What I've Learned Beyond the Classroom

As I sit here in front of my computer on the eve of my high school graduation I'm not quite sure what to say.  How do you sum up eighteen years of life, or twelve years of schooling, or even just three years in high school in a blog post?  

High school was...an adventure full of highs and lows, exciting times and disappointing ones, days complete with life lessons and days totally void of purpose.  There are two lessons, I suppose I'll call them that, that I kept coming back to since tenth grade.  The first one relates directly to God, and the second isn't as direct.

I'll start with the more direct one, I suppose.  In middle school I felt so close to God, I had days that I could almost hear Him in conversation with me.  In high school, though, life began to fill with so much more than in earlier years, and I could feel God beginning to get pushed into the periphery of my life, but even when I put everything else aside and focused on God things still felt...different.  Very rarely did I feel that closeness that I used to feel in middle school, and there were moments that I began to doubt God's presence in my life.

Only recently did I truly begin to understand why this was happening.  As we progress through the stages of life, God progresses with us.  While He is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, we are not, and because of that God reaches us in different ways.  Middle school was a time full of developing out of childhood, finding out where I fit in, and discovering who I was going to be.  It was awkward, and, at times, it was difficult to navigate, and I needed God to be, well, extremely loud and incredibly close.  While personal development continues throughout life, and certainly in high school, it's a much different experience, and we are beginning to prepare for the rest of life, gaining much more independence than in years prior.  

My faith through high school was about just that, having faith.  It was as if God was saying "Okay, we got through these three years just fine, but now you need to trust me when I tell you that I will always be near just a little bit more."  

Perhaps I can create an analogy to a story that my mom told me when we were going through photographs from my younger years.  There was a picture of me in a row boat in the lake at my grandparents' mountain home, attached to shore by a long rope.  Thinking back on that vacation I didn't remember being attached to shore, I remembered rowing independently on the lake, and I giggled, thinking that I was attached to this rope and didn't even know it.  My mom, however, told me that I had desperately wanted that rope attaching me to the shore (not that she would have let me go out unattached, anyway), that I needed to know that that rope was there reigning me in.  Middle school was like my mom's (true) version.  God was obviously there, and I was comforted by knowing without a doubt that He was with me.  High school was more like my (false) thoughts.  I didn't realize that I was attached to shore all along, but I trusted that my mom would make sure nothing bad would happen to me.  I could have gotten too far away, though, to a point where I felt like she wouldn't be able to reach me if she needed to, but all along I was attached to where she was.  I have to trust in God that He is always here, and recognize even in the times that I am unsure I am still anchored to the everlasting Lord.

The second lesson from high school is about priorities.  Tomorrow when I am beginning to tear up during Graduation it will not be because I will miss the structure of high school, or because I will miss the subjects (if I really wanted to I could take similar classes at Grove City).  I will be crying because it is a goodbye of sorts with the people who I've grown to hold so dearly.  The people in life are the important part.  God sent us here to interact and love one another, and to develop a relationship with His Son.  That is our first purpose in life, not mastering rotations and torque in Physics class (though that could be a means to fulfilling our first purpose.) 

I'm not saying that we shouldn't be focused on academics or careers, anyone who knows me knows that I would never say that those things are unimportant, but this year especially, my senior year, I've learned that it is easy to put our priorities in the wrong order.  Years from now it is unlikely that I will remember how to solve the integral of an exponential function, yet I know that I will remember the people in my life right now.  Before senior year I often put academics ahead of anything else in my life, but now I see that there are some things that can come before, or at least equivalent to, them.  There is one thing that must come before them.  God.  In all things God must be the first priority in my life. With God first, everything else will fall into place, as He'll guide me towards the proper path.

So I suppose the first lesson that I learned was about my relationship with God, and the second was about following and serving Him, neither of which is much different from the other.

Above all remember this - "For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only son, so that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life." (John 3:16)

What I Know Now

I don't really know what to say about this song, except that it really spoke to me. The part that sticks out to me is the first part, to the "little girl, fourteen."  It describes a very common situation, and provides a lot of truth. 

I've spent a lot of my time this past year with a lot of amazing middle-schoolers.  I'm only a few years beyond middle school, but already I'm having moments of "if I only knew then what I know now."

I wish I could tell my middle school self to "put those magazines and makeup tutorials away, you aren't going to care very much about makeup in just a few years, anyway.  Go read or write.  You'll be wishing you had more time to do those things later on."

I wish I could tell that fourteen year old Abby to "stick with the friends who care, not the ones who constantly make you fight to keep them.  It's the ones who are comforting you on the sidelines who will be with you once you get into middle school."

I wish I could show that girl what studying looks like.  "You'll need those skills pretty soon."

I wish I could tell her "don't take the happy times for granted.  They aren't always going to be that way."

But then I wish I could remind her "the bad times aren't going to last forever.  Trust that God will bring you through whatever He brings you to."

I wish that I could tell her to "stop saying that you don't care what other people think, and work on actually believing it.  You can say that the grass isn't green as many times as you want, but that isn't going to change the truth."

Mostly, though, I wish I could tell her to "pay more attention to the adults around you.  They've been through it all before, they know what they're talking about.  Take it to heart."

Well, this isn't what I thought it would be at first.  I thought the song would have more to do with this post, but I guess it was just inspiration.  Maybe I'll talk about it again, later.  But I feel like I've said what I needed to say, anyway.

Troubles Aren't Always Tests

Sometimes our lives can be easy-breazy, and pure bliss, and other times we find that we are going through a horrific challenge. Up until now I thought that these challenges were always tests, or lessons, at least, from God, but now I'm beginning to think that there is a third option.

During these happy, blissful easy times in our lives, we are being built up. Life is easy, and there is plenty of time to learn and to focus on who we are as a person. We're being taught lessons of love and acceptance, we're given momentary gifts of happiness. And then when it all comes crashing down we don't realize that maybe, just maybe, God hasn't done all of this to test us, or to teach us more, but maybe, God has done this because it is our turn the be the teachers.

Now it's our turn to go out into the world, and to teach others what it's like to know God, to give the gift of bliss to the next person, and eventually, you'll find more happiness in this than you've ever known before. We can't blame God for taking away what we've taken for granted. When we lose people we love, or people change, we can't spend so much time wondering why, but spending our time being that type of person that people don't want to lose.

I guess what I'm trying to say is this. In difficult times, don't spend forever grieving, go out and make those wonderful times for others. Eventually it'll come back around to you, and it'll be there to stay.