michigan

How strange it is to visit a place you lived while in a different mindset. I visited my college in MI to see friends there. Somehow some of the kids I used to watch in my church group growing up are now freshmen at my old college. Small world, aint it? I also got to see my old boss and profs and other friends still there.

This is what I found; the happiness I saw then was but a fraction of the joy I have now. The darkness I lived under seemed dark compared to what I saw others having. But now I know how little joy I had seen by the time I left college. It’s like lying under a rock watching others live in the forest where the light seems so much brighter. But the shadows of the forest do not compare with the sunlight on the mountaintops.

My respect for professors grew with the understanding that they choose to endure the tension of that college for the hope that others would treasure the learning they teach freely. I do now, but I didn’t while I attended there. I received the building blocks while there, but never understood what they signified until I had left college behind. Then one day it clicked. One day I started living the life saved for me. As I looked back at the place I spent the years previous to that realization, I finally understood the magnitude of the darkness I still lived under after becoming a Christian.

And so I visited with my peeps and let my joy show and hoped this helped instead of hurt. I wanted to tell them of joy, of life, of adventure, and the One who had given everything to me. I wanted to take the heaviness I saw away from them. But it is not to be. So I tried my best to lighten the weight for a bit with my stories and good humor. I find that this is one of the most necessary and yet hardest acts to accomplish. To put aside what you see and call up what you have seen for the benefit of those you care for. Oh how I wish I could zap them instantly with joy. But that is neither my place nor how it works. A person must work out their own path to joy, not follow someone else’s steps. Something is not worth having if it is not worth gaining through troubles and strife. A belief is not worth holding if it is not worth dying for.