Linking up to Five Minute Friday here again for the first time in a long while...Tonight, the word is LOST. Here we go...
If I'm being completely honest, I have never felt more lost than this year as a freshman in college. I finished high school, certain the worst was behind me, that I had grown and changed enough for a lifetime, that I would cruise into college, confident, poised, ready to take on the world. I chose my school for a reason, as a step out in faith. I wanted a place to grow in my faith, and, boy, did God come through...but His idea of how and the ensuing journey didn't necessarily match mine. I chose a college where I know no one. Where I have no history other than what I make. While I thought this would be liberating and nourishing, and at times it was, it also turned out to be the backdrop where God would wage war against the fear and mistrust still lingering in my heart. A few months into the first semester, I began to feel the effects of starting over in a place where no one knew me apart from what I told them, where no one had any way of backing it up to make sure it was true. Where it was so easy to hide when hiding was the last thing I wanted to do. I found out how good I was at hiding, at how I hesitated at the thought of letting someone know me well, however much I wanted it. Coming home for breaks and having that fear gain even more of a foothold--finding everything the same, but different--same people I loved doing the same things that happened every year, but in a way utterly foreign to me. Because I wasn't there for so much of the year, my people had a different way of relating to each other and fitting together. I belonged, but I didn't. I still loved them and they loved me--but I didn't see them every day. I wasn't there to do life together the way I once had. This summer, that has hit me hard and often--the sense that I'm missing out, losing my place by not being in the right place at the right time. By missing that small group meeting or that grad party or who knows what else, I'm jinxing my chances of ever fitting the way I once did. I'm losing them. This summer so far has been feeling like I should be in a million places at once and trying to push down the panicky feeling when I spend a few days reading and relaxing and doing nothing in particular only to feel like I'm missing some great critical opportunity for community. For belonging. So, yes, right now, I'm feeling a little lost. A little disoriented, awkward in the places I should feel--and once felt--most at home. This is hard to understand, let alone explain to others. There are a lot of loose ends and question marks and nights where I just don't know, but, in the midst of the weirdness of this year, I think I'm also learning that feeling lost is different than being lost, that maybe this weird ache is actually a sign of me finding my foundness. (Oh boy...) I'm learning that this lost feeling is not, has not, and will not consume me. As insecure and awkward as I feel in this new role as college student, at any given moment, some deep hidden part of myself is coming to recognize that I am heard, that I matter to a Carpenter with scarred hands and a heart big enough to cover me. I can mutter and moan and groan all I want because He hears me. Because it is not lost. Because I am not lost and I'm growing and, really, it's all okay. This season is not a mistake. I am not a mistake. He promises that He knows all of my days, when I stand and sit and lay down. He knows the aches I can't explain, the brokenness I run from, the dark places of who I am and how my mind twists the truth into lies, and yet He is here and with Him I am always found and safe and beloved. So right now I'm learning to settle into the quiet instead of forever finding something else to do. Because grad parties and get togethers and vacation Bible school and summer jobs. all of those parties and opportunities and intimate community building times I missed this year have no bearing on my worth, my belonging, my belovedness. They have made me hurt. They have made me cry and run and spend sleepless nights staring at the ceiling, fighting off the lie of being forgotten. They have scared me senseless--to the point where I have no choice but to seek sense from another mouth. This peculiar season is forcing me to feel the deepest parts of my brokenness in a way that leaves me no choice but to reach out for help, to God, to people around me who remember what His voice sounds like when I forget. It has driven me to the point where I have no choice but to let Him love me well, to let Him sing his truth over me over and over again, where people find me in the midst of all of this and become His mouthpiece, reminding me
that I am not forgotten. And He is God, even when I play hermit and try to hide. By His grace, the story continues and the theme is that I am found despite my chaotic efforts to hide, and little by little, His love prompts me to stop hiding in the first place.
If I'm being completely honest, I have never felt more lost than this year as a freshman in college. I finished high school, certain the worst was behind me, that I had grown and changed enough for a lifetime, that I would cruise into college, confident, poised, ready to take on the world. I chose my school for a reason, as a step out in faith. I wanted a place to grow in my faith, and, boy, did God come through...but His idea of how and the ensuing journey didn't necessarily match mine. I chose a college where I know no one. Where I have no history other than what I make. While I thought this would be liberating and nourishing, and at times it was, it also turned out to be the backdrop where God would wage war against the fear and mistrust still lingering in my heart. A few months into the first semester, I began to feel the effects of starting over in a place where no one knew me apart from what I told them, where no one had any way of backing it up to make sure it was true. Where it was so easy to hide when hiding was the last thing I wanted to do. I found out how good I was at hiding, at how I hesitated at the thought of letting someone know me well, however much I wanted it. Coming home for breaks and having that fear gain even more of a foothold--finding everything the same, but different--same people I loved doing the same things that happened every year, but in a way utterly foreign to me. Because I wasn't there for so much of the year, my people had a different way of relating to each other and fitting together. I belonged, but I didn't. I still loved them and they loved me--but I didn't see them every day. I wasn't there to do life together the way I once had. This summer, that has hit me hard and often--the sense that I'm missing out, losing my place by not being in the right place at the right time. By missing that small group meeting or that grad party or who knows what else, I'm jinxing my chances of ever fitting the way I once did. I'm losing them. This summer so far has been feeling like I should be in a million places at once and trying to push down the panicky feeling when I spend a few days reading and relaxing and doing nothing in particular only to feel like I'm missing some great critical opportunity for community. For belonging. So, yes, right now, I'm feeling a little lost. A little disoriented, awkward in the places I should feel--and once felt--most at home. This is hard to understand, let alone explain to others. There are a lot of loose ends and question marks and nights where I just don't know, but, in the midst of the weirdness of this year, I think I'm also learning that feeling lost is different than being lost, that maybe this weird ache is actually a sign of me finding my foundness. (Oh boy...) I'm learning that this lost feeling is not, has not, and will not consume me. As insecure and awkward as I feel in this new role as college student, at any given moment, some deep hidden part of myself is coming to recognize that I am heard, that I matter to a Carpenter with scarred hands and a heart big enough to cover me. I can mutter and moan and groan all I want because He hears me. Because it is not lost. Because I am not lost and I'm growing and, really, it's all okay. This season is not a mistake. I am not a mistake. He promises that He knows all of my days, when I stand and sit and lay down. He knows the aches I can't explain, the brokenness I run from, the dark places of who I am and how my mind twists the truth into lies, and yet He is here and with Him I am always found and safe and beloved. So right now I'm learning to settle into the quiet instead of forever finding something else to do. Because grad parties and get togethers and vacation Bible school and summer jobs. all of those parties and opportunities and intimate community building times I missed this year have no bearing on my worth, my belonging, my belovedness. They have made me hurt. They have made me cry and run and spend sleepless nights staring at the ceiling, fighting off the lie of being forgotten. They have scared me senseless--to the point where I have no choice but to seek sense from another mouth. This peculiar season is forcing me to feel the deepest parts of my brokenness in a way that leaves me no choice but to reach out for help, to God, to people around me who remember what His voice sounds like when I forget. It has driven me to the point where I have no choice but to let Him love me well, to let Him sing his truth over me over and over again, where people find me in the midst of all of this and become His mouthpiece, reminding me
that I am not forgotten. And He is God, even when I play hermit and try to hide. By His grace, the story continues and the theme is that I am found despite my chaotic efforts to hide, and little by little, His love prompts me to stop hiding in the first place.
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