Religion is a word that comes to mind when we talk about our beliefs and worries. I’m not going to lie, I didn’t realize the importance of my religion until I was struggling. I didn’t realize what truly mattered until I was put down by all the things I put before my faith. It’s hard to always stay focused because of all the distractions that we have, which can lead to doubt.

I heard from a lot of people older than me that when you go to college it’s easy to forget about your faith and focus on other things. It scared me how much people started to change and it pushed me to not be like that. This is ultimately why I wanted to make it a priority to be the best version of myself in college.

When I came to college, I had a choice to completely put my faith to the side and turn away from it or to learn more about it and grow. One of the first few days we had an involvement fair and the first club I happened to come across dealt with religion. It was almost a sign that I needed to spend more time on this than I had previously spent. It took me awhile to completely realize what choice I wanted and this was probably because I went to both a private grade and high school. Faith is one of the only things I have known for such a long time, but the question was if I really understood what it meant.

I used to be the type of person who would say I was Catholic, but never did anything to show it. I would always try to make myself feel better about not going to church by saying how much community service I did that year or how I prayed in my religion class. I thought that I could make up for the things that I wasn’t doing. Then, one day while talking to one of my mentors at Ohio State, I realized that it’s about what I believe, not about how much I can show off to others.

At first, I didn’t really know what this meant. This realization ended up forcing me to re-evaluate the people in my life, which was a tough thing to do. I started to question if my faith was real when things started to go downhill and I almost felt as if I was at square one again. However, each of us struggle to understand why certain things in the world happen and we will never truly have an answer for that. Even when I started to have these downward spiral thoughts, it all came back to me wanting to grow in my faith.

Recently, I have been waking up every day and following along with a Bible Study booklet that has scriptures to read with reflections. It has allowed my mind to wander and my thoughts to expand into greater things. Ultimately, it has allowed me to be more at peace and to trust in the days that are ahead of me.