jumblyness

I sit in my corner of Old East residence hall at the university and am not sure what to write. The day has been a blur of faces new and old, things to buy and schedules to be made. And at midday, after buying posters for the room, catching up with an old suitemate, adding classes, dropping classes, and worrying as the riptide begins to strengthen, I wonder how on earth I will be able to continue at this pace once classes begin. I enjoyed myself for the first eight hours of the day, but as evening approached I began to walk in a haze, exhausted and wanting to just curl up in my cozy, lofted bed under my canopy and read C.S. Lewis and talk to Colleen on the phone.

I still have one foot in summer and the other in some foreign land that may be Chile or Spain or the future or the past, I’m not sure what. But it somehow prevents me from fully enjoying the present. Although I suppose my standards are too high, you have to admit it’s odd that nobody in collegetown factors in “boredom” or “fatigue” or “mediocrity” on the scale of life emotions. I think more than anything, the spiritual pace here is tiring. I am baffled at how so many students can go, go, go constantly, drinking and partying well into the morning, and constantly surround themselves with young people, rarely taking a moment to relax, unwind, call a parent, reconcile with a friend. I get caught up in this, too, so I am one to point fingers, but for some reason I am getting a bigger whiff of it this year than I have before. And this observation is not going to cause me to be ensnared by melancholia and depression, yet I still wonder why students are always smiling…so much that their mouths could not stretch any wider.

I wish I could see beneath all the layers. I can’t see through.

It’s really hard for me to apply different Christian principles to real life situations, even though I hold them true in my heart and mind. How do you show love to incoming freshmen, for instance? Is it simply smiling and telling them that you are here to answer any questions? I don’t know…it was this very superficial friendliness and southern “hospitality” that I was so befuddled by last year. I just wanted someone to listen to me, but I didn’t want to approach them…I didn’t know who to approach, after all. And I wanted someone to show and emotion other than giddiness. I feel like love entails a stronger, more active involvement. But how do I play this out?

I can pray for the incoming students. For the confused, the hurting, the lonely, the ones that are having problems with their roommates, the ones that are pulling out maps on the lower quad trying to find their way through a yellow school of fish. But when I get out of my dorm room, out into the real world, I get awkward.

College is fun, yes. Meeting new people is fun, yes. But for me, at least, a large chunk of it involves darting in and out of awkwardness. Trying to break down walls and recognize my own facades and strive for honesty in thinking and feeling and conveying such. At times I still feel like a middle school student.

I rejoice in the fact that God is willing to work with and through my awkwardness. Even though I don’t know how to use a compass or steer my way through college, God is going to help me overcome securities and fears and that the process will be pleasing in His sight. God is not finished with me yet and has promised to do good things. It comforts me to read the Psalms and know that even these great figures in Christian history and world history struggled in the daily grind of life. I particularly like how David and other psalmists start some of their psalms despairing, aware of their sin but unable to see God’s goodness. There is so much feeling and wrestling in those psalms, and in each on there is some sort of turning point. The psalmist goes to the sanctuary of God and finds tangible rest in Him. You can see the curtain being lifted and the light shining in as the psalm becomes less about the psalmist and more about God’s goodness. God works through the psalmists’ own jumbled emotions and thoughts and expression.

I have no idea where this post is going. I’m tired and need to go to sleep. I don’t even know if it had an over-arching theme.

I’ll end it with one of my favorite verses, as of July:

The LORD will fulfill his purpose for me;
your love, O LORD, endures forever—
do not abandon the works of your hands.

psalm 138