I can't believe my time as a student at SVU has come to an end. Finals week was draining emotionally, but this semester was great. A lot of firsts happened and a lot of learning took place. There was some heartbreak and tears but so so much laughter!
Here are some of the things I learned:
Laughing
I think God needed me to remember that I love laughing and smiling and being happy. SOO many people this semester came up and told me "Lauren. You are always laughing and I love it!" I do laugh at basically everything. I just really love people and I love the things they do!
Friends are Everything
Good friends make you. I cannot thank my friends this semester enough. I spent so much time with so many amazing people doing so many fun things! Whether we were having game nights, watching movies, reading scriptures, hitting things off the parkway, or just talking on campus, my friends mean the world to me.
Never underestimate the power of a hello and a hug
This semester I became very close with the Men's Volleyball team. They are my team! I am so grateful for them and their constant watch over me. Whenever one of them sees me they always smile really big and say hi and give me a hug. They always ask how I'm doing and check in. They have been such great examples of the power of a hello. I love how happy they are when they see someone and how much love I feel from them. We need a little more of that from everyone in this world!
Find Peace
This whole semester I have felt nothing but peace in my heart. I am still trying to figure out how to turn my brain off...but my heart has been so calm. I have prayed a lot and have truly felt God's hand guiding me, especially the last few weeks of the semester. I have really learned that Peace is an answer. Once you find peace hold onto it as tight as you can because that feeling is from God.
Trust
Along with peace comes trust. We feel more peace as we trust and remember that Heavenly Father really does have a plan, and its a plan that is far greater than the one we have in place. At the beginning of the semester something happened that I had been wanting all summer. It was so lovely and taught me so much and then it ended quicker than wanted. But as the semester continued and I continued praying, I saw why things happened the way they did. Maybe I still don't fully understand, but I can see God has a purpose for everything. I think trust is one of the biggest challenges on this earth. Its so central and kind of difficult. But through prayer and peace we need to trust our all knowing and loving Heavenly Father.
This also goes another way. Trusting the people around you. At the beggining of the semester two of my really close friends at that time broke my trust in a pretty big way. I didn't realize how much that messed up my thinking until another friend told me that I didn't trust him. I thought he was crazy! But unlike the first situtation, he said "I need to prove to you that we are friends". Trusting is so central to relationships.
Music shapes you
I remember telling Kaylee one semester that I realized I had stopped listening to music. I think its because I had so much going on in my brain and I knew that the music I really liked some of my friends didn't like, so I just slowly stopped listening without realizing it. My friends this semester our OBSESSED with music. I love it! Not doing choir this semester was a little strange, but I listened to more music than ever. I constantly have a song on, or we are having jam sessions, or blasting music in the car. I am always talking about music with people or singing songs in my head. Music helps lift you. Find the songs you love and don't ever be ashamed of those songs. Just sing them as loud as you can and do it all the time.
I can and deserve to be treated right
Something I realized this summer is that through some experiences the past few years I have forgotten my self worth. I have been so grateful to God for putting people in my life this semester that have shown me that I am a daughter of God and I should be treated like that.
Power of Questions
If you ask my friends, I am very good at asking people questions and finding out things about them. I love it! But I realized early this semester that people don't ever ask me a lot of questions about my thoughts on things or whats going on in my life. And its probably partly my fault because I don't like attention and I get scared of what someone might ask me but also I am good at getting them talking. But I realized that in a relationship of any kind, its important that questions go both ways. I was very grateful for my friend this semester that would always ask how I felt about situations, especially situations that involved decisions with both of us.
We are all creators
Being a creator was a huge part of my senior paper. I spent a lot of time thinking about how we are all creators in so many different ways. I realized that God wants us to be creators, and not just that, but he needs us to be creators. Here on earth we have the ability to learn skills and different ways to create. We can create characters on a stage, create journals and books, create friendships, create movies, create food, create love, create relationships, create life, create ideas, create thoughts, the list goes on and on. We are here to become like our Heavenly Father so that we can return to him and be creators of other worlds. God needs us to learn to be creators here for our eternal purpose.
