This semester may be the one that drives me to coffee. It is reading-heavy and philosophy-heavy and classes-worth-caring-about-heavy. I have several hundred pages to get through each week, not to mention the book review I have yet to finish, the paper I have promised to give, and the all those sorts of assignments that actually appear on syllabi.

I’m not drowning in it. I’m doing alright. My reading for Monday is done, and I’m almost caught up with Plato for Tuesday. But I have a nagging worry that I won’t be able to sustain the pace.

I’m scared of crashing and burning.  Well, the burning I don’t mind—it’s the crashing I dislike. I do not like the jarring transition from self-sufficiency to self-pity, from one flawed attitude to another. It is an uncomfortable switch because in that first moment when my neediness is apparent, but I have not yet got myself quite tightly wrapped in warm, cuddly panic, I see Truth. I see myself naked in frailty opposite my suffering Savior, hands outstretched, patient to show me who I am. It’s awfully unpleasant.

And so, to avoid that moment, I am striving (that’s what my mom keeps telling me to do: strive) to see Christ first. To skip the self-sufficiency and self-pity and self-aggrandizement and self-deprecation and self-love and self-loathing, and begin with seeing my God.

Let’s start with today. Today was warm and sometimes sunny. I had a stab at reading Richard II, and had brunch with Renée and Sarah. I got to see Emily and her boys, and drop a note in intercampus mail, and talk to Karen, and go to church where I sang songs I love and saw people I love and was reminded of a Jesus who loves me.

Jesus loves me, not the way I love other people, because He thinks I am cool and funny and interesting and I make Him feel good about Himself, but because it is in His nature to love, because He is Love. He is living, dying, living-again Love.

Jesus loves me, because He is. We’ll begin with that. (It seems that He and I are forever beginning.)