2012
How I Have Seen God…
I didn’t join LCM until my sophomore year here at the U of M. My freshman year, I didn’t see God, mainly because I wasn’t looking.
Fast forward to my senior year…
In one of the first weeks of this school year, I paused for a moment during on our events, and I thought to myself, “since when did so many cool people start coming to LCM?” I don’t mean to offend anybody who came to LCM prior to this acknowledgement. It’s my fault. The cool people were always here, and I wasn’t. Up until this past fall, I never realized their greatness. I wasn’t present enough to do so. I was too caught up in my own world, trying to be my own savior.
Well that didn’t work.
You can’t find God if you’re not looking. Up until this year, I wasn’t looking hard enough. And then I opened my eyes. I noticed those who were present with me, and there God was too.
I was having a chat recently with another LCMer, which sparked this thought process. She told me about how important has been in her life this year. She thanked me for being a role model. I found this funny, because I didn’t join LCM to be a role model. I came for the same reasons she did:
To find friends.
To find community.
To find faith.
To find some reason to be hopeful.
To find a place to struggle, where struggling is socially acceptable, and where others are struggling right a long side of you.
That’s where God meets us, after all, in the struggling. So it makes sense that this is where I saw God. We all have brought our whole selves to this place, meaning we brought our struggles, our insecurities, our worries, our doubts, our imperfections, and we’re still okay. We have each other, and we have God. This community has meant more to me than any community I have ever been a part of. Because the people are real. The people care. The people love. And in those people, I have seen God, because I finally had the sense to look.
I love you all so much, and I will miss you all immensely!
Best of luck in all that you do!
-Ellen
2012
God, present in others
Twice in this past year, around the end of each semester, my mom has had surgery. Neither has been particularly serious, but each has presented its own challenges in recovery.
I’ve become quite familiar with feeling helpless as I’ve waited alone in the waiting room, and as I watch her trying to overcome the weakness that follows any surgery. Being an only child, I have felt particularly responsible for being there for her, but often there’s nothing I can do but to be there along the journey with her.
In the past months, I’ve often felt overwhelmed, trying to balance life at school and life at home, but there have been so many people who have been there to help us through these tough times and for that I am incredibly thankful. For a while, we had more food than we knew what to do with, because it seemed like a neighbor or friend would come over at least once a day with a meal. When I had to go somewhere, someone would always offer to come over and keep my mom company, and people just keep checking up on us.
It’s been a good lesson to me, a stubborn, independent person, that I don’t have to go about life alone, especially the tough parts. God shows up all the time in the people I know, in little ways that they might not even notice are that important: offering to sit with me in the waiting room, listening as I recount my rough days, and by praying for us. But these little things make a world of a difference.
Dear Lord,
Thank you for all of the people you have placed in my life. The way you show up through them continues to surprise and amaze me. Help me to remember that I don’t have to face life alone, that you are always on my side, and you’re always sending help.
Amen
Sara Sneed