When I went off to college, I thought it would fix everything. I thought I would transform into the beautiful independent woman that I pictured myself as. I thought I would find my path, my husband, my life. But that’s not what happens when you run away from your problems.
A lot happened that year when I was eighteen. I was graduating high school, on top of the world, I knew everything. I had plans. I was going to college, I was going to become a movie editor, I was going to get married at twenty-two to the man of my dreams, and by thirty I would have three to five kids in a house with a pool.
Then the world as I knew it ended.
And it was my fault.
My first semester of college was ruined, and I no longer knew who I was. I tried to cling to my old dreams, but they no longer fit with who I was becoming. The next four years turned into a frantic search for who I was and what I was supposed to be doing with my life. I changed my major on a yearly basis as my dreams changed from editor to doctor to just being me. I switched primary friend groups almost as often with only a strong few staying constant. I swung between being the nerd, to the fitness guru who never studied, to the couch potato who also never studied. It wasn’t until I was graduating and leaving that I realized I had found who I was. In the month after graduation, still looking for a job in some unknown field and preparing to move back in with my parents, I realized that somewhere in the midst of the searching and the grieving and the fighting, I’d found myself.
I’d made friends and had experiences that had allowed the real me to resurface. I hadn't fully dealt with what happened and was nowhere near healed, but I'd been able to heal just enough to find myself...or at least enough to realize that I didn't have to. Have you ever heard the saying, "There's no one alive that is youer than you," by Dr. Seuss? It's simple and silly, but oh so true. I didn't spend four years trying to find myself. I was always me, right there in the midst of the pain, I was me and I was changing. I spent four years not understanding myself and learning that I don't need to have a plan, God has one. One of the first questions you get as a young adult meeting new people is: "What do you do?" And if you don't have an awesome, adulty answer and you aren't going to grad school you're left with this awkward, "Um, well I'm ..." and then trying to come up with a cooler way of saying a temp, or an assistant, figuring it out, or any number of other things society doesn't deem as an adult job/career worth pursuing. But the thing is, my identity isn't in my career, it isn't in where I'm headed or what I'm doing it. My identity is in who I'm doing it for, Christ.
I’d made friends and had experiences that had allowed the real me to resurface. I hadn't fully dealt with what happened and was nowhere near healed, but I'd been able to heal just enough to find myself...or at least enough to realize that I didn't have to. Have you ever heard the saying, "There's no one alive that is youer than you," by Dr. Seuss? It's simple and silly, but oh so true. I didn't spend four years trying to find myself. I was always me, right there in the midst of the pain, I was me and I was changing. I spent four years not understanding myself and learning that I don't need to have a plan, God has one. One of the first questions you get as a young adult meeting new people is: "What do you do?" And if you don't have an awesome, adulty answer and you aren't going to grad school you're left with this awkward, "Um, well I'm ..." and then trying to come up with a cooler way of saying a temp, or an assistant, figuring it out, or any number of other things society doesn't deem as an adult job/career worth pursuing. But the thing is, my identity isn't in my career, it isn't in where I'm headed or what I'm doing it. My identity is in who I'm doing it for, Christ.
That summer, that year, when I started college is my moment. My moment I regret and wish with all my heart I could take back, and yet I wouldn’t be who I am today without it. I wouldn’t be where I am or know whom I know if I hadn’t gone through that terrible year. I wish I could say I now understand the bigger picture and I don’t have regrets, but that’s simply not true. Now I know that I’ll never get the bigger picture, it’s not my job to get it. I do have regrets, but I try to learn from my sins and better myself. While I can rarely tell why something is happening as it happens, I do have a better understanding when I look back and thus a greater appreciation for the way God works.
