I am not going to lie. Summer of 2018 absolutely sucked. I know people make jokes all the time about how terrible summers are and how they are just going to make the next year their year. It is a vicious cycle because no matter how many times we say, "oh, I'll make next year my year," we never actually end up making next year our year. Half the time people jokingly say that their summer sucked means that maybe they didn't get out as much as they wanted or the boy they liked didn't want them back. I don't want to push away people who're summers actually did suck because like me I'm sure there were just as many truly terrible summers as there were truly incredible summers.

However, this last summer taught me some crucial life lessons that maybe I didn't want, but certainly needed. I try not to sugar coat it, but I also try not to make it sound that terrible. It wasn't at all. There were worse things that could have happened, but it was just the consistency of crap things happening to me that made it just that terrible.

I'll spare the details, but it was definitely not my finest hours. However, in these dark moments, I found some parts of myself that were hiding for a good while. Parts of me that I was either just too afraid to accept that they were apart of me or that I needed to get rid of because that was no longer me. As I struggled to find this definite meaning of who I was, I was stuck sitting trying to tell myself that getting back to college for the fall semester was when everything would get better. While being back at college has maybe helped, it wasn't the solution at all. The solution was God.

Cheesy, I know. But for the last few years of my life, my faith has been on the back burner. It wasn't that I wasn't going to church or wasn't praying. It was the robot-likeness of it that consumed me. My sophomore year of high school I was incredibly dedicated to my faith. I attended youth group frequently, and my main group of friends ran out of the youth group too. I was surrounded by people all searching for God.

I left the youth group, after a series of changes in the youth leader, I found I was no longer getting out of youth group what I once was. I thought the solution was to stop going. I stayed with my routine of prayer and going to mass but then after a while, things became just a routine again and my attention in mass wore off quickly and I wanted to just get to the closing hymn so I could go home. I became robotic in my faith.

When everything hit this summer, I wasn't sure how everything would play out. Things did not look to really be going my way, but at the same time, I kept thinking if I just got back to college it would be fixed. One night, I had enough though. I've always been a strong believer in the idea that you are a product of your own choices. Nothing in this world can define you if you don't want it too. But for just these few months I'd stopped believing that, and I sat back asking around, "why me? Why now? What is the lesson?"

I was so deeply disturbed by my own personal distaste in life. My own resentment towards the actions I had made to cause this. I had let my free will beat me.

I couldn't find a system that worked for me. Praying by just kneeling and trying to say a rosary never worked. Going to Church was still a chore. I couldn't find that spark I once had. Until my mom bought me this little black journal.

I've always collected journals, but I never know what to put in them. I get too scared I'm going to absolutely mess up the perfection of the crisp pages. But this journal was somehow different. I knew exactly what I wanted to do with this journal. I felt comfortable with it in my hands, and somehow at ease. I would take the one passion I still cling too (writing) and the one passion I had lost (my faith) and combine them. I began by writing every day in that journal, reflecting on bible verses I randomly selected. I started tracking my mood. I started to focus in on loving myself by focusing on the one who loves me most.

It's only been a little over a month since I started that journal, but my results with it have moved me so much to even write an article about it. I'm not perfect, no. In fact, sometimes I go days without writing in it. But I've found something to tie me back to God, even when I'm not feeling up to it. Since then, my outlook on life has changed. I'm happier, and I'm much more pleased with the plans God has for me.

I'm responding to what I believe is my call, even if I can't see the entire road ahead.