First of all, I love college, but I really feel like I'm living in an alternative world. Anything I've known, all kinds of societal norms are gone. Plainly, this is not real life! It's good and insanely frustrating at the same time. I can't really think of one singular negative aspect, nothing is wrong, nothing is bad, but it feels very strange, for lack of better word. That is the frustrating part. The atmosphere is amazing, but the way of life is simply not normal to anything I've experienced, witnessed, or even heard of. We live in a controlled, very close-knit, spiritual bubble. I don't want anyone to get the wrong impression, this is a good place, a place where growth happens rapidly. You hardly have time to recover from the growing pains before another one hits. But I think this is why I love my job so much. I feel like I'm in real life again. At the same time, it kind of adds to my frustration a little, because it makes me question why I'm working in a restaurant when, if this was real life, I should be in a salon! I'm not complaining, I just don't know how to sort through two completely different worlds, especially when neither of them are anything I ever expected for myself, and I'm constantly messing up both. How can you be in the world and not of it? I've heard this preached a millions times, but now that I'm experiencing it, I'm so confused. In one world, I feel inadequate, desperate, overwhelmed. In college I'm not a top cat in the slightest (which I'm perfectly fine with). It's fast paced, and I feel like I'm moving in slow motion. There is a constant nagging in me, something I don't know the words for. I love the lectures and the atmosphere. I love that we get to be leaders in church and volunteer at conference, but there's this underlying thing that is so unfamiliar, so abnormal. In church I realize that power, love and grace are built right into God's very nature. Nothing He does or says is short of any of those things. I'm knowing (I don't know how to describe this feeling, it's like I know something in my head, but I'm securing it in my heart) that God goes beyond me, that no matter what failing I have God is always stronger, better, smarter. In this environment I feel humbled and empowered at the same time. At my work, around real, normal, everyday people, I feel like I don't belong, like I can't relate to them, can't touch them. I want to be one of them, I want to be a real person that they can understand. I feel like that's the best witness. God's people are everyday, normal people. We go through the same struggles, have the same fears and are not brainwashed or psycho. We know realities. We have to go to the doctor when we're sick, we use normal everyday common sense, good happens to us, and we have rainy days. It's trying to find the balance that I'm struggling with. When can these lives collide? Where do they connect? What can I take that is relevant to one and suitable for the other? How can two lives perfectly combine to create the right mixture of personal growth and worldly testimony?
Hopefully a part two will arise with the answers, which, when it all boils down, will probably be love, but I'm still journeying this one.
This is also so good.
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