The following is an excerpt from a paper I wrote yesterday (ps- it is a rough draft)...it seemed relevant....
People say that freshman year is the most selfish year of a person’s life.
They say that people find out so much about their personalities and their relationships
and their faith. They say that people spend more time thinking about their own lives and
their own futures than they ever will again. “How does this affect me?” is a constant
question running through my mind. I will be the first to admit that I am selfish. I am
human and I am weak, but I feel like I can say in confidence that in this semester, my
first semester of college, I have spent less time focusing on who I already am and more
time uncovering the person I hope to be.
When I first came to Harding, I thought I knew exactly what I wanted. I thought I
knew what I wanted in my friendships, in my faith, in a guy, in a career, etc. The list
goes on and on. I’m the kind of person who likes to know exactly what’s going to happen
before it happens. Now before all the judgment starts and everyone begins thinking that
I’m a psychotic, organized, planner person, please keep in mind that everyone likes to
know what’s going to happen. Everyone likes to be able to answer the question, “So,
what are you going to do with your life?” Everyone likes to have a game plan.
Daily, I surround myself with people who know me well. Some of them have
known me for weeks and some have known me for years, but I have been blessed with
friends who know who I am and love me anyway. A lot of us have known for years
what we want while others still have no idea. Our classes and conversations are
filled with family members and professors subtly asking the terrifying question,
“So…what are you going to do?” They say they want us to do what we feel like we are
supposed to do but what they really want us to do is make a difference, to
make great decisions and do great works. So we worry. We worry about our clothes and
our diets and our clubs. We worry about our majors and our minors and our summer jobs.
We worry about our relationships and our choices and our faith and when we finally get
so overwhelmed about our situations that we finally reveal our hearts to our friends, we
learn that we are not alone.
There is a post-it note above my bathroom mirror that says, “Take a deep breath. I
love you. We are in this together.” My roommate wrote it the first night of pledge week
when we knew we were headed into our hardest week of college so far this year.
We were in it together and we made it. We knew even when the pressure was so
great that we could find strength in ourselves and in each other. That is what I mean when
I say “the kind of person I hope to become.” I don’t know what kind of job I will have
someday. I don’t know when or if I will marry. I don’t know who of my friends will still
be my friends in ten years and I don’t know where or if I will ever make a difference in
the world. But I do know that I am not alone. I know that even when we are selfish, we
are not alone. When we are scared, we should find courage in knowing that even when
we are not enough, God is sufficient.
My faith will never be flawless nor my choices perfect. I will never
become who I want to be by my own merit. “But by the grace of God I am what I am,
and His grace to me was not without effect.” (1 Corinthians 15:10)
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