Mackenzie Norman

I went through a phase where I was exhausted and the last thing I wanted to do was go out of my way to try something new. Suffice it to say that such a mentality was way out of character for me. I am the first to jump headlong into something I’ve never done. Adrenaline and I are BFFs…most of the time. 

Now, if this was a normal bout of exhaustion, all I’d need to do was rest a bit, find a sleep schedule that didn’t involve all-nighters, and stop eating dining-hall cheese pizza every day for dinner. But it wasn’t normal exhaustion. It was something darker. Fear.  

You see, my escapades involved other people. And when those people left me, so did my confidence. I stopped feeling the need to do anything new, to take any risks. I curled up inside to protect myself. I was unwilling to be vulnerable in any way. Physically, mentally, and emotionally. 

And I missed out on some important things because I decided to hide.  

In a classic move, I flat-out refused to deal with the emotional fall-out that came with losing friends. 

Why am I talking about this in the first quarter? Because some of you have left friends behind in moving to college. And the pain of moving away and starting over can sometimes become so overwhelming that the last thing you want to do is go out and meet new people or try new things. 

I’m not trying to win the award for Miss Doom and Gloom, but it doesn’t get any easier to move away and make new friends. Huge life-changes are hard, whether you’re 18 or 80. But here’s what I want to emphasize: change may never get any easier, but your response to it can always be better. 

Let me say this loud and clear- hiding is NOT the answer. 

Avoiding pain never makes it go away. Take it from someone with experience. You can’t hide from your hurt, and the more you do, the less you live. 

Galatians 5:1 is one of my favorite passages. “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” 

For freedom we have been set free. And when we run away from our problems rather than confronting them, we are subjecting ourselves to a kind of slavery that Jesus never intended for us. 

It is hard to start over. Hard to find the confidence to try something new. Especially after your world has been turned upside down. But face the fear, face the grief, and be willing to work through it. 

It took me nearly a year to get back on the proverbial saddle. And when I did, I was far more cautious. Not all of my caution was bad. I was older, wiser, but ready to ride again. My biggest regret was that I spent a year running from my hurt instead of allowing God to help me deal with it. If I had just trusted Him, the healing process would have been so much faster and deeper than my feeble attempts to heal myself on my own. I wasn’t free for a whole year. Instead of living, I hid. And that was the opposite of the abundant life and freedom that Jesus was extending to me. 

Friend, I don’t want you to make the same mistake. I get it, sometimes Jesus’ method of healing seems so much more painful. But think of it like salt in a wound. It hurts- a lot. But it heals. And it heals better than anything else. Band-aids don’t fix a problem, they just cover it up. Jesus isn’t the kind of physician that accepts a cover-up where a healing is needed. And you shouldn’t be the kind of Christian that settles for a band-aid when Jesus is offering total healing. 

“Do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” 

College is worth being present for. So run to Jesus, let Him heal you, and refuse to spend your life hiding. Seek Him instead. Because with Him, you will find everything else.