High School

High school kind of sucks, right? While it can be a lot of work sometimes, in no way am I referring to high school in the academic sense. No, I'm talking about socially. High school is essentially one big race. A continuous marathon that can be ran throughout a whole lifetime. It's exhausting, is it not? There's always pressure. In high school, our identity defines us. We strive to be the smartest, fittest, most successful, best looking, funniest, and coolest. We compete over who can get the most girls, or who can be liked by the most people, or who can be the best Christian. We want to be the person that tries the most, or the person that tries the least. We want to be the person that does the craziest things or the person who does the most drugs. We want to be the good kid that stays away from everything. The list goes on and on but I hope you're starting to get the central theme. High school is about being someone you're not. It's about trying. Trying to be something or trying to act like you're not even trying. I think we are all victims of this. Going into high school I always wanted to be the nice guy who had a girlfriend. I constantly thought to myself "once I have a girlfriend, everything in my life will be a lot better." Well, it's four years later now, and I have still yet to have a girlfriend. However, everything in my life is better than I could have ever imagined. And not better in the sense that I am always happy, but better in the sense that I am living passionately and purposefully. You see, after constant heartbreak and disappointment, I finally realized something about myself. I was in a never ending race. Having a girlfriend would not bring fulfillment to my life. I soon realized that nothing on this earth would bring fulfillment to my life.

The fulfillment I found came through someone named Jesus. Now, this name comes with a lot of connotations but how about just forgetting all of them for a second. Jesus was basically a really righteous dude who lived 2,000-ish years ago. He was a rabbi but said a lot of things that aggravated a lot of the religious leaders in His time. This was interesting because Jesus was said to be the prophesied messiah. The really cool thing about Jesus is that He, Son of God, came to the world for the sick and the sinners, not the religious people. Jesus came for people that were broken - the triers. Jesus hung out with a lot of messed up people but called them His brothers and sisters. When He met them He didn't ask them to say a prayer or go to church with Him, He just said, "follow me." Jesus eventually ended up having a lot of adventures with the people that followed Him and changed their lives forever. The reason Jesus had such an impact is that He lived differently then any other person. Jesus was never about trying to be something He was not. Jesus was about trusting in who God knew He was. Trying didn't matter to Jesus and since Jesus was also God this becomes even more intriguing. God doesn't care about trying, but about trusting.

Now it's been more or less than a couple years since I've actually started following Jesus but these years have easily been the best of my life. Starting to follow Jesus has been kind of similar to a blind person that receives sight later on in his life. Before, I was able to operate but I was constantly held back by fear. Fear of not being good enough, loneliness, failure, etc. But now, it's like there's a whole new world out there. Now that I can see, life is actually pretty dang wonderful. My identity no longer defines me. Jesus defines me. And as my old identity disappears, so does the pressure that came along with it.

So, back to the high school thing. Once I realized that I was in this race, I became set free. Although I'll be graduating in a couple weeks, high school can be amazing. It's all about finding purpose and passion while you're there. No one wants to go to college still being stuck in the haze of high school. My prayer to you, fellow high-schoolers, is for you to try to realize this as soon as possible. This world will always let you down and it will never satisfy you. Thank God there's something more.

Much love,
Raven