Since getting into college (Grove City College class of 2018, wooho!) I have not felt the need to slack in my schoolwork. Since starting senior year, however, I have found that I no longer feel the need to live up to the standards of everyone around me. I don't need to be actively involved in six different friend groups to be happy. In fact, all that does is burn me out. So why was I doing it until this year?
That answer is simple: because, up until this year, I was holding myself to the standards of my friends, my parents, myself, and God. This year, I've been trying to narrow that list down to being only God. I want my standards for myself to reflect God's, so that's an easy one to attempt to check off. I may not have realized it until this year, but my parents' standards for me have reflected God's all along, so that one is even easier to check off.
Ah, but then there are my friends. I spend approximately thirty five hours a week in school with these people and then however more time after school and on the weekends, how am I supposed to just ignore them? But, there, my friends, is the problem. I'm not supposed to ignore them. I'm just not supposed to be focusing on who they want me to be. And this year has shown me the importance of that. How many of these "friends" will I actually be in regular contact with after a month or two of our freshmen year in college? Five, six, maybe? So if I'm only going to remain friends with five or six of these people, why have I been struggling so hard to live up to the standards of so many more? So there I can cross off most of the people from the friends part of my list.
"What about those five or six, though, Abby?" you ask. Ah, well here is the best part. Those five or six people don't have standards for me beyond the most basic of God's standards. They just want me to be, well, me.
So now my list of standard setters is down to just one. God. And man, do I wish I had figured this all out a while ago, because it is just so calming to know that they only standards and judgements that matter now are God's, and His standards will only lead me down a path that I want to follow, that will not leave me weary.
So call it some form of senioritis, if you may, but it is far from laziness and a feeling of being done. It comes from a realization that God is the only true judge, that there is no use in exhausting myself to live up to the rest of the world's standards. Isaiah 40:31 says "But those who hope in The Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint." Narrowing my list of people who set standards for me to God and only God is not lazy, it does not lighten the workload, but it gives the strength needed to do everything that God wishes me to do and strive to live up to each of the standards that He sets.
