Someone told me the other day that I was the perfect student. A careless comment, dropped by someone who meant well, who is confident in my perceived brilliance.

Brilliant would be the last word I would use. Someone who is brilliant is not naive, at the bottom or inexperienced in their subject of study.

I am still in college. I am a freshman. I may have more credits, but I don’t have the experience, the reading to back it up. There are days when I feel like I’ve mastered something, learned a new concept, and then hours later I sit in front of my computer feeling utterly humiliated by my lack of comprehension or beaten by an assignment. How can I possibly type anymore? How much more should I know? What did I do wrong?

I live in my English professors’ offices, asking for critique, wanting more knowledge, more to read, more to do. How can I help with your event? What did you think about this paper? Most of the time I walk out feeling stupid, like I know nothing. The wealth of the knowledge of my professors pours out around me and I struggle in the current to keep from drowning.

Yes, I am an honors student. No, I am not brilliant, but I want to be. If I were to respond to criticism how I’d like to at times, I would have left long ago, hidden behind a mundane job and contented myself with freelancing. I hate feeling stupid, inadequate, like I haven’t done enough. I want to learn the things in every book, every essay that I skim through in search of research materials. I want to read every book by every author I am fascinated by. Maybe then I’ll know more, be able to impress more, to move further faster. But impossibility places me here, working towards that one day when I’ll be able to show one of my students how to edit a paper, teach them about Woolf, Austen, Shakespeare.

I’m not perfect. I am not the perfect student. I feel inadequate with my knowledge, but that doesn’t mean that I stop trying. I push on, because I know that one day this will all be worth it. I will know something, and I will be able to use that knowledge to the betterment of somebody or something.

I’m not the perfect student. I just keep on trying to learn, to grow, because in reality, that’s the best any college student can do.

(Photos: Salamanca, Madrid)

Forgiveness isn’t a comfortable place. It’s really hard to tell someone that things “will be okay”. It’s like saying, “hey, you’ll feel better eventually, get over it”. It’s so much easier to sympathize, to agree that the other person was in the wrong, to dig the hole deeper and deeper around ourselves.
What is forgiveness, really? It’s not saying that the other person was right. It’s not saying that we’re horrible people. It’s not even saying that things are okay now. It’s just letting go of the hurt, climbing out of the hole and continuing on with life. It’s letting go and letting God.
So why does it hurt so much? Why is it so hard to forgive, so hard to “never let the sun set” on our anger? I recently forgave someone that I never thought I could forgive. I never thought I could get rid of the hurt, the sting of memory of being abandoned by someone I thought I trusted. When I think about the person, I no longer think about the pain, I no longer feel hatred. Instead, I feel thankfulness. Yes, thankfulness. I’m no longer tied to the hurt, and I can move on. I can wish the person well, and thank God that I’m free from the chains of unforgiveness. It’s an amazing feeling – nine months ago, I couldn’t have imagined feeling this way.

But forgiveness isn’t comfortable. An incrementally small part of me wishes I was still angry so that I could kill them again and again in my mind, to recreate the scene of when we meet again (when I’m on top of the world). You couldn’t have approached me with forgiveness six months afterwards, with that anger/sadness burning a hole in my heart. Yet, throughout the past nine months, God has been teaching me the true definition of forgiveness.
I think it’s a misunderstanding that forgiveness is saying that it’s okay. Some things may never be “okay” again in our innermost selves – we may always regret that moment, that event, that lost friendship. Forgiveness is telling God that I can’t take it anymore. I can no longer live with the burden of hurt, the guilt of “what if”. I need the freedom that God promises through his grace, and this is found in forgiving. Letting go and letting God.
I’m reminded of a song by Martina McBride from a few years ago. In Anyway, she sings “God is great, but sometimes life ain’t good. When I pray, it doesn’t always turn out like I think it should.” Life has a funny way of turning us in circles. I never would have dreamed that I’d be at this point in my life without the support of this person, yet amazing things are happening that I never would have dreamed of nine months ago. The very fact that I can thank God for the grace of His forgiveness astounds me every day. I don’t want to hold back. I don’t want to be haunted by what I can’t control, what I couldn’t do, where I failed. The things I wanted nine months ago are not the catalysts for the amazing things that are happening now, and it’s so much better this way.
You may not always be able to see what the future holds, but give the past over to God, and let Him work His miracles. Let go. Let God. Forgiveness isn’t comfortable, but grace and thanksgiving mend the heart, the soul, the mind. Choose forgiveness.