My time at LU

This semester hasn’t been easy. None of my now four semesters at Liberty have been what I could describe as “easy”. I’ve been enrolled at LU since the Fall of 2019 and I have changed so much since then. I was terrified of going to college, the thought of being on my own away from my parents and away from the comfort of my home was a scary thought indeed. And well, the first few weeks at LU were tough. Yet, I was able to settle down and to adjust to college life after a few weeks, and I ended up really enjoying my first semester at LU. However, it hasn’t exactly been sunshine and rainbows since then. My time on campus at Liberty was cut short in the Spring 2020 semester after just 9 weeks because of this thing called Covid, I’m sure you’ve heard of it somewhere. And thus, the last 7 weeks of the Spring semester were completed online through Microsoft Teams meetings. The rest of the semester and the summer that followed had much uncertainty surrounding whether or not we would return to campus as normal in August. And while we returned to campus in august, I’d say it was anything but normal.

Right away, things were different because of the pandemic. Masks were required just about everywhere indoors, there were large restrictions on official hall events and large gatherings. Somehow though, that wasn’t even the wildest thing about the Fall 2020 semester. Less than 2 weeks in, our school president resigned after previously taking a leave of abscence for reasons I don’t have time to explain in this post. With all the craziness that ensued with the covid restrictions, we actually made it the whole semester without ever having to shut down in-person classes, and overall it was a decent semester.

Now fast forward to Spring 2021, which is where we are right now. It’s my 4th semester at Liberty, and has been for sure the toughest one to date. It started off rough with a relationship that ended badly, and the aftermath of it really negatively affected me, and the ensuing weeks were hard. Even after some time passed and I felt like I was finally getting through it, it seemed as though God threw another obstacle at me, whether it was in a different form like through schoolwork, a finger injury that’s caused me to have a splint on for 6 weeks, or other things that seem to try and bring me down. After all of that though, I still feel like my faith is as strong as ever. There’s a line from a song by Josh Wilson called “Fall Apart” that has really resonated with me this semester. The line in the song is “My whole world is caving in but I feel you now more than I did then,” and that has kind of been my theme for the semester, because I truly felt closer to God this semester throughout all the hardships I experienced. He really did never leave my side, and all of the bedside prayers at 3 in the morning were never unnoticed. I can go into even more detail about this semester and all of the challenges its brought, but it’s still been a great one, and I honestly have nothing more to say other than that God is good all the time, and all the time, God is good.