When a week is mere hours yet also eternity

In one week, if all goes well, I'll be departing Denver on a British Airways flight to Copenhagen via London. From there I will take the train 25 miles to Lund University, Sounthern Sweden, and start a new, more studious life. If all goes well. My student visa has not yet arrived, and I'll admit that that fact is causing me some stress. I sent away the documents back in early June, and have been eagerly checking my mail daily. My irrepressible optimism still thinks that everything will work out fine, but a certain level of worry has intruded into my life.

Really, the visa, though troubling, is only one part of my mess of worries. Despite the fact that I have done this sort of thing more than once, I still worry. Change is healthy, necessary and inevitable, but that doesn't mean we have to like it! On the other side of any big change is a vast ocean of uncertainty, and that is intimidating. However, I have been trying to look at it in the light that uncertainty is only another word for possibility, and so on the other side of any change is a blank slate of possibilities and opportunities. When we weather change, we become better people. At least, that is what I keep telling myself when I say good-bye to everybody... again.