A few weeks ago I had the awesome privilege of going to SEEK, a conference of 13,000 young Catholics on fire for their faith. Even though my travel plans didn't really work out the way I had wanted them to, God was able to work through others and myself to show me that I need to let everything go and let Him be in control of everything going on in my life. Even though I got there about 24 hours late, I'm still grateful for my experience and happy that I was able to make it for what I did.
SEEK is a conference put on every other January by the Fellowship of Catholic University Students or FOCUS, to bring college and some high school students closer to Christ and give them the tools they need to evangelize to their peers at their respective colleges and universities. Some of the best Catholic speakers give important and practical talks for the keynotes and breakout sessions, on topics ranging from relationships to what's so great about the Catholic Church, and every topic in between. But some of the best and most fun things of my experience was seeing all the amazing performers on the Hub stage, performers that are basically just getting started and want to share their talents somewhere, along with the constant flag runs of the different schools being represented. Plus all the inside jokes that were had.
School spirit of all schools that went, no matter is they have a FOCUS center on their campus or not, was very prevalent for everyone. This was especially true for my school since FOCUS was founded there and a lot of the people involved with the organization happened to go here.
In the midst of all the amazing things that I was able to experience during this conference, God threw me yet another curveball. Which He seems to be throwing me a lot of in the past few months. I won't go into the personal details of the matter, but the curveball He threw me was a huge hit, both financially, emotionally, and spiritually in the sense that I would end up having to pay thousands more for this year than what I had previously thought. But through it, I had, and still have to trust Him in everything. I've also learned that I need to let Him take control of everything in my life, which I thought I had been doing up until then, but He obviously didn't think so.
Even though, I am having to end up paying a few thousand dollars more than what was supposed to be the case before, I don't know what I would do if I weren't able to go to Benedictine. Here I have found such an amazing community and family, that I would be lost without it, if I were to go somewhere cheaper. In addition, I am challenged daily to make my relationship with God deeper and stronger, where other places, this wouldn't be the case. I am able to get an amazing education, where I'm taught so much more about my faith in every subject, not just Theology classes, and a place where professors talk about religion and their faith openly. I'm also grateful to be able to get to know my professors on a more personal level by having smaller classes and being able to talk to them about anything on my mind.
Even though God's plan may not align perfectly with mine, I know that He's in control and I just have to work on letting go of everything and letting Him have the reigns, so to speak.
