No Man is an Island

An island can exist by itself. A man cannot.

[[ In an experience of opposition & straight up struggle, I detached from God for a bit & made myself a sorry little island, thinking I could exist on my own. ]]

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I had a plan to attend Shippensburg University my freshman year of college, live on campus, and experience the 18-year old freedom most high school graduates do. However, that plan failed due to insufficient finances & I had to commute from home while attending Lycoming College on a first-semester scholarship I was awarded. My two closest humans who I loved most, aside from my family, (physically) left me. My best friend from middle/high school, Gabby, moved to Florida, & my boyfriend, Clay, moved on campus to Shippensburg. I had to watch them experience aspects of life that I wish I was doing, but instead, I was home in the still small town of Montoursville for reasons I could just not accept. I found myself mad at God for "forsaking" me & what I wanted.

I was angry. I was disappointed. I was lonely. To get even with God (spoiler alert: you can't get even with God. I mean you can try, but just know you'll fail every dang time), I packed up all those feels & brought them with me to my first-year college experience. I made myself an island where no one was welcome. I isolated & detached myself from almost everyone & everything. I didn't know how or where to direct my disappointment, so I walked the halls of Lycoming alone, went to my car on breaks between classes, & made zero effort to socialize with any other human being. I caused misdirected & unnecessary hurt to my relationship with Clay, taking some (probably most) of my feels out on him & my family. I was not ready to successfully manage reality & was far from ready to be friends with God again. You could say I was being a bit extreme, but it's where I was at with myself & God. I didn't want Him to help me through any of it; I just wanted Him to flat out give me what I wanted when I wanted it. Sounds like a toddler, I know.

Psalm 94:14 (NIV) says that God will not reject His people; He will never forsake His inheritance.

It sure didn't seem like He wasn't rejecting me.

He wasn't.

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I sat in the wrong room on my first day of my "Child of Exceptionalities" course because my schedule was printed with the incorrect room number. There was another girl in there too with the same schedule conflict. I remember thinking, "I probably have to talk to her & ask if she knows anything. Professors can drop me from their course if I miss the first day..."

So we sat there together, both puzzled about our messed up schedules, until someone came & escorted us to the right room where there were only two open seats next to each other in the very back row.

And so here comes God's love, always in perfect clutch. Natalie, meet Kirsten (Myers) Rost. She's about to change your life more than you know.

Kirsten & I developed a very straight-forward, profound relationship from hour 1. I found myself sharing personal parts of my life with her as a practical stranger, something I do not do. She finds the good in every person she meets, and I mean every person. She would say, "If I have negative feelings toward someone or start to find myself judging them, I will always find 3 uplifting things about them & say them to myself. It drowns out their flaws so I can only see them how God sees them." She also applies this to less than ideal life circumstances instead of writing God off. No one would have known that she too was unhappy with her first semester college experience and was not where she wanted to be. But her love & trust for God's will was so inspiring & her natural raw happiness was captivating.

Day after day, she helped me shift my focus from my selfish wants to God's wants. She taught me that it is OK to not be OK, but not to stay there. She challenged me to evaluate myself & my attitude toward God when things just didn't go my way. She helped me process & work through my disappointments instead of projecting them wrongly. She showed me the importance of enjoying life even when I won't get everything I want from God. She taught me this by actually practicing what she preached. She lived it by simply doing it. She was by my side to remind me that God never leaves or forsakes me, not even on my own island.

He never left me. He gave me a forever friend to enjoy life with, even to this day.

I will forever thank God for sending me someone so precious who I would have never met, had I got what I "wanted."