identity crisis

I don't think I'm really fully aware of the fact that I'm a college graduate. I think it's just now beginning to hit me that I'm really, truly done with school. Unless I decide to get my MFA or go to Seminary, but that's another blog for another time. Right now, in this moment, and for as far as I can see right now (which is to, say, early October, because I have a wedding to go to), school and I are officially done.

So much of my life has been school. I mean, I've been in school for 16 years. And the 6 years before that don't really count, because how much of your early years do you really remember? Essentially, I've been in school for my entire life. I never realized just how consumed my life has been by school. I think I got really good at categorizing my life, and "school" always contained homework, classes, and my major. But all of the social and extracurricular aspects were in different categories.

Looking back, school was the glue that held my life together. Everything made sense because I was in school. I learned to love being busy, and when my life isn't crazy full, I don't know what to do with myself. I overcommit because that's my nature. I love running from one thing to the next, being so busy that I have to schedule every bit of my life or else it doesn't work. School made that busyness kosher. It was OK to be so busy because everything I was doing mattered. Staying up all night to finish an art project was OK because I literally didn't have time anywhere else in my day to do it, because that day was spent running from work to chapel to class to another class to starbucks so I could knock out a paper in 2 hours to chapel to my studio. That may sound like torture to you, but I loved it. And I miss it.

Here's the thing. I love school. I love going to class. I love having deadlines that get me to write or create or think outside the box. I don't know how to be motivated to do that on my own. I mean, sure, there are parts I hate, and in some moments everything in me wanted to quit. But looking back, oh what I would give to have another semester at APU.

My identity is found in school.

What I mean is that I am so lost without being in school. 16 years of something will do that to you. Especially when the last 4 of those years is spent at a place like APU.

Being graduated is going to be harder and weirder and suckier than I ever could have anticipated. Sure, I had professors talk about how difficult it would be to make art after school. I had professors say that figuring out the rest of your life would be difficult. I knew it would be hard. No one tried to sugarcoat it. I knew it would be hard. But I didn't know it would be this hard.

Not having a set direction makes it harder. But I think things are maybe possibly starting to come together. I can look past early October and you know what? My life isn't completely over. I'm going to keep moving forward.

Sometimes it feels like I'm blindfolded, groping around in the dark to find comfort or safety, while everyone around me is watching me look like an idiot. Some try and help, but most step away and look at me like I'm absolutely crazy. But there is a Voice ahead that is guiding me, gently and sweetly. Through this stupid identity crisis, that is the Voice I'll listen to. Not the ones around me telling me I'm crazy. Not the ones saying I can go my own way, that maybe I'm taking this to an extreme. I'm listening to the one kindly calling me, "this way, child. come to Me."

I don't think there are extremes in following Jesus. You either follow Him or you don't. "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it."* There's no middle option, no lukewarm choice, no medium sized gate. It's hard and we as Christians have grown so complacent that when someone actually does what Jesus commands, it seems crazy. But I'm not crazy. I'm just in love with Jesus, and I just want more of Him. So I'll learn to really, truly place my identity in Him, and follow Him with reckless abandon, no matter how crazy I may look.

*Matthew 7:13-14