What Is A Belmont Senior?

So many people ask me what being a senior feels like. They ask if I am going to miss everything, and they ask me what it feels like to do something for the last time. They ask what it feels like to see the ending. They ask what it feels like to know that it was my last registration, my last formal, my last...well...everything.

But they missed something.

Senior year is not about the last things.

Senior year is about seeing someone's first time...

Someone's beginning.

Senior is about knowing what someone's first time will mean down the road. It is being thankful for everything and celebrating everyone else's opportunity to experience the same things you did. You know who you become friends with after standing in lines, going to dances, and finding a new church. You know just how many amazing things are going to happen in their future.

So this is my letter to someone I haven't met, but I think they'd like to see this if they knew.

And even though it isn't exactly right...I think my senior friends would share the sentiments.

Dear Girl Who Sits in my Gazebo Now,
You don't know me, but I sat where you are sitting now. Sometimes at night, I go back, just so I can remember what I felt like three and a half years ago. I go back to the warm summer nights with the stars twinkling, when I had my first big "Belmont Memory." From the look in your eyes as you sing your songs in the rain, I can tell that you are doing the same thing as me.

Oh if you knew just how much was to come!

You are going to fall in love... You are going to love Nashville. You are going to love Belmont. You are going to love learning something, whether that takes place in your classes or not. There are going to be beautiful stars twinkling in your eyes as you find something special in your life week after week. And as you come back to this gazebo, you are going to find yourself wrapped up in the nostalgia of the happy days that you shared with the beautiful people you met here.

You are going to have your heart broken... You are going to meet that boy that makes your world stop, and he's going to fall in love with everyone but you. You are going to realize your future is not what you thought it would be. You are going to lose friends over nothing. And as you come back to this gazebo, you are going to find yourself wrapped up in its shelter as you cry for hours.

You are going to find yourself again... You are going to realize what you really want in life. You are going to make a best friend or two that actually loves you. You are going to find something that makes you smile, and no one can take that away from you. And as you come back to this gazebo, you are going to find yourself wrapped up in the mixed emotions that came from all of the memories you created here.

You are going to fall in love again... You are going to find love in all of the people who helped you find yourself again. You are going to laugh for hours over nothing with those same people, and you are going to love the way your stomach hurts the next day. You are going to love the freshmen that panic over registration, the sophomores that ask you why they still have to check boys in, the juniors that are perpetually late because they forgot that commuting takes longer than expected in Nashville, and the seniors who cry over becoming adults.

You love them because they are just like you.

And as you come back to this gazebo, you are going to find yourself wrapped up in the nostalgia, the shelter, the mixed emotion, and the joy of realizing just how much you have grown up in four years...

and the irony of how much further you need to go.

You are going to give it back... I am doing this to you now. There are so many positions and places that I have called home. But I am graduating in May, and someone needs to keep this campus running. Someone needs to help others, and someone needs to sit here and love like I did. I see you experiencing things like I had, and I see the sparkle in your eyes. I remember it all. I love you for being the new me.

As a senior, I have the opportunity to give someone else a chance to have the same happy memories.

As a senior, I have the opportunity to place trust in someone else.

As a senior, I have the opportunity to see the sparkle and the wonder and the awe that only fresh eyes and hearts may see.

Best of luck with these next three and a half years. You have absolutely no clue what lies around the bend, but as a senior, I can tell you that it is beautiful.

Love,
The Girl Who Sat Here Before

“I have heard your prayer and seen your tears. I will heal you.” -2 Kings 20:5

For those who may know me a little, it may come as a shock that I had a rough couple of weeks. Considering the fact I was successful with the GRE, have a FOCUS interview, and my residents love me, I should not be complaining about anything. There is nothing wrong with me...at least not in the general sense of the word.

I have been struggling because I couldn't hear God anymore.

In the past, I could go to the lab and feel confident in His gift of science to me. I could hear Him tell me how amazing the world was around me. Yet when I came in to the lab for the past few weeks, I could only think of how terrible it would be if my enzyme failed to work or if I was missing something by being stuck in a lab all day every day.

In the past, if I were to help a resident with a problem, I would feel as if I drew closer to them. I felt accomplished and like I had done something right. Yet when I started to bond with them on a deeper level again, I was anxious about their problems progressing or them lying when I checked up on them later on.

I went to the chapel and wept.

I begged God to tell me what to do.

It was silent.

As all of this was going on, I was watching many of those around me falling down in to some new level of sadness that I could not help with. I was watching people fill their holes with alcohol and drugs and sex. I was watching lives change, and I was unable to help anyone. I felt completely helpless where I once was so important.

I wanted to talk to these people.  I wanted them to know that I loved them, and that even if I was mere a Facebook friend that I was still there for them. Even though God wasn't talking to me directly, I would pray for them every night.

I did not know to do.

And God was not telling me anything.

Then I went to Adoration on Wednesday. We sang the song Letting Go by Matt Maher. And as I sang, I offered up all of the words to the God who I knew loved me, even if we weren't speaking clearly anymore.

I'm holding onto Your love
I'm letting go of myself
I'll say so long to everything else

I stand in awe of You
And everything You've done for me
You speak Your words into my life
And where You are is where I wanna be

And I came to this realization: Jesus completely understood what I was feeling. He loved us from before time began. That is a heck of a long time, so it would take a lot to change that love. 

He wanted me to know that He loved me. He wanted to tell me that it would all be ok. He wanted me to tell him everything, and He wanted to listen to me. He wanted me to feel loved by Him. And yet there I was, hiding from Him through worldly things. I was obsessed with what people thought of me, what job I would do, and what I was associated with. I did not care about who or what I loved. I was filling the God shaped hole in my life with everything else.

I was holding on

To anger

To jealousy

To fear

To loss

God wants us to let go of everything. He wants us to stop hiding ourselves. He loves us so much, and it kills Him inside when we ignore Him with our little problems that could very well be offered up to Him. He wants to have our whole lives, and He wants to be able to give it all back to us, renewed and changed.

I love these people. I love these people that I rarely speak to, or never speak to in some circumstances. I love them because God loved them first, and I want them to know rhat they are important.

God wanted me to know that.

So I am letting go

of my anger

of my jealousy

of my fear

of all my failures.

Let go of all these things too my friends. Stop hurting yourself by ignoring the God who loves you. 

Be happy.

You deserve to be hapy.

And if that means admitting that something needs to change in yourself, in your view of the world, in the way you have acted, then go ahead and do those things. Let yourself be happy. Let yourself live the life that God wants you to live. I assure you....it feels freer on the other side.

To the One Whose Love Seems Worthless

Dear Friend,

For your entire life, you have been loving on people. You have been the one that people can turn to in a crisis, in a moment of joy, and in the unexpected turns of life. If there was a need for love, you would fill it, no questions asked. Day after day you loved on these people.

But there was that one friend.

You know exactly who you are thinking of. It was that friend that seemed to respond to your love unlike the others. They would sit with you and listen to you, and what's more, they would thank you for everything you did. In a world of takers, it seemed like you were being given something. Your love had transformed from an output to an input.

But then they were gone...just like everyone else.

You tell yourself that it is ok, that you have been through this before. People have stopped being your friend before, and you clearly were helpful for them. Their lives are better now, and even if they did miss you, they have too much going on to do anything about it. You are happy for them.

But this friend is different. They seem to be completely the same. Nothing you did made a difference in their lives, and you feel like maybe it was your fault that they regressed to the person you used to know. Maybe you hurt them. Maybe you were the problem. Maybe your need for love was just too much for them, and they were relieved that you weren't around anymore.

Maybe your love is worthless.

Do not think that your life did not make an impact on their life. Think of ATP Synthase, the protein that allows for the creation of ATP, the "fuel molecule of the cell." Without ATP, the cell could not function, just as the world does not function without your ability to love. When ATP levels are low, molecules of ADP go in to the synthase and are released as ATP. At the end, the synthase looks completely the same, like the ATP/ADP reaction did not matter in the least bit.

But if you looked at the protein, you would see that this reaction did change the ATP Synthase. As the ATP was being reformed from ADP, the Synthase was rotating. It was only a small distance, but the protein moved. And it was the ATP's decision to change and leave the complex that allowed for this shift to happen.

A friend does not just let you sit in the same place for your entire life. A friend teaches you how to love, how to give back to those who gave something to you. If you have a valuable friendship, then you are able to move outside of this friendship to love other people. Some friendships last forever, but others end, but at the end of the day, a truly valuable friendship causes a change in both parties so that more love may extend to the world.

Sometimes we are the ATP Synthase, taking people in and letting them go. Sometimes we are the ATP molecule, being released from the seemingly unchanged Synthase. We give something to the synthase, we cause it to move, and in the end, we are changed for the better.

But that change in our hearts does not go in vain.

As the synthase moves, more ADP comes in.

Your decision to love more than one person, to be ok with the gradual release of a relationship, is what allows for more people to come in.

You may never be able to see the impact you made on someone's life. You may never have the opportunity to hear about the good things you did, or the way things got better for your former friend. You might search for answers for years, but you may not find them in conversations or Facebook posts or the awkward smiles on campus.

But you felt the shift when you changed for the better.

You know what happened.

You know you mattered.

So regardless of how you may think everything turned out, remember that your love did have an impact. Your life made a difference in the life of your friend. Your decision to enter their life and love them caused a shift.

Your love matters.

Always.