Life Lessons Learned the Hard Way

  
It's really strange to look around my church and see all the college students that attend during the school year...and realize that I'm OLDER than they are!  How could such a thing be possible?  For many years I would observe the visiting students from afar...looking up to them with a sense of awe.  They were COLLEGE students!  They were so much older and wiser than me!  Well, they may still be wiser, but now I'M the one who's older.  Doggone it, I've GRADUATED!  Haha, and the really funny part is imagining that most of them probably see me there with my family and think that I'm a high school student or something.  HA!  That thought alone provides me with an endless source of amusement.  :-D  But...that's beside the point.

Musing back over my years as a college student and thinking through all the things I've learned, there are so many words of wisdom that I would like to share with those who are just embarking upon that journey.  I'll try to outline some of those things here, and hopefully I won't forget anything of great importance.  :-)  Also, this is based on two years of experiencing life on campus, since my first few years were spent at home doing online and night classes.


1)  PUT GOD FIRST.  Prioritize the time you spend in personal devotions.


I don't know why this was so hard for me.  I did really good the first semester I was at Bryan...until we went to New York on fall break with the theater group.  We were up so early and out so late that I didn't spend time reading my Bible.  And once I was out of that habit, I didn't really get back into it.  By Christmas time, the guilt was overwhelming.  Reading my Bible shouldn't be a habit.  It should be a strong desire of my heart.  And if I wasn't desiring it enough to take time out of my busy schedule to do what I KNEW was most important, then I must not love God very much.  I was ashamed.  It wasn't until a CLF retreat early the next semester that I realized that Satan was holding me in bondage to my guilt, and that God was waiting with open arms for me to return to Him, like the father and his prodigal son.  So here's the lesson-within-a-lesson: If you stumble and fall away from spending time with God, don't be afraid to turn back to Him.  He wipes the slate clean every morning and loves you more than you can ever realize.  


I'd like to say the rest of my two years consisted of dedicated devotional time, but they didn't.  I still struggled off and on with prioritizing my time with God above my social life, my homework, and my own shallow pleasures.  I heard many testimonies of how God had an amazing way of multiplying time and helping students get work done when they were faithful to spend time with Him in spite of seemingly impossible deadlines...but woe is me for my puny faith.  With huge tasks looming in front of me, I kept my nose buried in my textbooks.


Another thing I realized was that it was so easy to feel "spiritually satisfied" at a Christian school.  Church on Sundays, chapel three times a week, great fellowship with believers on campus...it becomes harder to feel the need for personal time with God (although NOTHING can replace it).  So that's just something to be aware of.


I really regret my failure to cultivate a deeper relationship with God while I was at school.  He is the most important thing in my life (whether I acknowledge that or not).  It dawned on me one day how foolish it was to spend all my time and energy pursuing what I believed God had called me to do...and not pursuing the ONE who had called me!  If what I was doing was all for Him...then how skewed was it to not spend time seeking the One who provides the entire meaning and purpose for my life?  Also, I know that a lot of problems I had could have been avoided if I had been grounded in His Word and had spent more time studying the road map He had given me.  

[I promise I won't spend this much time on each point, but the first is definitely the most important by far, and thereby deserving of more time.]


2)  Be very, very careful in choosing your friends.  


Even a Christian school, there are a lot of people who will tear you down.  Even the ones who seem to be good Christian people may have slight variations in their standards and beliefs that may slowly begin to affect you and change you without you even realizing it.  A friend of mine gave testimony to this.  She didn't notice how she was gradually changing from the influence of her friends, but her parents pointed it out to her, and God began to convict her heart of those things.  She had to make the painful decision to distance herself from those friends and cultivate better relationships.  It had all seemed so innocent and harmless...but it wasn't. 


Also, be aware that your friend groups and all the dynamics involved will mostly likely change every year, if not every semester.  I had a very close group of friends the first year and we hung out every weekend.  It was awesome!  I love having a few close friends that I can always hang out with.  But two of them left after that first year and the group dissolved.  The girls on my hall were always busy that second year, and I had to start all over in finding a group of friends to do stuff with.  It was a difficult task, and I didn't make the best decisions.  


Here are some questions to ask yourself -- Do your friends actively point you closer to the Lord?  Is there a lot of unnecessary drama that goes on?  Do they understand and respect your standards?  How are they influencing you?  What do they talk about behind closed doors?  Even if it's seemingly innocent, does it *really* honor the Lord?  For instance, do they find innuendos in everything and cause your mind to start thinking the same way?  (My poor mind lost a lot of its purity and innocence in college.)  If you find yourself clinging to a certain friend group (or individual) when it seems like God may be nudging you away from them, think seriously about whether these are the people you're realistically going to keep in touch with after college...and don't be afraid to let go.  Keep it in a bigger perspective.  


3)  Stand firm in your standards and beliefs, even when you stand alone.


I think I was probably labeled something of a prude.  I hate that word, incidentally.  Yes, I am more conservative in most areas than most people I have ever met.  But that's not a bad thing.  I have high standards and I'm comfortable with that.  I'm used to being "different" so it wasn't hard for me to maintain that at school.  However, I'm a very non-confrontational person, so sometimes it was hard for me to speak up when I didn't agree with someone else (especially when I was the only one who disagreed), but I always stood by my standards.  For instance, I think I was the only girl who wouldn't wear a strapless dress based on convictions of modesty, and I had SEVERAL discussions about bikinis (haha, my bathing suit has often been mistaken for a sun dress because the skirt comes to my knees!).  I don't judge people who feel differently, but I do lovingly disagree with them.  


Anyway, there are a lot of areas where I differed with my friends (movies, music, clothing, etc.), but I held my ground, and I'm so glad I did.  I can't tell you how blessed I felt when one of my friends approached me this year and very humbly thanked me for staying true to my convictions even when everyone else was giving me a hard time and trying to change me.  She said that she admired and respected me for that, and she wished she had been more able to resist the influence of others.  Considering how badly I messed up on the other points I've been telling you about...there's no way I should take credit for getting it right on this one...but I give thanks to the Lord who gave me strength (and prepared me ahead of time) to stand strong.


4) Get involved in a local church and cultivate relationships there.


I encourage not to merely attend services on Sunday and leave without speaking to anyone...but try to get involved and make friends.  Attend Sunday School and/or Bible studies.  When they have a night of fun and fellowship, GO!  This could be a great place to find a mentor, or at least godly adults who will encourage you in your faith (and keep you grounded in the real world outside the college bubble).  It wasn't until my third year at Bryan (when I went back to audit a few classes after graduation) that I started attending Sunday School at the church I had been attending for more than a year.  I was so blessed by the friendships that that enabled me to make among the women of the church, and how much I gleaned from the wisdom they shared.     


5)  Find the right balance between being studious and being social.


Here's one last morsel of witty wisdom -- "You'll never remember the exams you didn't pass, but you'll never forget the friends you hung out with when you weren't studying."  Haha!  I know I didn't get that perfect, but I love that quote!  Not to be taken too literally, because it's important to study hard and do each task as unto the Lord...but you have to find the right balance.  Grades won't affect the rest of your life, but people will always be there for you.  Don't become so immersed in studying that you have no social life and neglect the people around you who might need you.  For most people, it won't matter what their GPA was, so don't think it's the end of the world if you don't get an A in every subject.  (I'm being a hypocrite here because I'm a horrible perfectionist, but it's advice worth repeating.  :-)
    

Well, this is getting very long...and those are the only main points I can think of right now...so I'll end here.  If I think of any more big areas to discuss, I'll post about those later.  I hope this is helpful to any new college students who may read it (and since I know what it's like to be a busy college student, I give you many bonus points if you actually made it through the whole thing!).  :-D