Freshman year. There truly aren’t words sufficient enough to put a specific description on the year in its entirety. All I have to say is…what a year. A year of more brokenness, more heartache, and more pain, but yet, more growth, more lessons learned, more healing, more excitement, and more joy than I have experienced in any year prior to this one.
You learn a lot about yourself (and if you’re like me, probably more than you really want to know) when you’re pushed out of your comfort zone so completely that you don’t even know who you are anymore. You’re left with a decision that is the underlying determination of the choices you make and the person you become: in what, exactly, will your identity be placed?
Whether you realize it or not, you have an “ultimate”. A goal that is placed higher than anything else on your list of priorities. Whether this goal is feeling acceptance, finding love, proving your worth, inflating your pride, running away from your past, striving for perfection, or maybe seeking happiness wherever you think it may be found…whatever it is for you, it controls you. It drives your motivation and you base, not only your worth but also your self-determined definition of identity off of it.
For me, my biggest prayer as I began the “college chapter” in my life, was that the Lord would break down everything within me that I had built on my own and then rebuild, reshape, and remold me in a way that, not only would have me rooted in Him but also would reveal more of who He is. Lesson one: our God is faithful in answering our prayers.
When you’re stripped of the things you have always allowed yourself to be defined as you’re left feeling entirely lonely, whole-heartedly broken, and absolutely terrified. It is here, in this state of utter despair, that the Lord reveals who you are apart from Him. Lesson two: I am absolutely nothing without my Savior.
I am pride. I am selfish ambition. I am greed. I am lies. I am evil. I am gossip. I am idolization. I am superficial. I am anger. I am jealousy. I am comparison. I am self-seeking. I am sin.
Lesson three: we serve the Great I Am.
Even in the ugliest, darkest, and most horrendous moments, He is The Constant. Within the revelation of who I am as a sinner, I was shown who I am in light of Jesus. He whose eyes look on my wretchedness with love, He who pleads on my behalf, He who fights my every battle, He who goes before me within every trial, and He who calls me free…that is the Love I seek, that is the Acceptance I chose, and that is the identity worth being defined by.
Thank you, Lord, for freshman year.
