These Three Years

It was just last year, about the same time. I had the worst final exam schedule: Four of them and one final paper—all due the last five days of the two-week exam period. When all my friends were throwing away outlines and cheering on summer or graduation, I still had three full days of torture left. The night before my last exam--about May 3--I remember sitting on the otherwise-empty top floor of my school libarary and shedding tears of frustration. Lord, I just want to be done! I remember saying.

Okay, so maybe I was a little dramatic, especially since that was my fourth semester of law school, but I just felt so weak at the time.

But zoom to this year, and I’m done-and early. I feel God had remembered my momentary misery—which I had forgotten until now—and given me something this year that I didn’t even pray for. God’s blessing has been a theme in my life these last three years of law school. But more importantly, He’s pruned me—showing me what it means to follow Him—and what I need to do to shatter ceilings that keep me from intimacy with Him. Tangibly, it’s been that Bible Study topic; those conversations; that prayer meeting…those journal entries.

If you would have asked me three years ago, I would have said law school would be so much more about the degree. Obviously, the literally thousands of hours devoted to “work product” (lawyer joke:)) make it hard to argue with that. But if you want to know what has defined these last three years for me, it’s that I’ve become a woman (no longer a girl), so ready to be all I can for Him—even if it sometimes takes me a while to hear His voice. He's taught me spiritual lessons of greater value than any expensive case book--ones I never could have pictured in August 2005 when I was fretting about how I would ever be able to brief 10 really dense cases in one night.

I have so much more to share about these last three years, so I’ll be blogging about them for the next few entries…For now I’m off to celebrate (which basically just means getting to attend an event I haven’t been able to all semester because of school). First, Psalm 116: 12-19, which expresses what I'm feeling on this last day of law school:

12 What shall I render to the LORD
For all His benefits toward me?
13 I will take up the cup of salvation,
And call upon the name of the LORD.
14 I will pay my vows to the LORD
Now in the presence of all His people.

15 Precious in the sight of the LORD
Is the death of His saints.

16 O LORD, truly I am Your servant;
I am Your servant, the son of Your maidservant;
You have loosed my bonds.
17 I will offer to You the sacrifice of thanksgiving,
And will call upon the name of the LORD.

18 I will pay my vows to the LORD
Now in the presence of all His people,
19 In the courts of the LORD’s house,
In the midst of you, O Jerusalem.

Praise the LORD!