Losing Control

On the Asbury University Freshman Class Facebook group, someone has posted a new update every day saying, "63 days until orientation!", "62 days until orientation!" and so on and so forth.

At first it was amusing and exciting. Now it's just plain stressful. Because it's impossible to ignore. Oh, there are small distractions, like discovering the world's greatest banana bread recipe or watching The Great Gatsby. Thanks to social media, though, there's no ignoring what's coming:

"27 days until orientation!" 

That was today's post. My stomach ties up in knots just thinking about it.

Everything is becoming real. Undeniably real, a little too real.

I got my roommate and dorm assignments.

A schedule for orientation dropped into my inbox the other day.

I've made a list (at mom's urging) of things I need for my dorm.

Most people are excited to go to college. I got a tremendous scholarship, and it was the providence of God that I was able to go to the school I wanted to. And yet I'm almost in tears thinking about moving in next month.

All I can think of is orientation and the "activities" that are planned.

What if it's relay races or something? Everyone's first impression of me will be that I'm out-of-shape and self-conscious about it.

What if nobody likes me?

What if I try my very hardest to be social and outgoing and to make friends and it just doesn't work?

Everything's going to change. And I have no control over it.

That's the real problem. I'm a control freak walking into a situation where the biggest thing I control is the color of my comforter.

It makes me want to scream and cry and lock myself in my dorm room with a collection of Jane Austen novels and a subscription to Netflix.

Which I have done plenty of times at home.

I have avoided people, resisted intimacy, and shied away from vulnerability, content to sit at home watching Little Women and Sherlock and dreaming about the friendships I was too afraid to form.

This will not do in college.

Asbury is a chance for me to be someone different. Someone brave and trusting and able to lose control.

Because when I lose control, He takes control.