This is a new section on the blog that I wanted to start. Sometimes, I think the blog focuses a lot on the aspects of writing and editing or on what I’m working on, but there’s not a lot of personal stuff to it. Obviously, there’s a fine line between sharing and over-sharing, but I personally really like it when I see stories and personal notes from the authors of blogs I follow or books I like to read. It makes it feel like I know them just a bit better and have a more personal investment in their work. It also makes it easier to recommend them, at least for me, because I can tell friends or parents I talk to that the author’s philosophies, outlook on life, and personality are also commendable.
So, I’m going to start sharing things I’ve learned through life’s experiences so far and things that I’m learning now. For those who aren’t Christians, I’m not going to discourage you from reading, but you should know that this part of the blog will be much more obvious in its Christian roots because I am a Christian, and the lessons I have learned are ones learned through hardships God took me through to teach me things I wouldn’t have learned otherwise. If that’s something that’s offensive and bothersome, just skip over these posts when you see them and keep reading what you already do. I won’t be offended by it. But if you do decide to join me, then welcome, and thank you for doing so!
Today’s Sunday Story comes from a lesson I learned about loneliness in my first semester of college at Pensacola Christian College in Florida.
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They say your college years are the best years of your life. Mine have been both the best and worst years so far. I know, a strange statement to make, but a true one for reasons that will, I think, become apparent as I share more of the things I learned during my college years.
I won’t deny that I have an overall negative opinion of my alma mater itself. At this point in my life, I still haven’t fully sorted through all of the emotions, positive or negative, that I went through while there. I’m a bit of a slow learner when it comes to emotional things, and my final year and a half at PCC was filled with many negative emotions, some directed at the school and some toward myself. But that’s a story for another Sunday and isn’t really the point of this post. My only reason for mentioning it is to be up front about the fact that I most definitely have a bias against the institution but that, because God richly blessed me with friends from the student body who could facilitate growth even when the school failed to do so, my view can’t be entirely negative of my time spent there, at the very least.
My first semester was mostly bleak, especially in the beginning. I had no friends, and those I tried to make would agree to plans enthusiastically only to leave me alone when the time for our plans rolled around. This meant many meals spent eating alone, but it also created a fair share of problems since the school had a “no-going-off-campus-alone” rule at the beginning of my time there.
The rule itself wasn’t bad since our area was more than a little dangerous and had gangs who operated near the school and targeted our female students. The school tried to make it easy to find people to go with for the weekends since they ran buses that went to Walmart, the mall, and one other local shopping destination. Unfortunately, the rule regarding going off alone also applied to the weekend shopping trips and the bus, which I initially didn’t even realize. (The rules regarding bus use were more than a little vague in that area.)
Furthermore, I could only go with girls, so my pool of people to choose from was relatively limited. I tended to have very little luck connecting with girls my age despite repeated attempts. This was by no means the school’s fault, but it did make things difficult for me. As a result, when people cancelled plans every time we had them (and that semester, there wasn’t a single weekend that the people I made plans with didn’t cancel on me last minute), I was forced to either cancel plans to avoid breaking the rules or go alone even if it broke rules.
For most students, this wasn’t an issue. They could either not go that week or had no problem finding friends to go whether it was last minute or not. In my case, I couldn’t choose not to go because I had to buy food I could actually eat regularly without making myself sick and needed to buy my own toiletries. One of my roommates had a car, but neither of them liked me or was keen on lending me anything if I wasn’t able to get to the store, so I relied heavily on making time on a weekend to go. So, I spent much of that semester discouraged and struggling because I couldn’t manage to find anyone to go anywhere with me or do anything, even on campus.
It took me a long while to give up on it. I admit that I gave up in despair and for all the wrong reasons, but once I gave up, God finally got through to me, and I began to learn one of the first lessons the people there taught me, though I’m sure it wasn’t their intention to teach me this lesson. Loneliness, as uncomfortable as it is, is not the end of the world and is often a tool God uses to draw us to Himself. In this case, it did just that.
Later on, I did make friends, and some of them are ones I’m still in touch with, my best friend included. I made them at the very end of that first semester, but not until I learned to do two things. First, to accept the hollowness a lack of human companionship left in me. Second, to bring it to and give it over to God so that He could fill it with a thankfulness for the One who never leaves and for the person of God Himself.
I still struggle in this area sometimes, but this lesson had to be learned and has stuck with me. It is one of the few things the school itself ended up having a big part in teaching me, on a spiritual level at least, because in some ways, their rules made my lack of friendship more apparent every time I had no choice but to go on the bus alone to get things that couldn’t hold off for an uncertain “I’d love to go with you next week” from those I thought were friends.
I had many nerve-wracking, guilt-ridden trips to Walmart then with plenty of time to consider the fact that, unless I wanted to go without toilet paper or food I could eat safely for another week or more, I had to break the rules. I spent those rides terrified I’d get in trouble for being on my own, ashamed because I knew I was breaking rules, angry because I wanted to follow the rules (even if I hadn’t known about some of them until I got on campus) but couldn’t because others didn’t follow through week after week, and lonely because everyone else had a group while I was alone. Not a “good” experience, certainly. By the end of that semester, I had come to dread Walmart trips and hate the health issues that made trips necessary every other week, even if I had to break rules to go. But the acute emotional distress did force me to choose how to respond and to find a solution.
So, I eventually chose to stop looking for friends. A strange decision, I know, but it was the only one that seemed remotely reasonable at that point. I told God that, as sad as I felt about the prospect of being friendless for three years in a place I was already beginning to feel alone and out-of-place in, I was going to accept it if He didn’t choose to give me any friends.
After all, I’d already chosen to obey His leading in coming to a school that I never would have attended on my own because of the rules they did make clear, and that hadn’t even covered the ones that were tacked on or made themselves manifest after I first arrived that weren’t even in the student handbook or the differing applications of the student leaders in charge of enforcing them. But I was living with all of it, even if I wasn’t thrilled about it, and I was doing it because I strongly believed it was where I belonged even if I never fit in with more than a handful of people there.
So, if I could do that, then I could surely survive three years with no friends if it was what God called me to. To me, at that point, I was mostly just resigned and a little relieved I could stop putting all my efforts into developing friendships that never went anywhere. There was, at that time, no excitement about trusting God with the situation, but only a hopeless prayer of unhappy resignation to the loneliness if that was what had to be for His plans to be worked out in my life. (Had I known back then what I would find by doing this, I might have had more enthusiasm and less of a depressed, if I have to attitude, but hindsight is 20-20, as they say.)
Over the next month, bus rides got easier. Oh, the guilt and frustration over the fact that I had to break rules to get what I needed was still there. I couldn’t get around that without just eating foods that made me sick until I could buy non-perishables and whatever I could store out of the fridge for a week or so until I could shop again. But those trips never allowed me to buy enough to tide me over until the next trip, and I didn’t have a way to extend shelf-life on the fresh foods or fruits I needed to eat more of. I made it through, though, and I dealt with the consequences of my choice with a good attitude. I knew I was breaking policies, and while I felt bad about doing it, I knew I was still responsible for it if I got caught. I accepted that risk and the guilt that was a consequence of breaking rules I felt should be followed.
Some would have told me at the time (and later a few guy friends did tell me this) that I should have kept the rules even if it meant suffering health-wise because it was wrong to break a rule you knew about. That’s one of those things I still don’t know how to feel about.
I’m not a rule breaker, and breaking rules is something I hate doing. But there were many times where I didn’t know how rules should be interpreted or what they applied to because every resident assistant did things differently. I often felt guilty for breaking rules, even if I didn’t know about them beforehand because they weren’t in the version of the Pathway I’d been given prior to updates. I learned to accept and expect the guilt. As I said, my head got tangled up and confused on the issue, and in the end, whether it was right or wrong, I chose to do what was best for my health so I could focus on classes, even if it meant breaking a rule.
When it came to the bus situation, however guilty I may have felt, the loneliness itself eased up as a week or so passed in this state of isolation and prayer. I wasn’t angry at people for ditching me because I expected them not to show and leave me in a bind, and I didn’t care if we were able to hang out or not, so I wasn’t disappointed when it didn’t happen. Maybe that’s pessimistic of me, but I felt no real antipathy toward anyone for it. I just saw things for what they were and didn’t expect things to change.
Eventually, though, things did change. I didn’t expect them to, and I didn’t notice right away that, while no one else around me was changing, I was changing. It took time, but I grew to find walking, eating, studying, and living life with just me and God to be a joy instead of a burden. My problems weren’t solved, and I had a lot of growing ahead, but I was at peace about the journey ahead and the steps behind.
In the end, the lesson I learned from the struggle wasn’t an easy one, and I didn’t like the experience that had to happen for me to learn it. I wouldn’t tell you the experience was positive because that would be a categorical lie. But what I could tell you is this. The experience was painful and what was going on was negative, yes. But the results and the growth that came out of the experience were positive. Those were good and necessary.
It’s easy for me to forget, often, that even if what happened to me was undoubtedly negative, the results were not if I grew and came closer to God because of my suffering. The suffering and other people’s lack of integrity or good decisions (in this case, their poor planning and lack of following through) wasn’t good. Should those things have happened? No, probably not like they did. But if they hadn’t, I wouldn’t have learned to embrace loneliness instead of fighting it, and I would be a lesser person today. The experience was bad, but the outgrowth from my response to it and what God did through it was something way more positive than I ever could’ve dreamed.