Dear freshman me,
(me, pictured on the right)
You’re anxious, I get it. It’s scary. Moving your entire life and everything you ever knew to a new place, living with a new person, starting a new challenging academic load and experiencing a whole new way of living is overwhelming. It’s different, it’s out of the ordinary and it poses so much unknown. Unknown is scary. You’re not crazy for being worried, you’re not crazy for being scared and it is okay to be nervous. Headed to college heartbroken from a painful breakup only makes the unsettling nerves worse.
What you don’t know… is that your life is really just beginning.
“Courage is not the absence of fear. It is rather not letting your fear control your actions” - Alex Harris in Do Hard Things
Though you don’t think you have the strength, energy, confidence or courage to meet new people and to try new things… I promise you, that you do. And if you do, you’re going to begin to change your life and start to become who you were always meant to be. God had made you to be someone and that someone has only begun to make her appearance in the world. It takes a village to really know someone and to bring out different facets of their characteristics, and you’re about to make a move that will help you do just that.
I’m not going to lie, it’s not going to be easy. It’s going to be hard, and you’re going to have to put yourself out there and experience vulnerability unlike you’ve never known before. You’re also going to make mistakes… some of the bigger mistakes of your life that will impact your future. However, you’re also going to make the best friends that you’ve ever made…. people who will stand by you when you get married, women who will support you 10 years beyond your graduation. People who know the real you, and accept you as you are, yet challenge you to be the best version of yourself that you can be. You’ll start a healing process that you don’t even know that you need yet, but really … the best of it is that you’ll experience the Lord in a deeply personal way, a way that you knew could exist, but never experienced deeply yourself in a way that has made sense.
He is near to you. He has never left you, and never will. This time that we call college is going to be the time that you have the opportunity to be separated from what you defined yourself by these past 17 years. You have the opportunity to ask the deep questions, explore the personal characteristics of God, pick up the theological books and most importantly ask for mentorship and encouragement from those who are for you.
freshman Chelsea
Don’t give up when you make the big mistakes. His grace is more sufficient for you than you could possibly imagine. Run to community and run to Him in those moments. You won’t be transformed immediately, but instead it will take months, and maybe even a couple of years before you notice a difference. I can’t stress it enough… don’t give up and lean into an identity that is given to you, not one that you craft for yourself.
You have a lot of obstacles in your way, but I would say the one that is the biggest for you is your anxiety over the unknown. It will lie to you - tell you that it is safer to stay in your room, to hide away, to watch Netflix and to run from others. It will tell you to go home every weekend to head to the comfort of the beautiful view outside your window back home to seek solace in isolation. Solace doesn’t come in isolation, and what you need in these next four years more than anything is to know others and by known by them. You’ve had your time at home, and now… it’s your chance to fly.
What are you waiting for?
pictured: me + the friends that would come through taking risks and joining a community during my senior year
Written by: Chelsea Anderson (associate campus minister)