College is Weird

College is weird. That's really the only word to describe it. It takes everything that you had so deeply woven yourself into and built yourself around and it strips you from it, leaving you naked and bare and probably extremely vulnerable. There's nothing familiar. No one knows your heart and can give direction when everything is jumbled up and blurry, there are no hiding places that you can run to and feel safe and secure, there is not even a familiar face to remind you that your life and you really are the same as you have always been. It's just you. And Jesus.

All that crap that I fantasized and dreamt about college is merely a romantic picture that I'd pieced together from movies and stories told from other people's adventures. The truth is, college is freaking hard. It's overwhelming and stressful and there isn't time for thinking let alone Spanish tests and English essays. There are a million new emotions that I never new existed, there are opportunities for adventure every day and suddenly the world seems accessible. The nations seem so close that I could reach out and touch them. College is a whirlwind, that's for sure. But amongst the newness and foggy future, there is a beauty that has begun to penetrate me with its growing light.

I feel extremely blessed by the family and friends that I've grown up with. I can't ever imagine having better friends than I've had this past year. They were those rare people who not only inspire you every day to love Jesus more and go where He sends you, but also make you feel free from the worlds constraints and expectations, that can show you how to throw your head back and laugh at the ridiculousness of life. They are the manifestations of joy. And as my dearest friend Alexis and I sat on my bed crying the night before six states came between us, we realized it wasn't the loss of friendship we were afraid of but the realization and the reality that things would never, ever be the same. That's what broke our hearts. But the truth is, Jesus wants us to realize that we don't need anything or anyone apart from Him. He is beautiful because beauty is satisfying within itself. It's not a means to an end, it's an end. He is the end and also the beginning. He is everything.

So although somedays I feel like I've been beaten by the world and it's pressures and expectations, I can feel Jesus wooing me to find rest in Him. When I feel like I must come before him with everything figured out and fixed, I hear him tell me that His strength is made perfect in my weakness, not my strength and put-togetherness. He loves me not because I am lovable, but because he IS love and I am his daughter whom he delights in. He rejoices over me not because I know what I want to do with my life or make good grades or keep my composure 24/7, but because there is nothing he'd rather see in all of the universe than his children loving him. That may seem daunting. It may seem scary because it means change and conviction, but there is nothing I'd rather do than quit life in order to love him more. He is all that I need. I'm still learning what that means, but I think that being stripped from everything that I clung to so closely made me realize something so beautiful: As it turns out, it's not my friends or family or church or school or hometown that have built me into who I am, but Jesus who is building me to be more like Him.

Nothing missing.
Nothing needed.
Nothing wanted.
Just Jesus.

It is well with my soul.