So many times I’ve heard the saying, “College is the best four years of your life!” I’m sure you’ve heard that too, and maybe you agree. Or maybe your like me and you think, “Is it though?”
Don’t get me wrong, I loved JMU. I love the friends I made, I loved a lot of my classes. I loved living on my own in a house with 6 of my best friends. I starting following Christ my sophomore year and wouldn’t want it any other way.
But I don’t think I would want to repeat these last four years. While there was a lot of good, there was a lot of painful growing. It’s easy to say your a Christian, but truly following Christ is hard. I don’t claim to do this perfectly, or well for that matter, but I have learned that following Jesus requires something of us.
There were a lot of things I wanted to do at JMU that didn’t happen. I wanted to be in an acapella group, I wanted a job with the Community Service-Learning Office, I wanted to be in the community service fraternity, Alpha Phi Omega. I remember screaming at God in my car, “I’M DONE!!” I was so fed up and angry with God for not giving me what I wanted (In retrospect, it sounds absurd). Looking back in my journals, there are days of angry scribblings, livid that I felt like God wasn’t blessing me in the ways I wanted.
There were also things that I did that I really didn’t want to do. The biggest one was becoming a small group leader within InterVarsity. I remember praying, “Lord I will do this if You want me to, but I really don’t want to.” But after two years of leading my small group and then freshmen girls, I would never have traded it for anything. It brought to light my biggest insecurities, but also brought me to the foot of the cross where I experienced God’s endless love, grace and mercy.
Last week I found a verse that sums up much of what I learned throughout my college experience. In John 14:27 Jesus says, “Peace I leave you; my peace I give you. I do not give as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”
I am thankful that Christ does not give as the world does. The gifts that come from the Lord are so much more satisfying than what comes from the world. He doesn’t always give us what we want, but He always give us what we need.
As I am entering into life after college and preparing for the Race, I am learning what my faith looks like without the “student” and “small group leader” title that my identity has been so firmly (and wrongfully) grounded in. In the first chapter of the Gospel of John, the first thing Jesus says in verse 38 is, “What do you want?” In the next verse He replies with an invitation and a promise, “Come, and you will see.”
This past month I have been learning to answer that question with, “I want to follow you.” The Lord invites us to follow Him and promises that we will see. See what? I don’t know. But I do know I can trust an all-knowing, all-powerful God that has endless love for me.
All I know is I want to see.
