It’s been a hard week in the midst of a hard year. I had a busy schedule at school, and had a lot of friends going through a rough time at the same time. That lethal combination of no sleep, no free time, and too-much pouring out at once hit me. It hit me hard.

College is a very easy time to feel lonely and invisible. I have a lot of friends whom I love very much. But I’ve been realizing recently that I tend to hold myself separate from them. I am all about helping my friends through whatever they’re struggling with. I willingly drop anything and everything to have an impromptu counseling session with someone who needs it.

But in doing so, I have been letting my own feelings and issues fall to the wayside. I have spent much of my life helping to care for others well while simultaneously ignoring my own need for care. This realization was a hard one to come to terms with.

I have a few friends who have caught sight of the tip of the ice berg of me, commenting how I always stand up for others without question, but then when it comes to myself, I’m silent. I had a friend call me out the other day, saying that I was making those around me feel while not allowing myself to feel. Yowch. God has put the question on my heart of why I treat myself differently, as less, than how I treat others.

As you might be able to imagine, I was aggravated. I didn’t want these hard-hitting life questions coming at me in the midst of a week full of four tests and a multi-page essay. I just wanted to check the next thing off my list and keep moving. That’s my strategy, keep moving keep moving keep moving.

But as anyone who has ever lived can tell you, things eventually stop moving. You can’t keep avoiding forever (much as I would like to). Those thoughts that you evade are sneaky, and they catch up to you in the quiet moments between events, the quiet moments when you’re waiting for your coffee to brew in the morning. When you’re stuck waiting at the longest red light on campus. When you’re waiting for the next Netflix episode to load.

Even the most stubborn of people (me) can’t completely ignore themselves forever. God and His nudges are (unfortunately) not to be ignored. Learning new things can be difficult. Really difficult. It’s not easy, and there can sometimes be some backslide into old habits.

God sends hard lessons our way because he cares for us. We are His children, and He wants to see us growing and becoming better, healthier versions of ourselves. It isn’t one, two, three, then done. It isn’t a straight or wide path. It hurts. But God is there, walking every step of the way with me. With you. With us. He wants me to treat myself with the same care, attention, and devotion that I use to treat others. And He’s going to help me learn how.