chapters.

In 11 days I will be starting my last semester of college. Okay. We all know I'm not going to focus on that fact for very long because I hate thinking about it. But I think it's so interesting what happens with each chapter of my life. I always think about it in sections: like there's a semester of school, that's one chapter. Then a break like winter or summer comes after that. It's divided like that because I've found that new things tend to happen over those periods of time. I change a lot and just experience different things in life, and it's pretty cool. So at 1:55 a.m. I find myself thinking about this summer.

A lot has happened to me. Some of it I won't describe here because I just can't. But here's what I can tell you: the journey has been crazy. In the beginning when school let out I was really close to God and so on top of what I was doing. I was really nervous and scared about moving off campus for the first time in my life and terrified that I would never have a social life ever again. Of course, God made it all okay. He blessed me with the job that I wanted and an awesome living situation. He's even prepared me to be okay stepping away from my college life as I knew it. But in the midst of moving back here my life got a little twisted and with the stress of new responsibilities and experiencing a lot of new things, I kind of fell apart. For those of you who call me emo (you know who you are) it wasn't the usual falling apart. It was actually pretty bad this time. I stopped caring and I feel like I lost my faith and I'd never gone through that before. It's been really hard to bounce back; in fact, I'm still not where I was when I began the summer (and that was a good place to be). In other words, I've changed. Right now I'm okay, but I wasn't like that all the time. And if I've learned one thing during this "chapter" it's that people really do shape who you are and you can have the strongest faith ever, but you still need to check yourself once in a while. It makes a difference, trust me.