Season 2, Episode 13: Home (Is Wherever I'm With You)
(5 . 22 . 2017)
I took a break in the middle of my Lent analysis- I apologize if you were anxiously awaiting the next installment, but today I had something else that was on my heart. It's my last day out East- I fly out to Chicago around 7:00 tonight and the nostalgia is hitting me in waves, it would seem.
I've had a whirlwind of a year. If you've been following along as I've blogged about it, you've seen me talk about loving my school, and then how I felt like I had made the wrong decision in choosing it. I've gone through periods of growth and change and pressure, and now that it's all come to an end I'm left looking back and trying to sort through the memories.
As I describe this, I imagine two things:
First, an irreparably damaging explosion, and
Second, a hastily done cleanup effort, in which all items are thrown into boxes and bags and shoved into a closet/under a bed.
In some ways, it feels as if the year has moved along so quickly that I barely had time to recognize the moments I was going to be cherishing before I was moving along to the next set of memories to be made. That's why it feels like a shoddy cleanup. I let things happen and now I'm going back through all of the boxes and the bags and determining where each moment needs to be filed in my mind.
In other ways, this year was monumental for me. I felt myself growing, which was kind of insane to experience.
I saw myself make hard decisions.
I was brave.
I did things I never would've done.
I had hard conversations.
I sought out friends and community in order to address a fear of being unwanted.
Heck, I prayed with 40 different people, and I was terrified.
(6 . 10 . 2017)
But now I've been out of Maryland for nearly three weeks, and I'm still only beginning to touch on how incredible this year was for me.
My friends have to keep reminding me that I've already told this story about Kate/Ben/Michelle/Nina twice before.
My camera lens misses capturing the smiles of the worship team.
My heart misses having a roommate to share tears and laughter with.
My mind misses having classes (even if they were at 9 am) to attend.
As trivial as it may sound, my Snapchats are still being sent to the same 8 people over and over again -four from Illinois, and four from Maryland- even if they never respond.
See, my head knows that I'm going back again, but my heart seems to think that I've left for battle and won't ever return.
If you know me at all, you know I'm terrible at saying goodbye. I work myself up about it in the days leading up to the moment itself, and then when that moment does come, it takes everything in me not to become a ridiculously emotional weeping child in the face of the goodbye.
I felt like I had a lot of those to make this year, even though I know I'm coming back. In many ways, I feel like I'm going to be making a lot of those this summer as well.
There's a part of me that knows that I'm different than when I left home a year ago. At the time, I barely knew my school -I had only visited once, and that was on a day when the University was opened up to the public, so I had a particularly vague idea of what the school was about, or what it would be like to attend.
Now, I know my campus, I've given people directions, I've found places where I can meditate on the Bible, and places that I can focus on music. I made myself do things I didn't want to do, things that scared me. I talked to people about Christ and invited them to check out the on-campus ministry, I (truly by Providence) was able to join a worship team, I talked to a boy about feelings, I joined a sorority, I went out of the country twice...The list of things that I never actually saw myself doing goes on for a long while.
The crazy part to me is that these were things that I knew I wanted to do when I got to college, I just didn't believe that I actually could/would. But here I am, living proof that dorks do alright in college.
Truly though, it's been quite weird to find myself back home again. It feels like a prolonged winter/thanksgiving/spring break, and while I appreciate the time off from revisions and studying, I miss Maryland far more than I ever anticipated.
I do this with myself everywhere, I've realized. It's a bit of a cycle.
I enter a community ostracized in some way or another (new kid, didn't go to school in district, out of state, etc...) and feel miserable for a bit. Suddenly a wild friend appears in their natural habitat! I gravitate towards them and begin to make friends through them until all of a sudden I have people, and they kind of like me (I think/hope) and I realize how much I love spending time with them.
But, like all good things, those periods of blissful interactions have to end, because inertia requires change. Every time, I recognize how little I expected to get out of the experience, and yet how much more I've gained.
As Andy Bernard once said, "I wish there was a way to know that you're in 'The Good Old Days' before you've actually left them."
Every time I begin the process of leaving an environment, I look back at the time spent within it and realize how much it's given me.
I took a break in the middle of my Lent analysis- I apologize if you were anxiously awaiting the next installment, but today I had something else that was on my heart. It's my last day out East- I fly out to Chicago around 7:00 tonight and the nostalgia is hitting me in waves, it would seem.
I've had a whirlwind of a year. If you've been following along as I've blogged about it, you've seen me talk about loving my school, and then how I felt like I had made the wrong decision in choosing it. I've gone through periods of growth and change and pressure, and now that it's all come to an end I'm left looking back and trying to sort through the memories.
As I describe this, I imagine two things:
First, an irreparably damaging explosion, and
Second, a hastily done cleanup effort, in which all items are thrown into boxes and bags and shoved into a closet/under a bed.
In some ways, it feels as if the year has moved along so quickly that I barely had time to recognize the moments I was going to be cherishing before I was moving along to the next set of memories to be made. That's why it feels like a shoddy cleanup. I let things happen and now I'm going back through all of the boxes and the bags and determining where each moment needs to be filed in my mind.
In other ways, this year was monumental for me. I felt myself growing, which was kind of insane to experience.
I saw myself make hard decisions.
I was brave.
I did things I never would've done.
I had hard conversations.
I sought out friends and community in order to address a fear of being unwanted.
Heck, I prayed with 40 different people, and I was terrified.
(6 . 10 . 2017)
But now I've been out of Maryland for nearly three weeks, and I'm still only beginning to touch on how incredible this year was for me.
My friends have to keep reminding me that I've already told this story about Kate/Ben/Michelle/Nina twice before.
My camera lens misses capturing the smiles of the worship team.
My heart misses having a roommate to share tears and laughter with.
My mind misses having classes (even if they were at 9 am) to attend.
As trivial as it may sound, my Snapchats are still being sent to the same 8 people over and over again -four from Illinois, and four from Maryland- even if they never respond.
See, my head knows that I'm going back again, but my heart seems to think that I've left for battle and won't ever return.
If you know me at all, you know I'm terrible at saying goodbye. I work myself up about it in the days leading up to the moment itself, and then when that moment does come, it takes everything in me not to become a ridiculously emotional weeping child in the face of the goodbye.
I felt like I had a lot of those to make this year, even though I know I'm coming back. In many ways, I feel like I'm going to be making a lot of those this summer as well.
There's a part of me that knows that I'm different than when I left home a year ago. At the time, I barely knew my school -I had only visited once, and that was on a day when the University was opened up to the public, so I had a particularly vague idea of what the school was about, or what it would be like to attend.
Now, I know my campus, I've given people directions, I've found places where I can meditate on the Bible, and places that I can focus on music. I made myself do things I didn't want to do, things that scared me. I talked to people about Christ and invited them to check out the on-campus ministry, I (truly by Providence) was able to join a worship team, I talked to a boy about feelings, I joined a sorority, I went out of the country twice...The list of things that I never actually saw myself doing goes on for a long while.
The crazy part to me is that these were things that I knew I wanted to do when I got to college, I just didn't believe that I actually could/would. But here I am, living proof that dorks do alright in college.
Truly though, it's been quite weird to find myself back home again. It feels like a prolonged winter/thanksgiving/spring break, and while I appreciate the time off from revisions and studying, I miss Maryland far more than I ever anticipated.
I do this with myself everywhere, I've realized. It's a bit of a cycle.
I enter a community ostracized in some way or another (new kid, didn't go to school in district, out of state, etc...) and feel miserable for a bit. Suddenly a wild friend appears in their natural habitat! I gravitate towards them and begin to make friends through them until all of a sudden I have people, and they kind of like me (I think/hope) and I realize how much I love spending time with them.
But, like all good things, those periods of blissful interactions have to end, because inertia requires change. Every time, I recognize how little I expected to get out of the experience, and yet how much more I've gained.
As Andy Bernard once said, "I wish there was a way to know that you're in 'The Good Old Days' before you've actually left them."
Every time I begin the process of leaving an environment, I look back at the time spent within it and realize how much it's given me.
In lower school, it was confidence in my intelligence.
Middle school, a sense of individualism.
High school, a community.
College-year one, love.
When I left people this May, I was upset because I knew that I was about to enter a period of time where I couldn't just text someone to meet up for coffee, or to come to CSPAC and play music with me, or to watch a Disney movie at 1 AM because it was that time of month and I needed to watch something cute.
That's not to say that I don't have friends here at home because that would be entirely inaccurate. It is to say, however, that the bonds I've made with people from college are rivaling friendships that I've had for years (and in some cases, over a decade) back home -which is a really cool thing, but when I'm the one who has to leave for the summer, it feels like I'm taking stitches out too soon.
So anyhow, that was a lot of words to say that I miss Maryland. I loved the people, I loved exploring the state (usually in the back of Ben's/Derek's/Michelle's car), I loved the school, and I loved the way that God chose for me to be there at exactly this point in my life.
I've been thinking a lot (shocker) about that lately. As many of you may know, when I was choosing schools, I narrowed my choices down to Maryland and a much smaller private Christian school in California. I remember thinking that going to UMD meant I was turning my back on God, and I didn't want that, but at the same time, UMD was my middle school dream school and wasn't I absolutely in love with their Criminology Program? (The answer to that was yes, clearly.)
But since I've been home, I've been thinking about how my year could have been completely different. First, I would've been on a different coast, nowhere near anyone I knew, studying music. Second, I'm sure I would've found a different community out there, but it wouldn't be the one that I have now.
Maryland has made itself my home, but what I've realized even more is that -to steal the words of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros- Home is Wherever I'm With You. (You being God in this case.)
If I invite God into my life, then wherever I go will become a home to me. Everywhere I go, I'll be met by his provisions, whether they be in the form of community, a job, a place to live, or other things, if I invite the Lord to be with me, then I will always have a home in Him.
My main concern in coming to UMD was that in God's eyes (and my mind), rejecting the Christian school was akin to rejecting God altogether. Obviously, from what God has shown me throughout this year, that's not the case. You don't have to be at a Christian school to live out an active Christian Faith. You don't have to be in a Christian sorority or only have Christian friends. You can live that out while interacting with other like and differently minded humans, which is pretty cool.
Basically, no matter where I went, God would've used me and would've taught me some incredible things, but I'm so grateful to have been at UMD to see things happen because I think that makes the victory of getting to see Christ's kingdom expand even sweeter.
The way I've seen God working on my heart and at UMD this year has been astounding. I mean, I don't know if I've ever been so passionate about anything as I was about getting connected with an on-campus ministry, and Hi--we're members of Campus Crusade, do you want to fill out a card and get updates about when we're meeting?
I've never felt so compelled to pray as when I was halfway through my Lenten challenge of 40 days of intentional, interactive prayer.
I've never felt so called to pursue my faith during the school year -which I find kind of crazy. See, the Camp I work at has a saying that you get a "camp high" from being immersed in a spiritually engaging and growth-provoking environment, but that for some people, it can be hard to maintain that feeling. I remember the crash of the "camp high", it usually came around January, when I started to realize that it had been six months since I had last seen my closest friends. But this year was different because I made my faith a priority. In the past, it had never been in the backseat exactly, but I had probably made it -and by extension, God- a passenger in the car of my life, instead of the driver. But that wasn't the case this year. Whenever I had a decision to make, I prayed. When I had a hard time coping with something, I leaned on the community of people whom God had provided to me and prayed more. When I received incredible news, I rejoiced and worshiped, and prayed in thanksgiving.
My life has never revolved so much around my faith, and my being has never felt so genuine. At the beginning of the year, I let God into my heart fully when I asked him to change me. I don't regret it.
There's this song called "Oceans" by Hillsong that's always been particularly moving to me.
When I was in High School, the part that stood out to me was in the second verse:
"Your grace abounds in deepest waters/Your sovereign hand will be my guide.
Where feet may fail and fear surrounds me/You've never failed, and you won't start now."
I liked that it spoke about God's presence never failing us and never abandoning us. I also remember having a conversation with someone who said they didn't like the song being played for young people, really, and I remember asking them why.
They brought up the bridge:
"Spirit lead my where my trust is without borders/Let me walk upon the waters/Wherever you would call me.
Take me deeper than my feet could ever wander/And my faith will be made stronger/In the presence of my Savior."
And talked about how that first line has "wherever you would call me" and that most high school students aren't exactly ready to just up and go wherever the Holy Spirit is prompting them to go. I remember thinking at the time, "o......kay, but I still like the song," and not really getting the point that person had been trying to make...Until now.
I get it now because I feel that readiness bubbling inside of me. There's an eagerness, and a willingness to go wherever God calls me, and I can't wait to see where all of that may lead. (Australia 2018/2021?!?)
So I guess that leaves one last thing for me, at least.
Who am I now?
I am a student whose loves include cats, pigeons, ducks, baking, cinnamon flavoring, and British Television with a soft spot for puns and a proclivity for bad jokes, but beyond that, I'm a warrior and conqueror through and for Christ.
I am His daughter, His child, a member of His chosen people.
I am loved, I am beautiful, and I am enough.
And best of all, I'm starting to believe it.
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