You are Loved.
Turn to me and be gracious to me,
for I am lonely and afflicted.
The troubles of my heart are enlarged;
bring me out of my distresses.
Psalm 25:16-17
Dear Connor, or I guess I should say Aloha Connor now.
I needed to hear what you wrote the other week. It has been a summer. I don’t think I have really expressed to anyone what degree of a summer it has been. There is a massive part of my brain that wants to scream “Shay, you lost everything!” I know that's not true. But dang it, it certainly feels like it somedays. The tears haven’t hit when they were supposed to, not when I said goodbye, not when I waved goodbye, not when people broke me. It happened when I moved a table into my new apartment, when I drove the same route the same way I have dozens of times. It hasn't been easy, and I think there is a profound feeling of loneliness that can so easily accompany so much change.
The profound feeling of loneliness is I think one of the most overwhelming feelings that invades your late teens and early 20s. Especially if you have moved away for college. You began to realize all at once that a lot of people that you thought were permanent in your life really aren’t actually so permanent. College challenges your perspective in a lot of different ways. And one of the most challenging ways is how it makes you perceive your own value. Because college is really unique in the fact that it gives you such a clearly defined system on which you are able to measure your own value. You are in a completely new place where you might not know a lot of people, And unlike high school you are now paying for all of it. The classes you're taking aren't just for fun anymore or because you had to or somebody is making you do it. College is really nice because at the end of the day you don't need to go to college, It's a privilege. Privilege that you are probably paying a lot of money for. Which at least for me make grades matter a lot more. Because suddenly it wasn't just about getting it done or because I felt like I had to. There was very real things at stake if I failed.
Which makes the pressure climb up a lot higher because they are real expectations of you now. You don't get to just ride the easy way out. I think I didn’t really realize how much is expected of you in college vs highschool. Because when you are in grade school you're so used to people checking in on you. I don’t know about you. But throughout high school it always felt like adults would take the time out of their day to check in on me? See where I was at. If I was understanding the material. Make sure that I didn’t have any missing work. But that doesn’t happen in college because professors don’t check up on you. Suddenly, all of that expectation is just on you alone.
Those expectations build up into increasing stress. Because you are now the one responsible for your own life. But I think that is one of the biggest mistakes is assuming that you are responsible for your own life. Because while you have control of your own life, you are not the one responsible for it. Those responsibilities are the God who loves you. If you let it, that stress will determine your entire value as a human being. Whether you are praised or hated by your own self. Because value is not determined by the object itself it is determined by the owner and the buyer. You are neither. Because God who made you is your owner. And Christ, who saved you through his blood is your buyer. That is the only determination you should be using for your self worth.
I can’t believe how far both of us have come. Till we meet again,
Shay Krueger