Life has been flying by at hyper speed lately. student teaching full time. classes. sleep. attempting to have a social life. This semester has been quite the ride.
Last semester, I was really looking forward to the promise that this semester held. I was excited to be in the classroom. I was excited to be a senior. I was excited just because life was going great, but then “the real world” happened. My grandma passed away over Christmas break. Waking up at 6am was exhausting. I felt like a chicken with my head cut off because my friends were all living life and I just felt like I was working, working, working.
It really got to me. I became obsessed with social media, and I looked at it every spare moment of the day. I saw how much fun my friends were having, and I saw all of the moments that I was missing. I couldn’t attend things during the days because I had to teach, and I couldn’t attend things most nights because I have class or other obligations. It felt like I fell into a deep hole. I compared my life to others as I looked at Facebook. I became saddened as I convinced myself that I was “doing college wrong.”
This week, I have felt nothing but joy as I’ve gone to school. My students were doing well with their content, and I was fostering amazing relationships with them. I couldn’t wait to come home every night and talk to my roommate about the shenanigans that my students created each day. (If you interact with me regularly, you already know that my high schoolers do the funniest things.) Life was looking up, and I blame this partially on my decision to delete Facebook from my phone.
This morning when I woke up, life went back to normal. I didn’t have the desire to get up and go to church, so I watched the service on my computer.
God spoke loud and clear.
During the sermon on Ephesians 1:15-23, the pastor went on a side note to talk about hope. Hope is the oxygen that we breathe, even if we don’t realize it. We put our hope in something, and sometimes the hard part is when we realize that our hope isn’t filling us up like we thought it would. That’s when I realized that I’ve been putting my hope in the thought of that “perfect college life.” I feel like many say that college is the best four years of your life, and although this is true, it can also be some of the hardest years. On top of that, social media doesn’t make that any easier. It’s easy to take a snapshot of the fun, happy moments, post them online, and forget about the hard things. It’s even easier to look at these moments from the outside and compare your life to this “snapshot” of someone else’s.
Since I heard this message this morning, God has been surrounding me with His love and grace all day. I know where to put my hope now, and that is completely and totally in Him. Although I don’t have “the perfect college life,” I think mine is pretty great, and I will start this week by dancing in HIS hope and HIS grace.
As for me, I think I’ll keep a little more distance from social media, too 😉
I hope you dance with me this week!
Jordie
P.S. As a result of God’s amazing self today, I’ll have some really EXCITING updates on my fundraising this week, so stay tuned!!!
