July is the month we say goodbye to writers who are retiring or moving on to new adventures, and this is Gabrielle’s last post. She has been writing with us since August 2022.

Goodbye for now, people of the post calvin.

I’ve spent most of my life dreading goodbyes. I could dread the last day of each school year for months. I could picture the words my teacher would say about how proud she was of us, how much we’ve grown and dread the feelings bubbling up inside me. I could pre-picture how terrible it would be to never be in that classroom again. How when I got back to school the next year I would be older and different. How everything would be different. And different could quite possibly be bad.

A goodbye was a gateway into that terrifying world of change.

I’ve read three of the four books in the Thursday Murder Club book series by Richard Osman because reading that last book is a goodbye, and the characters are old, and if one of them dies in the story I don’t want to read it. I had this shirt with stripes on the sleeves and polka dots on the body, and I would try it on in the morning and breathe a sigh of relief when I realized it wouldn’t be my last time to wear it. I can remember the last orchestra concert I played in, the music crowded out of my head with the repeating drumbeat of this is your last e-flat, this is your last crescendo, this is your last bow. I think I owned my dog no more than three days before I felt this pit in my stomach. What would I do when I had to say goodbye to her forever?

So there were lots of stories I probably should have told while I was a writer here. My mom suggested I write about how cool the Bible is. My brother thought I could write another story about him. But really, when I click around this site and read all of my fellow authors’ stories, I feel like I could have done more. Better. I could have written about serious things. I could have written about meaningful things—maybe more theological things, geological things, or methodological things. And I think I will, if a spot opens up another year here, because I want to get better at writing things that matter. And no community supports that goal better than here.

But for now I’m practicing another thing that I’m trying to get better at.

I’ll be different the next time I write here. That’s how change works, despite my tears and dread. But possibly, that different won’t be so bad.

Thanks for everything readers, editors, fellow writers, and my willing and unwilling post subjects. 

See you soon.

Gabrielle Eisma

Gabrielle Eisma graduated Calvin with a BFA in studio art and writing in 2022. She’s from Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she now works as a writer and illustrator for books for (mostly) children and middle grade readers.