Why, If I Had the Chance, I Would Choose the Mount All Over Again.

On April 28th, I was checking TimeHop when I saw a status that I had shared for the past three years. A status that meant more than it had the previous years.

"so it's official. i will be attending Mount Saint Mary's University in the fall :)"

Reading this, I felt a twinge of sorrow I've been experiencing for a while. The sorrow that I only have two more weeks left at The Mount. But it's a strange sorrow. It's a joyful sorrow. A sorrow I am glad to feel, because I know it means I made the most of my four years here.

Oh, what a ride it's been. For my first two years, I was unhappy. I felt like I didn't belong. But, every time I looked into transferring schools, there was something within me that kept me from actually doing anything. Something telling me I was supposed to be at the Mount. It wasn't  until the fall semester of my junior year that things started to click. My heart was healed and my eyes were opened to the beauty and love that was all around me.

As you know, I had to go on medical leave last semester, and when I came back in January, it was to an angry campus, dealing with scandal regarding our new president. It was like a house divided, and it was painful to be on campus. Part of me wished I had just stayed away.

Despite all of the downs of my college experience, I don't regret a thing, and if I could, I would choose the Mount again.

I learned to trust God.

Attending the Mount in itself was a leap of faith. It was not my first choice (it was actually my fourth!), and I was nervous. Everything fell into place that it was clear that the Mount was what was going to work out, and so I trusted. I had to. My plans for college already hadn't worked out. 

Through each difficult moment I've been here, I've learned to rely on God instead of myself. I can only do so much, but He can do it all.

I learned that I am loved (and I am worthy of that love!!)

The friendships I've made here are truly one in a million. I have met the most incredible human beings who I am blessed to love, and be loved by. My friends here have shown me that I am loved by so many people, and most importantly of God. By standing beside me at my grossest (i.e. during panic attacks), my friends have proved to me that their love and friendship is going to last. 

Through my friends' love and kindness, I have been able to see a tiny, itty bitty percentage of God's love and kindness. This is a priceless gift I am forever grateful for.

I learned that nothing lasts forever.

Each pain I've felt has ended. Maybe it took a long time, but I eventually was able to overcome the obstacles I faced during the past four years. 

As I prepare to graduate, I am reminded that the good times, the lovely and beautiful we experience here on earth, don't last either. This is because God is preparing us for the good that will never end. Because of this, I've learned to take it all in and enjoy it while it's there.

I learned that I am never alone, nor will I ever be.

The beautiful people who have stood beside me for the past four years have reminded me that no matter what, I will never be alone. I have so many people who care about me, and have loved me in ways I never thought I would experience. Their faithfulness and loyalty has proven that God will never forsake me, no matter where I am, or what I do. I just need to reach out.

The Sorrow in Joy.

Joy. This word has been on my heart since I went on medical leave from school almost three months ago. What is joy? What makes it different from happiness? How do you get it?

These questions have all been partially answered in different ways, but in a big way through praying the Joyful Mysteries of the rosaries. While praying, I've noticed something: as joyful as these mysteries are, there's also sorrow in them, especially the fourth and fifth mysteries.

Joy is accompanied by sorrow.

My sister told me that she liked to pray about how Mary felt after Jesus went missing in the Temple. Ya'll... she literally lost God. She didn't know where He was.

She felt the same way we feel when we feel like God isn't there.

And she searched, and she searched, and she worried, and joy prevailed.

Years before, when she and Joseph presented the baby Jesus at the Temple, Simeon told her that her heart would be pierced by a sword. Mary must have felt so frightened, so troubled by this news. But yet, this event in Jesus' life is not seen as sorrowful, rather as joyful.

In our own lives, there are times when life is just so freaking unfair. Everything seems to be going wrong. We could be the young girl who is given news that could have her killed and shunned from society, or the girl who can't find a place to rest and give birth, and so she delivers her son among animals. These are troubling things. But Mary is an example to us: she chose the joy in these events rather than the sorrowful and troubling.

Will you choose the joyful? It has to be a conscious decision. There will be times when we're going to have to search high and low for it.

But it's there.

We just have to stop staring at the shadows and look to the sun behind them.

Photo credit to Trini Crocker Photography

Faith