The Promised Land

How often do I just get to do this? Sit down in my school library, look out at the bright autumn leaves against a building that came straight out of a Gothic novel, and just be. No essays due at midnight, no tests the very next day, and nowhere to be, no one to tell. While the past eight weeks have been, as Taylor pus it, “Happy, free, confused, and lonely at the same time,” I have found time to get away from the city, away from the crowds, and away from everything else telling me to apply to this-or-that and that I should either be a party animal or a worker bee, that I can’t have both without being either. Because I’m not – I’m a human being who needs both intensity and relaxation, both stress and serenity. Even before the fall of humanity, God created people to have roles other than lounging about in the shade of Eden, eating grapes all day long. God created us to not only be active, but wholly ourselves in each and every moment. Yet, oftentimes, that is so much harder than it first appears.

When I started college, I had everyone and their mother telling me not only what to expect, but what to do and how to feel. Some of the advice has rung true; but, to be honest, most of it hasn’t. In fact, some of it has hurt, because not only were their words like mosquito bites into personal parts of my life but were designed by their ideas of what my life should be, how many boyfriends I should have, how many parties I should attend this semester, and have I found my best-friend-in-the-whole-wide-world yet? And you know what? While, at first, I felt so deterred and heartbroken by their words, questioning my happiness and if I really am living the college life, I realized that nobody gets to decide how I live my life. Nobody gets to, let alone has a right to, hear about my romantic life – that’s between me, my lovers, and God. Nobody gets to decide if I spend my weekends studying or going out – that’s between me, my workload and comfortability, and God. And I’ve only known these people for nine weeks; how the hell am I going to find, let alone cast aside and ignore, the beautiful group of tribeswomen I already have that took years to find? Those decisions are between me and the Hagia Sophia. Notice a pattern? Every good and blessed thing that has come into my life has been through me and God; God whispers to my heart, but it’s my choice whether I listen to the Holy Spirit or all the other (but most times, well-meaning) voices. Because at the end of the day, no one is going to get me up at 7am to go run by the memorials, the clear Potomac waters remind me that God will always satisfy my thirst and clean my wounds with love and grace. No one is going to help me snort and crack jokes with my dormmates as we stand outside in the quad at 1am because some drunk idiot decided to have fun with the fire alarm, a friend offering me her coat as I stand in short-shorts and a t-shirt in forty-eight degree weather that reminds me that God is my fire through the night (and that bad decisions make really good stories). And no one is going to give me such gracious professors who validate my experiences as a rural, Midwestern woman in a ridiculously rich, elite East Coast academy (though Georgetown does have mi corazon).

So many things – both good and bad – have happened that I never saw coming, but I am so grateful to have figured out the DC bus system, smelled the sweet roses at the Botanical Gardens, and am no longer nauseous at the sight of hairballs in the shower. Loving college is red, full of fear, freedom, and fire all at once, and I wouldn’t change any of it, because only in the Promised Land do you find your true self. Then, it’s time to do the wonderful work of breaking new ground, and I’m so thankful to be planting seeds and sweating it out alongside my Best Friend.