Summer, College, and Other Life-Changing Events

I despise the spring.

I know that normal people love it - minus the allergies. Everything is new and fresh and beautiful. The sun comes out and its warm enough for t-shirts and iced coffee again.

I love all of that. But I hate bugs.

And the bugs come out in droves in the spring.

We always have at least one wasp nest lurking in or around our garage. Every day before stepping out the door, I have to take deep breaths and prepare myself for the wasp war zone that is my twenty-foot walk to my car.

I have to sit with the fact that I probably look like I'm insane when I sprint to my car every day, too afraid of the wasp horde to stop.

This is spring with a bug phobia.

So, naturally, during the spring my anxiety levels are high. Anything and everything makes me more nervous than I would usually be.

Only this spring is worse.

This spring I'm preparing to go both to Russia for a month with ROOF and to college this fall.

Yesterday, I decided (finally) to go to Asbury University in the fall. I couldn't be more thrilled or more terrified.

I assumed that once I made this decision, my worries would simply evaporate and fly off into the cool, spring air (hopefully with the wasps). But I had no such luck.

My stomach twisted into knots, and I found that I was more anxious than ever. Because now that the limbo of choosing colleges was gone, I was faced with the reality that in three or four months, I'll be living in a new state. In a new place. At a new school. With new people. All of whom I have never met.

And a month before that, I'll be going to a new country with new people to do new things with orphans.

As a person who can't stand change, that's a whole lot of newness for less than a year.

My life is changing. I'm changing. And it scares me.

And the only thing that I can do is give it to God. Give Him all my concerns and worries and doubts that I selfishly want to harbor and handle myself. It's like trying to carry all the grocery bags to the cars yourself instead of letting the bag boy help you carry them - and then they're too much, too heavy and you end up dropping them all over the road.

I always end up thinking, if only I'd swallowed that pride. If only I'd loosened my grip just a little. So maybe I can give a couple of bags to God. A preemptive move. Maybe, just maybe, if I let them go, they won't end up spilled on the street.