What I Would Say to Myself Freshman Year

If I could travel in time, I would deliver this letter to myself before the beginning of my freshman year of college. Since I can't do that, I'll just publish it here. 

You're about to start college. Hold on tight, because it's going to be a bumpy ride.

College, for you, is going to be a time of God breaking you. You are going to be broken in ways you cannot even comprehend right now. But don’t be scared. It’s worth it. The flame that burns also refines, remember? By the end of your sophomore year, you will be so humbled that you won’t ever be able to judge anyone again. And that’s a good thing. But it’s a hard road that leads to that.

You are a woman. God created women with complete attention to detail. Women are complex, because that’s exactly how God wants us to be. That complexity will separate the men from the boys: the cowards will shy away from it, the men will embrace it and try to understand you more deeply all of the time. But never forget this: no one will ever understand you fully except for your Creator. Embrace that now, and don’t let it drive you to depression years later when you are searching endlessly to be understood by someone to no avail. Stop seeking that now. Instead, recognize the deep desire in you to be understood and to be wanted. It’s a desire to be deeply known and still loved. Every woman has that desire, and it’s not a bad thing. God created you that way. But it is the driving force behind many of our actions, and sometimes those actions can be futile. Recognize this force. It’s more powerful than you realize. It will leave you clinging on with clenched fists and white knuckles to things that are of this world: relationships, people, bad habits, etc. Nothing in this world will make you feel completely known and completely wanted. Eventually, everything fades. Men leave. People forget. A boy changes his mind.  

After you search high and low to fulfill this desire, one that is as strong and as natural as the desire in animals to eat, you will feel empty. Probably emptier than you ever were to begin with, because there’s usually sin involved in the chasing. Sin is like a black hole. It creates emptiness and total destruction wherever it goes. It’s daughter is guilt, the ghost that relentlessly haunts every heart.

You’ll never feel more alone, never feel more unwanted, more rejected, more forgotten, more unworthy. You’ll avoid God. You might keep chasing more things, but eventually you feel that the desire will never be fulfilled, that you will never be happy, and that you are a failure. So your actions become less about being known and wanted, and more about surviving each day: the struggle to simply live, the struggle to numb the pain, the struggle to blindly fight through the fog of your thoughts. You’ll be lower than you thought you could be.

The only way out is Jesus. He’s the only light in an otherwise black tunnel that seems to keep shrinking and shrinking. You’ve heard this a million times, but you won’t fully understand what it means until you’re desperate and have no where else to go and no one else to turn to. Some people reach this point early in life, some after years and years, and some probably have to hit it several times. You’re going to hit it at twenty years old.

What does that even mean? Look at Jesus. Just look at Him. Sit in the chapel. Sit in prayer. Just be with Him. Like Moses, you cannot look at God without being changed.

Once you look at Him, you will see Him on the cross. You will see pain and agony written in blood on his body but love in His eyes. You will hear him say “I thirst” and realize it is your soul He thirsts for. You can’t do anything else until you realize that He thirsts for you. It’s stronger than a desire for, an admiration of, an approval of, or a thinks fondly of. He thirsts for you. He doesn’t thirst for the old you who had it all together, or the future you that will be well past this and have life figured out. He thirsts for you as you are right now. He thirsts for the you that sits there and slaps Him in the face. He thirsts for the you that nailed Him to the Cross by your sins. He thirsts for the you that yells, “Crucify him, crucify him!”

You cannot look at the deep, bloody wounds of Jesus and not feel wanted.

He knows you and loves you. He would not create you with a desire that He cannot fulfill. You just have to accept His love.

How do you accept it? Like Mary’s fiat, you say “yes” to Jesus. You say yes to whatever He asks of you, because He first loved you. That is how you love Jesus. It’s not by thinking nice thoughts about Him or wearing a necklace of Him or speaking the Christian language with empty, over-used phrases. It’s saying yes to Him. It’s taking up your cross and following Him to your death. It is a death in and of itself.

It’s you sacrificing yourself to Him and to every single person around you. It’s you pouring out yourself over and over again, every day, to every person, like Jesus gives His body and blood at every sacrifice of the Mass. It’s you giving every part of your life to Him. It’s you loving the people that are hardest to love. It’s you loving your family. It’s you accepting all humiliations.

You’re going to feel so overwhelmed with how far you have to go, but I think every saint feels that way on earth. Don’t focus on yourself and how bad or how good you are. Examine your conscience daily, confess your sins, repent, and ask for the grace to try again tomorrow. Put one hundred percent of yourself into each moment. You cannot do this if you have part of your heart in the past or part of your mind in the future. Don’t try to save the world or become a saint in one day. A good place to start is to every day pray and do one thing that you do not want to do to serve someone else. The rest of the time, listen to God and say yes to Him. To do this, you have to actually listen. Sit still. Turn off the music and the phone and the distractions. Don’t worry about what you’re supposed to do with your life. God will tell you in his perfect timing. If one day he tells you to go join a convent or move to the inner city or date that boy or go to that school, go do it. But until then, stay where he has put you.

If you don’t know where he has put you or what the means, start with your name. You belong to a family that shares that name. You are a daughter, a sister, a granddaughter, a niece, and a cousin. That is your vocation. Start by loving them. If you can’t love those that you live with, how can you expect to love your enemies?

Be disciplined. Sanctification lies in the little things. Clean your room, wash your clothes, eat well, exercise, and do your work. You cannot say yes to God in the big ways that you dream about if you do not say yes to Him in the little ways.

You still have the desire to be wanted and to be known. Open up every part of your heart to Jesus so that He can satiate that desire. This is not a one time action, but an action that we must make every day until we die. Use that desire to recognize it in others, and to seek instead to understand and love someone else. We were created to be relational people. In your relationships, don’t have any expectations of the other person. How they treat you is none of your business. It’s between them and God. Your relationships, at the end of the day, are not about you and that person, but about you and God. See Jesus in every single person. Treat everyone like you would treat Jesus, because He thirsts for them as much as He thirsted for you.

The theme of college might seem like God breaking you. But that is only the subtitle. It’s ultimately about Jesus thirsting for your heart, and stopping at nothing to get it.