A Looong Road Ahead

     I've been thinking...(Uh-Oh!)...Or maybe worrying, (Bigger Uh-Oh!) about the change going back to school full time has brought into my life once again. It's a change that happens every year after summer, and it keeps coming back like an annoying cold. Every year I expect it will be harder, I will learn more, blah blah blah, but it seems like I can never seem to wrap my head around it enough to calm myself from thinking that I can't do it. What am I, in 14th grade now? And I still hyperventilate at the thought of doing poorly in a class. Today, for instance, I walked into my Spanish 202 class about fifteen minutes early, and was about to puke by the time the teacher walked in. No, I didn't go grab a breakfast burrito at McDonald's, I was just scared out of my mind. First of all, the teacher. What if I got another first semester doozy that hated her life and everyone in it? Even if that proved to be falsified, what if everyone around me knew more than I did? What if I had forgotten too much over the summer? What if, what if, what if?

     You can imagine my relief when a girl from my previous class walked in and sat across from me. We both were on the same page, came from the same academic background, and she's a sweetheart on top of it. Next, the teacher walked in, handed out a *ton* of helpful cheat sheets, and the syllabus telling us the first week or two would be review. Not to mention the fact that she's a humorous, down to earth woman from Jersey (That explained a lot!). Finally, when it came time to do a little intro about ourselves in Spanish, I was pleasantly surprised at the variation of fluency in the classroom. And to know that I wasn't at the bottom!

     Now, this post totally has a point, but I just wanted to lay out the contrasting scenarios of what I *thought* or *feared* would happened, compared to what was actually *reality*. Mark Twain has a very appropriate quote concerning this subject:

"I am an old man and have known many great troubles, but most of them never happened."

     Isn't that so true? All the things I was afraid of this morning were things that never even happened. They were a result of my desire to do the best I could in what I am passionate about, which in itself is not a bad thing, but when turned to idolatry it can be devastatingly destructive.

     The thing about idols is that they're hard to catch. There can never be too much of a good thing, can there? Well, drinking too much water can kill you, too much vitamin B6 can cause nerve damage, too much focus on your goals can blur your priorities. I'm not saying it's bad to care about something you love, or want to be good at, but when those things take precedence over our lives and cause us to cease giving priority to God, then those things become an idol.

     My idolatry often manifests itself by putting the opinions of others on a higher pedestal than the opinion of God. I want to prove to others, as well as to myself, that I can hold my own in a conversation in another language, and that I really am good at what I want to do. I want to be successful in my classes, especially ones pertaining to my major, so that I can have a good career and prove myself to the world.

     Prove what though? What is more important in this life than learning to live as Christ did, and leading others to him? A career is something I want and aspire to have, but if I lose perspective on what is *really* important, my academic achievements are nothing but a pile of dirty rags compared to the life I could have when trusting the path my Savior has set for me.

<3MS