Yesterday I drove away from my assembly line job for the last time, and I realized that I was going to miss it.
I won’t miss getting up at 4 am. I won’t miss the strong language, the crude jokes. I won’t miss the exhaustion, counting the hours on the clock, running out of parts… But I will miss the people.
The man who promised to bring a snake from India to cure his coworker’s anxiety (and who was faster than all of the rest us at everything, even while facetiming his mom). The girl with a Latin teacher friend. The kind old man who smiled at me every morning. The girl who spends 60 hours at work every week just to afford her car and house. The woman who asked me for advice on her son’s dorm room (he was her oldest child and she was afraid to send him to college). The man who complimented my hard work in words I won’t repeat (but I was still happy to be complimented), whose favorite thing to say was “I f—ing hate it here” and yet worked the hardest of anyone and never had anything bad to say to or about me. The girl who said goodbye yesterday: “Have a nice life, Maya.”
Yes, I will miss them. I will pray for them, and I will miss them, and by God’s grace perhaps someday I will see them again, in this world or beyond.
Have a nice life.
It was hard to be around people with such different beliefs and lifestyles than mine all summer. I am trying to learn how to be at once kind and courageous; at once principled and friendly. I am glad that I got the chance to learn it, a little.
I will miss the people.
And now summer comes to an end. Now I face school’s beginning, the beauty of classes and schedules and clubs and all that terrifying wonder. I am very excited, and yet I am melancholy, for… for in every wood, in every spring, there is a different green. For I am haunted by an endless ache. For the world is broken.
But God is good, and by his will, my rage will turn to desperate faith.
I miss the people at school. The friends far away and near. My coworkers and my family and the people I have lost.
As I say often, I am made for a different world, so I will not be home and content until I am there.
But dang it, I’m going to try to be a better woman while I’m on this earth. I’m going to read my Bible and eat right and work out and do homework and write and pray —
And I’m going to fail and fall again on God’s grace —
So here goes. Helheimr.
Now don’t mind me. I’ll just be over here in my corner, mourning dead dreams and crafting new ones.
It’s good to be alive.
~ Maya
when through the woods 
Wow, this post is timely for me. I just started my stockroom job and it is a different world. Definitely not something I want to do long-term, but it’s something that is going to be good for me, and not just financially. Thank you for the reminder Maya!
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Oh, goodness, Maya…your way with words and your beautiful outlook on a broken world and a shining eternity.✨I loved reading this post!
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At the beginning of summer I moved back to my hometown and left a restaurant job I’d worked for a year to support myself. I didn’t write anything about the experience, even in my journal, because writing meaningfully about meaningful things in my own life is NOT one of my talents, but this is exactly it. There are things you don’t miss, for sure, but you’ve got to know people who are utterly different from you as really people (people who like you in return, appreciate you simply because you work hard at your job, and tell you goodbye with genuine hope that you will have as good a life as they are kind enough to think you deserve) , and it’s…beautiful. And actually kinda hard to leave? So thanks for writing this, it meant quite a bit to me personally as well.
I hope you have a beautiful sophomore year of college! Here’s to praying and reading the Bible and eating right and working out and having patience and seeking God’s will…and God’s inexhaustible grace when we inevitably fail! ❤
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Ack, I feel so melancholy reading this! Life hurts a little sometimes because every time we open ourselves up and choose to love others, we also open ourselves up to grief later on. Still, somehow all these experiences shape us and make life undeniably beautiful in a sad sort of way. 🤍🤎
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Thank you. Thank you for writing this and sharing it. Having experienced something of the same this last month, I felt this post deeply.
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