In high school, one of my best friends—who remains close to me and is blissfully unaware of this blog—honestly couldn’t hold a fifteen-minute conversation without at least three references to Joe Jonas. When we hang out over my breaks, she still can’t go a half-hour without mentioning her intentions of taking his virginity. I, thankfully, had other high school friends who were much more adept at serious conversations, but I always happily amazed at the change of mental pace here at Vandy. I’ve had so much real and meaningful dialogue in my almost-two-years here. It’s even reflected in my Facebook inbox, where I can skim through four semesters’ worth of secrets shared, friendships built, conflicts solved—and some not—in paragraphs typed rapidly while I pretended to study in Stevenson carrels.
I often slip into this collegiate-y routine that smells like sugar-steeped coffee, tastes like Rand fruit cups (and maybe several unnecessary trips to the Munchie Mart), and feels like sleep-deprivation. The mainstays of this chaotic lifestyle—the hours I’ll long for when I’m eighty-five and living in a nursing home because my adult children are too ungrateful to keep me in their guestrooms—are not Friday evenings devoted to playing dress-up before frat row, though those are fun, but the frequent heart-to-hearts (and Facebook chats) I’ve shared with the many Vandy kids I adore.
Never do I feel as rooted in my leafy-green, Nashvillean second-home as when I am lounging around my dorm, or Chef James, or Alumni Lawn, or the little foyer outside the glass doors of the library, exchanging feelings and questions and mere observations with friends. When teachers prove difficult, and people become cranky, and Spring break seems far away, being honest with people I trust about my worries, fears, and petty little heartaches is the most obvious solution to dealing with problems.
Our society says that communication is good—that it’s wiser to pour out our messy, raw feelings than to keep them secret while we fake smiles on our walks to class and upload lots of pictures of ourselves well-dressed, going out, and having good hair days for our 743 Facebook friends to see. Choosing to confide in someone about anything—whether it’s an issue as frivolous as boys or as boring as academics or as somber as depression—is precious and sacred and scary. Kind of like letting them see you without makeup for the first time. There is something priceless about the simple act of trusting someone enough to tell them the very things about yourself that you hate to even think about when you’re lying in your lofted bed at night, with your nose just inches from the ceiling.
I truly thank God for the people around me—kids whose paths I trust He intentionally and purposefully wove with mine. My Vandy experience would not be as whole or as nurturing or as beautiful without the friends with whom I feel comfortable being honest. And yet—because He’s God and smarter than me or any of the TAs I’ve dealt with in office hours lately—He has made a point to slap me in the face with quite a few lessons these past four semesters. After playing dumb time and time again, I’ve finally decided to accept what God has been yelling at me through a heavenly megaphone for a couple of years.
I’ll spare you the long version (basically scenes of me sniffling, with a runny nose and a pile of tissues around me, and God being/looking typically cool and macho and way out of my league) and offer a synopsis: “Cast all your anxiety on Me (God) because I (God) care for you (girl with runny nose/mascara).” So maybe I twisted that line from a Bible verse (1 Peter 5:7) that popped up when I just now Googled “verses about God caring,” but it accurately sums up the urgent message He has been striving to get through my thick head. When I’m lying in bed at night—worried and unable to sleep and already contemplating skipping my 9:10 class—I should be telling God about the things that stress me out, and begging Him for His peace. Confidants are wonderful blessings, but friends aren’t and never can be God. Inevitably, anyone you spend much time around will, at some point, let you down—just like you’ll sometimes disappoint them. They’re human and you’re human and sometimes, in all our humanness, we can’t be wholly supportive of each other’s sufferings because we have infatuations and midterms and family secrets and insecurities and sadness of own to lose sleep over.
We all have that defining moment when we’re little kids with scraped knees calling out to Mom for a band-aid and a kiss and a cup of orange juice and she takes ten minutes too long to answer because she’s busy on the phone with her boss, or arguing with Dad, or taking care of the meatloaf that just burned in the oven. We’re shocked that first time she doesn’t rush to help us. And then, gradually, we grow used to the idea that parents are just people. Maybe they get divorced, or refuse to and just fight every night over dinner, instead. Swiftly, we come to the conclusion that—while parents are wonderful and necessary and loving—they can’t be the only things that hold us up. Sometimes, they’re on the verge of collapsing, themselves.
Why do we, as college students (or at least me, anyway) so often forgot to this apply this knowledge to our understanding of friends? Why is it so easy for us to stay out with friends until Sunday morning, then sleep until noon that day without feeling the tiniest bit guilty for missing church? How come, when we do go to church/flip open our Bibles/pray for help being nice to the lab partner who annoys us/skip a couple parties, we feel so immediately noble for ten minutes and then justify forgetting God entirely for a month? How can we (meaning me) really be stupid enough to think that we (with the help of some late-night chats over coffee with our best friends) might even begin to solve all of our own problems? No matter how hard our friends work to be supportive—and no matter how hard we strain to support them—the fact is, we’re all human and we’re all in desperate need of some divine help. I am so thankful for the people around me; I know God regularly uses them to speak to me. But instead of scrolling through my contact list the next time I’m feeling confused—then devoting two hours of Tortellini Tuesday to analyzing life with someone who’s honestly just as unsure as I am—I might as well call out to the God who made me with eternal love and already knows my future.
“ ‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future’.” (Jeremiah 29:11)
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