbee on the quad or working in the library on a paper, thriving, learning, growing.
Miracles.

Love Is or Princess Pollen

I woke from a sinus induced nap yesterday to find that I had been cuddling a jar of Vick's Vaporub.

That pretty well sums up my life right now. 

"April is the cruelest month", and I find myself, once again, at her mercy, begging the skies for rain to wash away the oak pollen from my life. 

What a tease, Arkansas is. A forecast of week-long rain replaced by sunshine. And yet, campus tours remain in my personal forecast. 

Neither essential oils nor yoga nor Allegra D nor neti pots nor surgical masks can rescue me, and let me tell you what. These Kleenexes do not have lotion in them. 

Before the month began, I gave my office and my housemates and my boyfriend warnings of what was to come, and I'm pretty sure they all thought I was being overzealous and paranoid. Until they saw what a mere walk in from my car to my office was capable of doing to my system. 

Saturday was spent washing every piece of fabric on my bedding, vacuuming, and diffusing air purifying oils into the air to make my room my safe space. Not even clothes that have touched pollen are allowed in. After being chastised for driving with the windows down last week, the boyfriend, when offering to come over on Saturday, added that he promised to shower, change clothes, and drive with the windows up before he came. I didn't even have to ask.

 Now it's Monday morning after a very long and sleepless night of sniffles left over from last night's parent dorm tour, and I am with my box of tissues sniffling my way through our morning meeting, thinking of the two tours to come today and of what I'm going to do. 

The other admissions counselors are super kind and have offered to divvy my students, but I feel so ridiculous asking that of them that I can't bring myself to let them, despite the fact that I know my fate later today if I do the tour myself. Being pathetic is the least fun when you can't help it. 

Being practical and practically compassionate is important me, even if I'm not great at being on the receiving end. But that's what love is sometimes. 

Love is offering to take someone's tour when you see them under a pile of tissues. Love is driving with the windows up on a beautiful day. Love is going for your run and mowing back to back so you pollinate the house only once on your way back in, heading straight for the shower to get it off and protect your housemate when you do so. Love is texting your daughter allergy solutions, even if she is already doing all of them. Love is conscientious and kind and seeks to protect. 

I guess that's my happy thought in this time of praying for rain.  

Ugly Running

After about a week and a half after I downloaded the app onto my phone, I finally worked up the gumption to start C25K, a running app designed for lazy non-runners.

Also, it should be known that by "gumption" I mean "the leering guilt which came through devouring an entire box of macaroni and cheese by myself in one sitting...again".

I am not a runner.

Tried Track for a couple months in high school, made it two months under the regime of the interim coach and one day of the actual team.
My sophomore roommate Lauren got me to run for the same two months 5 years later. We ran every single morning. Mile and a half, ending with the 100 stairs on campus. It was miserable.

I've been four years clean from running, and thank goodness. That stuff is terrible, and I get just the worst shin splints.

And yet.

C25K.

Why?

You guessed it.
Office peer pressure.

We're going to a conference for nationwide admissions folk and guidance counselors at the end of next month and, for some ungodly reason, there is a "fun" 5K involved.

Basically, I was tricked into believing that we were all going to do it.
We're not.
But I have been promised a tank top.

So there I went to the health complex to get my run on on the track above the intramural gym. Because it's beautiful outside, nobody else besides me (the Allergic Wonder) was there.

5 minutes of warm up walk, followed by variations of a minute of running to a minute and a half of walking for 20 minutes, then 5 more minutes of walking.

It was all good and fun (ish) until I hear thumping behind me, see a runner (CAME OUT OF NOWHERE I TELL YOU), and scream. Like a little girl. That poor guy. He finished half a lap and escaped out a side door not to return.

The idea of running has always appealed to me. I have visions of running through fields, down country roads, or down really really long hallways in the basement of Pentecostal churches after hours, with my hair streaming out behind me and my 3 mile legs taking me so far so fast.

Reality? About 15-20 seconds of glory before I'm panting and feeling the start of shin splints.
I've got no endurance. Or patience to learn endurance.

Many things have come easily to me learning wise.
If someone makes me feel stupid or less than, I will kick their expectations right off the table. Nothing can sidetrack me from my goal.

It takes that challenge, though, to make me change, to grow, to...try.
I've tried tricking myself into different challenges, like a weird self-antagonism, but it just doesn't stick. I need that outside antagonist, just one person that I've got to prove wrong.

That's how I passed Honors Algebra 2 and AP European History, why I was able to hold to my determination against slipping back into anorexia, how I managed to complete my Master's degree.
I still know the triggers from each. And there are more.

There have been other things I have vaguely wanted to accomplish, but the hard-nosed drive just isn't there.

I suppose I've always seen it as one or the other: either I'm so determined I'm scary or so apathetic others are scared for me. The gentle incline of appropriated endurance is not something I've endured long enough to see the fruits of. I try once, get irritated with my failure, and quit.

That brings me back to running.
I'm going to finish the 8 weeks this dumb app makes me do, and I will do it on its terms, not mine.
Honestly, I don't really care if I become a passable runner or not. It's more that this is a practice in a form of discipline that no one else would even know about if I didn't tell them.

So many areas of my life I wish were different. At the same time, I only think that because I keep focusing on all the large battles lost when I'm not even paying attention to the small battles.

Of course I can't read a 300 page book when I can't read a 300 word article on TheDailyBeast.
Of course I can't turn my phone off for a full day when I can't turn it off for half an hour.
Of course I can't write a new book when I can't write a letter back to Leslie.

Small, consistent practices of discipline. The gentle incline of appropriated endurance.
That's what I'm lacking; that's what I want.

Toilet Snakes

My best friend moved to Australia this past weekend, the land Steve Irwin (RIP), giant spiders, and toilet snakes. It's also the land of sand, surf, and sexy accents, not that she'll be much seduced by them, as she moved there with her sweet husband.

It's a time of transition indeed for so many of my friends and loved ones.

For Kira, it's a time of, "Good Lord, finally!!!" Tyler's job has him on the go and away from her for months at a time. Moving to Australia will enable them to be like a real life married couple.

The next three years are going to bring her so many incredible, life-altering experiences, probably a horrible partial accent, and gobs on gobs of joy.
It'll also be difficult: "How do I make new friends?" "Where do I start looking for a job?"
It'll be wonderful, it'll be lonely, it'll be worth it.

I think that's one thing I'm really starting to learn. Wonderful, lonely, and worth it are kind of integral to "new". It's hard to forge new paths in your life. It's especially hard to do that while forcing yourself to choose against remembering, rehashing, recreating the old paths in your head, wishing old things were back, even if you didn't really like them or benefit from them.

They're familiar.
You know how they work.
If they didn't work, you know how to fix them now.
The choices in front of you are all unknown and scary and different.
Maybe better, maybe worse, but definitely full of maybes.