When I tell people I was a jerk in college, they sometimes don’t believe me. They feel that, much like how I talk about my unbelievable breakdancing skills, I am exaggerating. To prove my point, I submit to you this photo of me from my junior year.

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I recently received an email that knocked me over.

I decided to post it for two reasons:

1. Somebody has a story like this and needs to know they’re not alone.

2. A lot of us have gifts we’re supposed to use that we can’t ever imagine God doing something with and this is a testament to what happens when we try. When we do something as silly and insignificant feeling as starting a blog.

After she emailed this to me, I asked Beth if I could share her story and she graciously agreed. I changed some of the details to protect her privacy for reasons that will become crystal clear as you read it. It’s time for me to just get out of the way and introduce you to the amazingly awesome Beth.

Hello!

My name is Beth and I’m from Texas. I am painfully shy. I didn’t always used to be. I used to be the crazy, silly gal that everyone laughed with. But now, I am shy. I used to be NUTS! I distinctly remember going to a pool hall and crawling around under the tables pretending like I was an alligator to cheer up a friend who had just broken up with her boyfriend. I was the only one who was SOBER.

My mother was a practicing (sorta) Catholic & my father was a Buddist. Since they could not see eye-to-eye on religion, I was not baptized. My younger sister, on-the-other-hand, was born 4 months premature & in 1977, there was no surviving that. She was baptized right away. She did survive though and in our Catholic upbringing, what that meant was that all my family went through the Christian education and rituals while I constantly sat in a pew. Because I was never baptized, I wasn’t able to go through church school or learn about the bible. My mom did the best she could to teach me, but she was hurt by being disowned by her family when she became divorced. It was difficult for her to teach me about Christ’s love when she was having a hard time experiencing it herself.

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The other day I had to go buy makeup.

For me.

For my face.

I’ve already cut up my man card and distributed pieces to my close friends who mocked me.

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A few weeks ago, there was a Royal Wedding. Not sure if you caught any of that or were aware that happened. I consider this blog to be the 37th place you turn to for the latest news and updates about what’s going on around the world. So if you’re reading this right now and are thinking, “Come on, spoiler alert!,” congratulations, you’ve successfully dodged every news outlet on the planet for almost three weeks solid. (Including this site on Monday.)

You should google it though because the whole thing was pretty amazing. I especially liked the moment when the doors on the balcony of Buckingham Palace were thrown open and Kate, the princess, stepped out to the jubilation of the roaring crowd below. It was a pretty powerful moment of joy and unbridled excitement and I rewound it a few times on the DVR.

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I once met a Tom Selleck impersonator at a party. It was a very surreal experience because at the time I was wearing a grass skirt and a t-shirt I had made with Magnum PI’s photo on it. (It was a Hawaiian Party, not just a “Jon does weird things” party. I promise.)

He had a thick Tom Selleck mustache, hair that would stay in place even while driving a Ferrari through the hills of Honolulu and he seemed like he probably had a friend with a helicopter. (Jersey Shore, Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber. Felt like I was going to lose some audience with those Magnum PI 1980s references.)

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Sometimes, hope hurts.

It shouldn’t. The phrase, “hope hurts” should be an oxymoron like “Lil Wayne gospel album.” But I promise you, it’s not.

Sometimes when you’re so deep in a season of hurt, you get used to the bad. You start to think you deserve it. You start to expect it and get comfortable with it and get numb to it. And like a creature that lives so far down on the bottom of the sea, you adapt to it. You cobble together little survival mechanisms that help you get through. You get by.

But hope is tenacious …

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Don’t tell my kids, but I’m afraid of spiders. Not in a “get on a chair if I see one” kind of way, but more in an “I assume every spider I see is a brown recluse” kind of way. They’re hairy, equipped with more eyes than any single animal should possess and are also into “sport biting.” Unlike the cockroach, another much maligned insect, a spider will bite you while you’re sleeping. You’re not threatening it, or talking smack or approaching with a rolled up magazine. You’re sleeping. And then the spider bites you. Why? For the love of the game.

That’s one of the reasons I had a hard time watching the show “Fear Factor.” They were constantly making people lay in coffins full of spiders. The other reason I didn’t watch that show was Joe Rogan. He always struck me as an aggressive bully. He seemed angry for no reason and fired up beyond measure. He’s jacked, often the most intense person at Ultimate Fighting Championship events (which is a difficult feat to accomplish) and got into a public verbal sparring match with comedian Carlos Mencia.

I might like to think I see people the way Christ does, but the truth is, all too often, I don’t. I pegged Joe Rogan. I judged him. I put him in a bully box and moved on.

But then something weird happened.

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A few weeks ago, my family and I went out to dinner together on a Friday night. The goal was to have a family meal, hang out, and possibly even enter into the Q realm. Quality Time.

Apparently every person in the greater Nashville are also had the same idea.

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I do not remember the day that I got my rejection letter from the University of North Carolina. That moment did not crystallize, me standing at a cold Massachusetts mailbox with a much too thin envelope clutched in my teenage fist as I cursed the clouds above. That would have been dramatic, but I am not sure that’s how it happened.

My father went to UNC. My mother went to UNC. My uncle went to UNC. My younger brother went to UNC. My little sister went to UNC. I was supposed to go to UNC. I grew up loving the UNC basketball team, throwing frisbee on the Carolina campus and dreaming about wearing that shade of blue for four perfect years. But then I got rejected.

Situations like that force me to deal with a harsh reality—there are some things I want that I will simply never have. Experiences or possessions or friendships that will for a host of reasons never really be mine. And I have a hard time rectifying that limited reality with my limitless God.

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The robot named “me” was beautiful. At first.

Have you ever tried to be someone else? Have you ever tried to change who you are? To make yourself better, or smarter or just different? I have and for a whole semester it worked.

I built a robotic version of myself during the Christmas break of my freshman year of college. I didn’t want to, but I found myself on social suspension for a disastrous Halloween prank, without any real friends and about to academically lose all my scholarships.

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