As a person who prefers the comfort of plots to which I already know the ending, I find myself often picking up old books instead of new ones. This habit, which is bad for increasing the breadth of my reading repertoire is nevertheless a humbling case study of which I seldom tire—probably because the study in question is me. I tend to highlight, underline, and ink-dialogue all over my books, and I find upon each new reading that I often disagree with what once struck me, or catch something I had never noticed before, or resonate with an idea that did not initially hold meaning. Talk to any friend who journals and they’ll tell you this is the most horrifying part of reading old journals, after a certain amount of distance, you find yourself struggling to love or understand parts of the person that once was you. It’s the catch-22 of life, I suppose. "I am like a candle lit from a candle lit from a candle," wrote Buechner. And so we are, "the traveling flame never the same and never different either." Re-reading books makes me realize how much of what I take in is really just a reflection of my present circumstances, my present reality. Multiple re-readings make me realize how much of myself I can trace through each experience with a book. When I pick up a book for say, the fourth or fifth time, somewhere between the lines of the text and my different interactions with it over the years are the very real memories of how I used to read that book. It’s a history of myself: "The first reading, I remember I felt this way. Then another time I remember reading it with a friend and we discovered a whole new passage. Or what about that summer when that same passage suddenly made sense in a way I never could have imagined?" It’s not just a story bound between two covers that I am confronted with. I am being retold my own story as well.

I think memories are often like the books we read again and again; we revisit them often, but with always a new perspective, a perspective that ultimately reflects our present circumstances, and maybe even, the presence of a gracious God.

I started thinking about this because, of course, a certain recurring memory returned to me yesterday after an abnormally long absence. The event itself goes something like this: during my year in England, my friends Tom and Kristel and I took a trip up to the Lake’s District without any real plans except to hike around a bit and watch autumn come to that part of the country. One afternoon, we stumbled across a tree no more than six feet tall which upon examination, had lost all its leaves except one. I remember we were all strangely thrilled to be on the threshold of something so spectacular; it seemed a poetic frontier we couldn’t wait to witness— watching in real life the very last leaf falling from a tree. The problem was, waiting proved to be the very thing we had trouble doing. We were getting hungry, it was getting dark, and the leaf was not getting any less stuck to that stupid branch. So, in the spirit of this monumental occasion in nature we decided to help out the situation—as naturally as possible, of course. We figured if we threw something, like, say, a rock, at the leaf, then it didn’t really upset any great laws of nature; after all, rocks are ultimately "natural." But try as we might, those rocks only glanced gently off that stupid bugger of a leaf. Not to be out-natured, we decided to move up along the ecological chain and try something organic; thus I began poking it with a stick. I’m pretty sure that by the time we finally got that leaf to fall, we had abandoned all rocks and sticks completely and chosen instead the most "natural" tool available, our hands. We grasped the branch and shook, first gently, then rather violently until that annoyingly stupid bugger of a leaf finally drifted down to the ground, resting just long enough for Kristel to snatch it up and place it between two pages of her scrapbook. All in all, we got quite a laugh out of the whole event, choosing to surrender what we had initially hoped to be a profound moment into something more comically ironic, if not oddly self-mocking.

And it is this memory that I find myself strangely returning to, or returning to me, at different points in my life.

When I first got back to my house in England, I immediately began to journal. As I wrote about that time, I found myself projecting upon that memory a type of parable for my life. There was nothing deliberate about this; I simply wrote what I remembered and processed it through in what came out as an intuitive need for design and meaning. I assumed that the last leaf falling represented everything I wanted for my life; a beautiful purpose and fullness— in the most poetic sense possible. The lesson, as all good parables must have, was that sometimes I in my urgency try to force things to happen that ultimately defeat the very thing I desire. I realized I might be able to justify myself into securing anything, but the real question was whether or not I trusted that God’s perfect timing would be, well, perfect. What strikes me now is not the meaning I projected upon the event, but rather, that the meaning I gave it reflected the very real present I was experiencing. I was a junior in college, close enough to graduation to begin feeling anxious about the future, yet I was simultaneously placed in an isolated year abroad where time had indeed seemed to stand still for me. I needed something mystical and poetic, like the final blazing leaf falling purposely from a tree, to both articulate my identity and my fears about the future, as well as to exhort myself to wait patiently and trust the Creator. I can’t help thinking about that leaf now, without also remembering that one time, well, I saw myself as the leaf. For several months, when I remembered the sight of the leaf falling from the tree, I also remembered that God was asking me to wait.

But just like me, how I would recall that memory kept changing. Fast forward a year or so later; I was back in the States and feeling angst against all things contrived (whether they really were or not). I began to think how foolish I had been to attach a cliched analogy to what was in fact, a very real, actual event. I thought, "It may be true that God’s timing is perfect, but watching a last leaf falling from a tree was not his way of telling me that." I was twenty-one and having a hard time with words like mystical and poetry, needing instead something concrete and visceral upon which to attach myself. So when I remembered again that last leaf on the tree it seemed to be just that: a tangible piece of life that my friends and I interacted with in real time, with real laughter, and with a real sense of community. The present me was just about to leave my own community, and it felt good to cling to the fact that silly moments like shaking a leaf down from a tree can, and did exist. I hoped that perhaps if they had happened once, they could and would again. The me who remembered a leaf being shaken off a tree did not see metaphor, symbolism, or parable; I saw three friends on a random adventure looking silly and laughing. And somehow, this too I needed to remember.

Since then that memory continues to be many things. Sometimes it rests beside me in my quiet nostalgic moments. Sometimes it bubbles up in evening of laughter and stories with friends. Once even I fell in (unrequited) love with a boy, and in my rush to articulate my growing impatience, I found myself describing it to a girlfriend as standing by that leaf, waiting for it to, well, "fall" for me. The more I began to naturally extend the analogy however, the more I realized it was not the leaf itself I really wanted, it was the last leaf hanging on the tree that had me so captivated. If it really fell, it would be just like all the others. What a disarming moment it was to realize that in the end, it wasn’t him at all that I wanted, but rather, the idea of him. I surely didn’t see that one coming when I stood before that little English tree, but there it was, oddly shaped enough of an experience to fit perfectly into even the strange oddities of my own romantic whims.

And here I am now. England is further away than my checkbook will allow. Work is fine, change is in the air, Tom and Kristel are happily married, and I don’t know that I’ve really watched any tree shed its leaves lately, much less its last one. And today for some reason while sitting on my bed, I remembered again that I had been a part of a leaf-shedding, tree-shaking event, and I was flooded not only by that memory, but by the memories of myself trying to process through it. I am the sum of all this. I am the student, shaking a tree in order to experience something truly significant and unique. I am the girl trying to make sense of myself, attempting to understand what it means to give myself wholly and completely to a God whose ways are higher, and slower, than my own. I am a woman, celebrating support systems that have been my community, my laughter, my real in the face of deep questions and insecurities. I am one who remembers, laughs, and loves. I am me, wondering if I can be ok with all that I have been and all that I will be as every new season leaves me clinging to what I know and falling into what I don’t.

I have no idea why I keep remembering my moment with that last leaf on the tree, and I have no idea who I will be and what the whole of that memory will say about me each time it recurs. I can only hope, like T.S. Eliot that in this too, "we shall not cease from exploration/ And the end of all our exploring/ Will be to arrive where we started/ And know the place for the first time." Like a good book that grows with me each time I open it, I think this may be grace.