Growing up, I was raised Catholic. I am extremely thankful to have been raised with parents who made God a part of my life. I grew up going to church every week and attended a Catholic elementary school — uniforms, demerits and all. However, as I got older I came to realize what I wanted from having a faith, and maybe Catholicism was not it. Going to church seemed to be a series of memorized prayers and songs that brought me no closer to God, and quite frankly pushed me farther away. In high school, I pulled away from God because I was trying to pull away from what I knew to be religion. I didn't have a relationship with God at all.
I'm a planner. For as long as I can remember I have had my life planned out: where I wanna live, who I want to be, what college I want to go to and what I want to do with my life. I have my life scheduled down to the hours and minutes in the day. I can remember sitting in class in 7th grade and telling everyone that I was going to University of California, Los Angelos to study musical theatre. As I moved into high school that changed to the University of Georgia, and I was going to be a broadcast journalist. Regardless of what the plan was, I knew I wanted it and I wasn't stopping until I got there.
Fast forward three years later and here I am at Auburn University studying communication and marketing. This was not in the plans. I had spent my entire high school career prepping to go to UGA but their admissions department hit the breaks on my plan and sent me down a completely different path. (Plug: thank you UGA for declining me because Auburn was one of the best things to have happened to me.) If there is one thing I have learned in my life, things rarely ever go as planned.
As I started my freshman year of college, I had a plan as well: I was going to major in broadcast journalism, graduate in four years and work for some hot shot network as a news anchor. A major change and a few reality checks later, here I am studying communications and marketing with not a clue of what I want to do with my future. A terrifying feeling for somebody who has always had a plan for their life. Recently, I began the lovely process of applying for internships, seven to be exact, and got declined from six of the seven and got a maybe from the remaining one. This has been a rather large slap in the face from life. Something that has forced me to take a step back from my plans and life and really self-reflect.
When I started at Auburn, I still did not consider myself a chaser of Christ, a believer yes, but a participant in my faith, no. I was in for a large culture shock moving from Colorado to the Bible Belt of America. Almost everyone I was encountering seemed to have a deeply rooted relationship with Jesus and was on fire for God. I was not. Since the end of high school and the start of
A lot of this anxiety stemming from the insane pressure I put on myself to implement my plans. It was not until a girl in my sorority brought me to a local church first semester freshman year, that I realized what religion was really about. It is about a relationship with God. It is about a faith that allows you to cast all of your anxiety and worry into someone that can give you a sense of security for your future. This was the wake-up call I never realized I needed.
Faith is confidence or trust in God. Something I realized about life is you need to have faith in the life God has planned for you. You may think you have a plan for your life, but he has a better one. I recently came across a quote that said,
"God has three answers to your prayers: yes, no, and I have something better in mind."
Things do not work out like you want them to, but find comfort in the fact that God will never leave you alone in your struggles. God wants to see you through to the end. Looking back, yes there have been times in my life where my plans did not take off; however, everything that happened to me leads me to who I am today and gives me the foundation to build on for who I want to be in the future. We were not created to go through the struggles, anxieties and turns of life alone. We have our friends, our family, our loved ones, and above all else we have God.
Especially in college, we put so much pressure on ourselves to be perfect, to do everything right and to try to be continuously bettering ourselves to maintain that successful edge. But what if God could be your edge. What if a faith in God is what gave you the attitude to be successful. There is no universal definition of success. Success can be money to some. Success can be happiness to another. Success to me used to be the career of my dreams. Success to me now means letting go of my plans and finding security in the life God has planned for me. Success is a positive attitude every day.
"Instead, bless — that is your job, to bless. You'll be a blessing and also get a blessing. Whoever wants to embrace life and see the day fill up with good, here’s what you do: say nothing evil or hurtful; snub evil and cultivate good; run after peace for all you’re worth. " — -1 Peter 3: 8
So have faith and trust God because he has a plan for who he wants you to be. The more you try to plan your life around your desires, the more God will find a way to show you his desires should be yours instead. So take a step back from your life, take a deep breath, and let all of your anxiety and worry fall to God because he will not forsake you in your time of need.
Run after the peace God can provide for you.
