Dear first year me, it may not feel like it… but your life matters.

Dear First Year Me,

Right now as you’re starting university, you’re filled with anxiety and worry about whether you’ve made the right life choices. You know, the big ones:

• Did I choose the right school?
• The right major?
• Am I going in the right direction for my life?

You’re questioning who you are and wondering if you’re worthwhile. Wondering if the quiet person that you are, who likes history, and reading, and listening rather than talking is actually going to make a difference in this world.

You’ve been told that you need to speak up more, that you’re too quiet and that history is a dead-end major, which (to be honest) has caused some serious doubt about your choices.

You wonder if the person you are is actually someone valuable. This anxiety comes close to making you drop out after first semester, when everyone around you seems to be doing all right, you’re dying on the inside. Crippled by fear that you’ve messed up your life.

Yet you push through. You kept at it. Not because of who you are, but rather because you are beginning to realize more and more whose you are.

God, the creator of the universe, loved you enough that he sent his Son, Jesus Christ to die on the cross for you. “Why?” you might ask? To pave a way so that you could have a personal relationship with him. A relationship where sin, the bad things in your life that keep you away from God, would no longer have bondage or control over you.

I wish, first year me, that you could see yourself the way you see yourself now: as someone dearly loved by God, who created you because this world needs you, the quiet, history-loving person that you are. Because although in first year it may not feel like it, your life matters.

If I could I would tilt your head up, look you straight in the eyes and tell you that you are making a difference in the lives of those around you; more than you realize. You are beautiful and this world would be lacking without you.

You may not be the loudest person in class, or in the major that will bring in the big money, but God loves you, and accepts you as you are. You don’t need to be or do anything more to make him love you. He showed his love for you by sending Jesus to die on the cross for you. You are enough with him.

What I wish I could tell you, and my prayer for you as you keep living life, is that you would “have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is.” (Ephesians 3:18) Because his love for you surpasses anything you could ever imagine and will always be with you, wherever you may go in the future.

I’m so glad that we figure all this out. Be patient sister, we are learning.