It's the mourning of a season that you worked so hard to get through. It's the uncertainty of the future of where the degree will take you. Will it even be worth it? Your price just went up, but will you even live up to the new bar you have set before yourself? Will you drown in this mountain of student debt deferred for now but not forever? The reality is in the midst of celebration graduation can bring grief. It brings a pressure that can either push out the greatest potential or expose the deepest insecurities.
I argue that I'm facing both. Between two mountains that could crumble or be climbed. I find comfort in knowing that God is with me. The pressures I face will not consume me my father tells me :
For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. Jeremiah 29:11-13
As I seek Him, I wonder if my dreams seem too big. Am I worthy of the aspirations of my soul. Surely my dreams are not my own but seeds of hope to be watered and nurtured. I see my education as just the beginning of His plans for my life. The real work begins now. Seeking the face of the Lord and doing a lot more listening to His direction.
Three months ago in May of 2022 I graduated from Regent University with an M.A. in Christian Discipleship. Much of the journey was an effort to prove that I was worthy of the life God had called me to. For some reason it did not click that though my education was an important part of my journey, it could never define my worth in Jesus Christ. I had come to terms with the fact that I didn’t deserve Gods grace and hand on my life but there also was nothing I could accomplish to ever arrive to a place of deserving either.
*It made my mind hurt thinking about it and even writing about it now.
So I finished my degree and celebrated and received my degree in the mail so why do I still feel grief in graduating? I think maybe it’s because working towards a definitive goal is something to lean on other than faith. It’s easy to think that working towards a goal gives us credit with God. We feel it gives merit to our day to day. Reality is, the only thing that gives us merit or credit is a solid relationship with Christ. All things come to an end and all goals are either reached or passed and we will never be satisfied unless we place everything in Jesus. I’m glad I graduated and I’m thankful for the grief from the loss of a season that felt so secure in that moment. I’m again stepping out on faith into a new season that will not always last forever and that’s okay because even in the grief of graduating I will always have Jesus. Every new season is a new opportunity to seek my Lord and His direction.
Did you feel grief when you graduated or at the end of another season in life ?
How did you seek the lord through the grief ?
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