Twisted Road

This weekend I went with people from my dorm on our annual hall retreat. My dorm only has about 150 people in it, so I feel like I “know” most of them, but not well. This weekend I learned that this is not necessarily the case, though. About 25 people from my dorm—some of which were my good friends, others that I recognized, and a couple that I swear I’d never seen before—went over to Manzanita on the coast. It was a really great 48 hours or so, and I got to know the people that went really well.

The theme of the weekend was about how God makes our paths straight. We had many great discussions about this because all of us are at some crazy point in our life. College is such a crazy, foundation-shaking time, and it often feels like we need to be deciding what to do with ourselves for the next however many years we live. But we concluded that even though it feels like we need to be worrying about all of the decisions we need to be making right now in our life, it’s really exactly the opposite. We need to stop stressing about everything and hand it over to God more. These last few months I’ve felt like I really need to pick a major and have in mind a career that I am going to spend the rest of my life doing and hopefully loving, but this weekend taught me exactly the opposite.

I need to stop worrying about everything and just enjoy what’s happening right now in my life. Of course I can’t never think about the future, it’s just that there’s no need to worry about it. It will all happen because that’s how God works. I need to stop looking so far ahead up the road that I forget to enjoy all of the scenery that I’m passing by right now.

This weekend took a lot from me in many ways—my energy due to lack of sleep, my hunger because our dorm priest was trained as a professional chef before becoming a priest, and most of all, my stresses. Well, some of them at least...