Let Me Be Honest

My sophomore year of college was rough.  I had some things thrown at me that I wish hadn't happened at all.  I made a lot of mistakes.  And I acted in an immature way and didn't handle my emotions well through processing a lot of it.  I wish I could say that I grieve death well or that I didn't blame myself for the actions of others, but the truth is that I did.  I do.  And so I didn't blog very much during that time.  I didn't want to write out of raw emotions or simply as a reaction to the things go on around me.

It felt weird to let myself stop writing my weekly blogs at first.  I don't want to pretend that everything in my life is great and perfect, and part of me felt that not publishing what was happening was a lie.  But I wanted to write about the bad things when I was able to step back and look at the whole picture.

Today I'm writing this with raw fingers after failing to get all of the paint off of a picnic table with chemical paint stripper.  And there are still raw emotions here, because I am a human being, and being emotional does not need to be a bad thing.

Last summer I broke up with my boyfriend after returning from my trip to Mexico.  Throughout the year and a half long relationship I had had with him, I had experienced a lack of sureness.  While in Mexico, I experienced vivid clarity and I knew that I needed to end the relationship.  However, the aftermath of the breakup is not what I had hoped it would be.  There were many emotional messages sent to each other.  I blamed myself for the way he was feeling and spent a lot of time beating myself up about it.  I told myself that I was worthless and that I should never be in a romantic relationship again.  To some degree I isolated myself from the other friendships that I had.  It wasn't a healthy way of dealing with any of this.  I spent an abundance of time wallowing in self-pity about the failed relationship and struggled to focus in class or while doing homework as I reflected on what I could have done differently so that I hadn't hurt him and told myself that I was stupid.  A lot of what I did was foolish.  But if I ceaselessly dwell on them, I can't learn from them.  Part of the learning process is letting go.  

During the fall semester I also realized that I was not enjoying what I was studying.  I was a Biology major with minors in Spanish and Math.  I was enjoying the classes in my minors, but not in my major.  I was not processing emotions well, grieving the death of my aunt, blaming myself for the feelings of others, trying to volunteer, and work a part time job.  My grades dropped.  I had always earned very good grades.  My grades were always something that I could take pride in.  And so, I also realized that I had been defining myself through them.  While I could say, 'I work hard in school because I'm working for God, and not for men,' that would not have been the truth.  The truth is that I had previously worked hard in school because I wanted good grades to fulfill me.  I wanted to see a neat line of A's on my transcript at the end of each semester, not for God's glory, but for my own satisfaction.  And in the fall semester, I didn't earn the grades that I so desperately wanted.  I found myself unsatisfied by something that had had never let me down before.  Despite the fact that I have always known that true fulfillment will only come from God, I had not been living that out in my life.  This was extremely evident to me.

My spring semester was much smoother.  I changed my major.  I'm now studying Math Education with a Spanish minor.  I didn't maintain friendships with anyone from the Biology department.  That was difficult, but with the end of those relationships, I am given time to forge new more meaningful relationships that are founded on more than just taking the same classes and thus have the potential to last beyond college.

After the failure to achieve high levels academically during the fall semester, I struggled to regain my focus.  I wanted to find my motivation to study by seeing it as an act of worship.  I wanted to really study for God's glory and see it as something to be done for Him.  This was difficult for me, but I knew that I could not allow grades to be seen as a form of fulfillment any longer.  The process of changing where my motivation comes from is difficult.  It was easier in some classes than others.  I've got a long way to go, and that is okay.  I have a lifetime to work towards it.

My sophomore year was rough.  But God was with me every step of the way and gave me what I needed.  What I needed wasn't always what I wanted.  There were things that were hard to accept and I am still working to accept.

This is me.  I'm messy.  I'm human.  I'm damaged.
But,
God cleans.  God heals.  God restores.

Living in Reckless Abandonment for Jesucristo,

Jo