Friends come and go. We all know it. Most of us have experienced it. But that doesn’t mean it’s always easy to deal with or understand. When something we think is good or something that is actually good enters our lives we often question why it leaves. Or at least I do.
Since I was in elementary school I always longed to have that “best friend.” That one person that I would be close with forever. That seemed important to me at the time. And when the friends I had faded away for no particular reason, I got mad. Mad at them, mad at God. Not mad at myself cause that’s never really been an issue but I was mad. I’ve experienced that pattern of friendship more times than I can count. And what’s funny is I thought I was the only one. How selfish of me. We’ve all experienced loss whether it was a loved one who passed, a friend who just sort of went away, or something else. But there’s a reason for that.
It may sound cliche to say that God has a reason for everything or that bad things happen for good reasons but it’s true. Every time I “lost” one person I gained a new one. Maybe not immediately, but eventually. In elementary school new friends came along relatively quick. Middle school was a little harder but I stayed friends with the same people for those 2-3 years. High school is where it got rough. I realized the people I was friends with in middle school were not gonna last throughout the next 4 years.
A lot of drama happened my first 2-3 years making high school a more difficult experience then I would have liked. By my senior year the closest thing I had to a best friend went away and I was done with everybody. So, I decided to focus on God more and try to be someone people look at and wonder why I am happy or what I had that they don’t. Doing that not only made high school better, but has also made life more enjoyable.
Now I’m in college and I’ve learned a very valuable lesson: God places people in our lives because they are going to help us in a season of our life. And sometimes we’re able to help them too. Then, when He takes those people out, it’s because that season of our life is over and He has new things in store for us that come with new people. Some will last forever, like (for me), family and God, others won’t. And sure it’s hard and it sucks for a while, but after every stormy season comes a rainbow. A rainbow that is full of new people to meet, new places to go, and new things to experience.
I hope this message speaks to you in some way, and as always, thanks for reading :).
A lot of people that I know think college is easy. Particularly when I tell them what my schedule is like. I go to school 2 days a week and am not currently working. Sure it may look like I’m living the dream and I know I’m better off than many but school is hard. I don’t sit around and watch movies all day, I can’t. You college kids know that we have stuff to do. Papers, presentations, reading, notes, studying, and going to class to listen to an instructors lecture. Not to mention the people that work too. It’s a lot to carry. Especially when trying to balance it with other parts of life.
I struggle to find a balance between God, family, and school. And it really should go in that order but lately I’ve been doing it backwards. Since when Is school more important than my relationship with God? It’s not but I worry so much about it that it seems that way.
Balance is key. My dad told me that you have to give a little to everything and not give too much of what you have to one thing. That makes sense because if I spend too much time with my school work I’ll have little time to spend with my family. And while it seems quite simple, actually doing that is hard. For a college student there’s always something that needs to be done. Assignments aren’t usually due the day after they’re given, usually they last about a week or so. So we are never actually “done” with our homework. We don’t throw our pencils down and yell “ha! I’m done!” In excitement and relief because we really aren’t. We may be done with what we think we need to do for the day, but there’s still something else that we need to work on. And that’s the hardest part for me. Knowing in the back of mind that there’s always something else I could be doing for school but I have to make the choice of “am I gonna do it now? Or can it wait another day?”
I’m a planner. I like to plan everything out and know what’s gonna happen when. I do that with my schoolwork and for the most part, it works. But then there are those small and big things that sort of mess up my schedule. Things like going out with my family instead of staying up to work on a PowerPoint, or going to my sisters house and getting distracted by her adorable puppy who likes to keep me from doing my work. Some of those I can control, but others I can’t.
Maybe it’s a family emergency or it’s your internet going out. We can’t really control those things and that puts us behind in our list of things we gotta do. Then we may have to spend a little extra time working on that paper that’s due at midnight and a little less on the reading that’s due in a few day. As much as we try, not everything in our lives is gonna get an equal amount of attention. And that’s hard.
It’s hard for me when my little sister says I don’t spend enough time with her because I’m always doing homework or claims that her life is harder because she goes to school every day. A lot of people
in college don’t go to school all day every day. But we still have the same amount of work if not more, than any other student.
This post isn’t a pity party I’m throwing myself or others. I know I am blessed not to have to go to school every day and that I should be grateful I don’t have to wake up early every day. I get that. But I wrote this post to help anyone reading it get what else goes on in the life of a college student. But not just college students, everybody. We all have things in our lives that people don’t know about or don’t pay enough attention to notice and because of that, they only see what they think is a perfect life. Whether you’re the one who assumes someone else has it made or the one who who does a lot that goes unnoticed, think about this: One, God sees everything and two, no ones life is perfect. What you see on the outside is not always what exists on the inside.
To the assumers, I’ve done it too. I look at someone and think they have it easier or their life is better not stopping to think about what goes on behind the curtain. So the next time you think someone else has it made, take a minute to remember their life isn’t perfect either.
Now to the college students and anyone else who can relate to this post: remember that you’re not alone. There are people who have been in the same place you are now, struggling with the same things. They made it out and so can you. Keep working hard, but also don’t get into the habit of being an assumer, assuming your life is harder than everyone else. Everyone goes through things that not everyone sees and because of that, we should all be careful the judgements we make about people. Especially the ones made based of what we think we see.
Tara Westover’s Memoir, Educated, tells the story of a young girl who’s desire for Education became an escape from her unpleasant family environment. Her family is what some might call survivalist or fundamentalist, believing in strict religious values and living a life very secluded from the rest of the world. Tara’s childhood involved little interaction with the outside world due to her lack of a public, or even proper education, as well as her father’s radical Mormon beliefs. She suffered much physical and emotional abuse and longed for an escape from it all. Educated follows Tara on her journey through life, that was completely transformed by education. While her childhood environment was not ideal, Tara Westover found the good in it. Her experiences as a child taught her the value of hard work, and pushed her to do well in school.
In her memoir, Westover portrays her father, Gene Westover, as a very industrious man. He owns a scrap yard so he partakes in activities that require a lot of effort. Wanting his children to really see that effort, he puts them to work in the scrap yard. In Educated, Westover describes her experiences there, hauling scrap and working machines. “I worked faster when I salvaged alone… I filled a bin with two thousand pounds; then, my arms aching, I ran to find dad” (Westover 63). The last line of this quote indicates Tara’s eagerness to show her father what she had done. She ran to find her father. She did not walk as if it were not important. She ran because she wanted to prove to him just how hard she could work. Carrying two thousand pounds of scrap and running while doing so, Tara searched for her father, hoping he would be pleased with her efforts. In an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg for the 2019 Aspen Ideas Festival, Westover responds to a question about any values from her childhood that are a part of her life today. She notes that her parents were devoted to hard work and that she is grateful for them passing that on to her and her siblings (“Educated: A Conversation with Tara Westover,” 35:30-35:53). The junkyard is one of the major settings where Tara sees that good things come from hard work, like her father being proud of her, and continues to remember that throughout her life. Especially in her education.
Tara’s decision to pursue an education was not an easy one. Her father, believing public school was an evil trick the government used to brainwash people (Westover 42,49), tried on many accounts to sway her decision (Westover 125, 137). Tara’s schooling up to that point had been almost nonexistent. Westover explains that any academic skill she or her siblings felt they needed, had to be learned in their own time (Westover 46). This is what motivated Tara to learn Algebra on her own and to teach herself all the skills she needed to know in order to pass the ACT, and attend Brigham Young University. Her journey doing so was not easy. She struggled with geometric concepts and theories, and the odds of her knowing enough to even pass the ACT, let alone go to college, were not great. Westover delineates these struggles when studying geometry:
The misery began when I moved beyond the Pythagorean theorem to sine, cosine, and tangent. I couldn’t grasp such abstractions. I could feel the logic in them, could sense their power to bestow order and symmetry, but I couldn’t unlock it. They kept their secrets, becoming a kind of gateway beyond which I believed there was a world of law and reason. But I could not pass through the gate. (Westover 125)
Westover’s choice of diction in this particular scene captures the severity of her own struggles and her desire to overcome them. Using words like “misery”, a more extreme synonym to bad, reveals how difficult the concepts of trigonometry are. However, Westover also depicts the understanding these concepts are supposed to supply. “I could feel the logic… could sense their power to bestow order and symmetry.” From words like “order,” “logic,” and “symmetry,” it can be inferred that the laws of sine, cosine, and tangent, are laws meant to help one gain more understanding of other trigonometry concepts. Tara knows this which is why she is trying so hard to “unlock” the mystery of geometry. Understanding this subject would result in her being one step closer to passing the ACT, attending college, and escaping the harsh realities of her childhood environment.
While Tara Westover had never stepped foot in a classroom until she attended Brigham Young University at age 17, she was determined not to let that become a roadblock in her path to education. Westover depicts this with the following quote regarding her studies in math:
I began to study trigonometry. There was solace in its strange formulas and equations. I was drawn to the Pythagorean theorem and its promise of a universal- the ability to predict the nature of any three points containing a right angle, anywhere, always… Perhaps it could be explained, predicted. Perhaps it could be made to make sense. (Westover 124-125)
Westover takes an interesting approach with this quote, specifically when using the word “solace.” Meaning comfort in a time of distress, the word solace contradicts the puzzling concepts of Trigonometry. This irony does, however, contribute to the overall sense of comfort Tara finds in education, and the desire she has for it. The complexity of the subject pushes Tara to make sense of it. Westover depicts this in another scene of her memoir in which Tara is faced with a new challenge; Algebra.
Algebra threatened to put an end to my scholarship. The professor spent every lecture muttering inaudibly as he paced in front of the chalkboard …I stopped sleeping. I stayed up late, twisting my hair into knots as I tried to wrest meaning from the textbook, then lying in bed and brooding over my notes. I developed stomach ulcers. (Westover 184)
Westover describes the actions of the professor with words like “muttering” and “pacing”, words that often indicate feelings of stress, anxiety, or nervousness. While they are used to describe her instructor, they still portray Tara’s feelings toward Algebra, and toward college. Her limited education as a child presented many obstacles in her education as a teenager and adult. She knew little of the subjects taught, which made her nervous at times. Westover shows this through the words and phrases such as “twisting my hair into knots” and “brooding,” words that again, portray Tara’s feelings of anxiety and stress. However, she uses this to her advantage, letting it motivate her to try harder. Westover uses the phrase “wrest meaning” to describe Tara’s determination to make sense of the textbook. She stayed up late, twisted her hair into knots, and even developed stomach ulcers all so she could have a proper and successful education.
During her interview with Goldberg, Westover discusses her father’s view of education, which she believes in to this day, in response to an audience member’s question. “My dad had this thing that he said a lot which is that ‘you can teach yourself anything better than someone else can teach it to you’” (“Educated: A Conversation with Tara Westover,” 35:30-36:19). Westover proves this throughout her accounts of things she faced on the road to becoming educated, and her immense success afterwards. On the back-inside cover of Educated, Westover lists her academic achievements, stating that she graduated from Brigham Young University with a Bachelor of Arts degree and from there attended Cambridge University, where she earned her Doctorate degree in Philosophy. She did this despite knowing only the things she taught herself, at the start of her journey. Her story serves as a reminder to all that despite the barriers one might face during any part of their life, it is possible to succeed when one has the will and determination to do so.
“The Lord works in mysterious ways.” A phrase I know all too well and believe it. What I don’t get is why he has to be so mysterious. Things happen in life and people hardly ever know why. Now before I continue please note that I am in no way shape or form questioning my faith, the existence of God, or anything of the sort. I am simply questioning his motives.
I know that everything happens for a reason and more specifically, a good reason. But I hate the process that comes with discovering that reason. Faith is a matter of believing not seeing. And often times when we don’t see what we want to happen happen, we’re not happy. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, in my opinion, that’s just how humans are. I do it too. When something happens that I don’t expect or like, I ask God “Why?” Why would you take away this thing that I love, why would you not do what I asked and prayed for, why does this happen, why didn’t this happen, and my personal favorite, why do you take so long to tell us why?!
People say that I am a very patient person which I find surprising because I hate waiting. Its agonizing and boring and really really frustrating. Anyone else like that? Probably. When I go through a tough season in my life, it takes me months, sometimes even years to figure out why I went through it. And the pain slowly get better as time progresses but the questioning and waiting is still there. Waiting for the season to end while at the same time questioning what you did to deserve it. But often times we did nothing. God places obstacles and barriers in our lives as tests of faith because he knows that we will come out stronger. Now you might say “What if I fail the test? What if I lose faith and I don’t come out stronger?” Unless you stop believing in God altogether, I don’t think you can fail. God knows how we are going to react to the obstacles we face and even if we are at the point of losing all hope and don’t know how we are going to get through it, we still haven’t failed. Because I believe God would not give us anything HE knew we couldn’t handle. But keep in mind that sometimes what we think we can’t handle he knows we can which is why he lets it happen. Crying out to God in the midst of our pain in sorrow and asking him “why” is not failure. Even being angry with God isn’t failure because when we do those things we are still acknowledging that there is a God. If we didn’t believe that anymore we wouldn’t pray. We wouldn’t ask him to help us get through this or yell at him when we can’t figure out why he did something. We wouldn’t say anything to him at all.
I feel bad for atheists or people who don’t believe in God because that just seems like a life filled with no hope. I’ve often wondered, when an atheist goes through something tough, what do they do? Do they just keep putting one foot in front of the other because they know things will get better? If so, how do they know? How can they believe life will get better if they do not believe that there is someone looking out for them? How can they believe in the good if they don’t believe in a God who does all things for good? How do they know their life won’t just keep getting worse?
Now obviously I am not an atheist so I can’t answer that but as a Christian I can say that I ask myself similar questions. The only difference is I’ve seen the fruits of my labor. I’ve seen good things come out of bad things in my life and others so how could I NOT believe there is someone out there that cares for me and loves me and is always looking out for me? If I didn’t I would be a very very very very different person. What’s funny is I’ve met atheists who don’t seem to live a life without hope and I still wonder how can that be? I’m not claiming that you have to be miserable and depressed to be an atheist. I just genuinely want to know how the ones who are not go through life with a positive attitude if they don’t know that things will get better.
I got a little off track so lets leave that question alone for now and get back to the point. Bad things happen and everyone wants to know why. And even though we may never know why, as Christians we know that things have to get better. That God has to have a good reason for this otherwise he wouldn’t have done it. That’s the beauty of Faith. Knowing that we will be rewarded for our waiting whether it’s here on earth when we see the sun come out of our storm or if it’s in heaven when we get to meet our maker and live in a world of pure perfection. All it takes is a little bit of faith. “And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you” (Matthew 17:20). In other words, a little bit of faith goes a long way.
Every hopeless romantic has often dreamed about finding their perfect soulmate. Many of us have even doubted if they exist. I often find myself watching sappy Hallmark movies wondering if I’ll meet a handsome man in the elevator and experience love at first sight or, if I will be like Belle falling for a beast on the outside who is really a kind gentleman on the inside. But as life progresses those fantasy dreams start to fade and reality checks in, reminding us of all the reasons why a fairy tale ending is not likely.
In all the movies I’ve watched the guy and the girl start out as friends, develop feelings, then share a romantic moment and a kiss under the stars. The End. Happily Ever After. I’m starting to realize that in the real world, IT DOESN’T WORK LIKE THAT! Every time I like a boy I either ignore him, completely make a fool of myself if I do talk to him, or just run away. I’m not exaggerating. I thought a guy was going to try to talk to me so I “walked” down the hall extremely fast. Straight into the class. The class we both had. Together. It was an embarrassing day that I don’t want to relive.
Just for the fun of it let’s talk about another stupid thing I did around this guy. You guys are gonna love this: He was writing a paper about a sensitive subject and we had talked about it some but not much. Class was over and he stayed to work so what did I do? I said “Well, have fun with that” in the most awkward voice ever. That’s not even the worst part though. I told him to have fun writing about a subject that is definitely not fun. What is wrong with me?!!!! The next day he didn’t talk to me or acknowledge that I even existed so at this point he probably thinks I’m a heartless nut job, which is not entirely wrong.
Have you ever seen that movie P.S I Love You about the girl who’s husband died but wrote her letters to help her through life afterwards? Ya well I feel like that awkward guy she talks to in the closet. The one who has a crush on her but says the stupidest things when he’s around her. For example, after realizing the girl was hiding in the closet he asked her what she was doing. She said she was trying to figure out why God killed her husband. He said “let me know if you need any help with that.” Seriously? This woman’s husband just died and instead of comforting her you offer to take part in her grief?? Oh but there’s more. He tells her that his rudeness is a “syndrome” he has to take medication for. I almost died after I heard that one. But I can relate. We’re both shy awkward people with good hearts who just don’t say the right things at the right time. If only those people we embarrass ourselves around knew that.
Another thing that bugs me is that I usually crush on the nerdy guys that don’t have a whole lot going for them in the looks department. 2 of my old crushes were not the handsomest and don’t even get me started on this one guys beard. He looked like a crow. Sorry. That’s mean. Going for the not so handsome, nerdy ones is fine. I thought maybe that’s just my type, until I met a super cute athlete who would smile at me in class and give me butterflies that made me want to puke when he talked to me. Then I thought, he’s cute. Something must be wrong. It could never work! Yet despite that thought I still find myself doing stupid things like literally running away. So, Mr. Perfect, if you’re reading this, please note that although I may act like it, I’m not completely crazy. Just a little nervous sometimes. My heart is often in the right place, but head isn’t always.
I have never been in a relationship. Shocker right? I’ve had friendships that felt like relationships when they ended, but never the real deal. Dating is a weird topic in my family because no one really talks about it. Every time me or my siblings would ask we were simply told to wait. I have no regrets about waiting, just hopes. Still waiting for the right man God has for me and hoping I don’t scare him off before I get a chance to know him.
Hope you enjoyed my embarrassing stories and feel free to comment about any of it in the section below. Thanks for reading!
College vs. Home 