I pride myself on being authentic, and that includes being authentic about the role that faith plays in my life, too. Heads up.
God has humbled me through this process.
I've mentioned before how hard the practice tests are.
I know NO ONE who scored >65% on them.
And I almost fell asleep taking them (they are computerized now, which increases boredom).
I amped up my studying to 3 sessions a day.
I recorded video summaries of chapter content by heart.
And I re-took a different practice test two weeks later, where I only improved .5%.
That produced quite a bit of anxiety in me. Whatever my baseline was, I was fine with, but the percent change hardly changing?
Thankfully, the actual exam was a zillion times easier. Instead of needing to know EVERY assessment ever created to measure some obscure variable, only the biggies were included.
But in the span of the week preceding the exam,
After anxiously completing another practice test where my heart hung in my throat,
I chose another way.
I know people doubt that faith is real, and things are just coincidences, but isn't their doubt strong enough that they ever doubt the opposite: How can a God not be real? How could EVERYTHING, so many things, simply be coincidences? Coincidences that shape us in redeeming, comforting, happy ways, just when we need it most?
Everything that has ever happened in my life has somehow shaped me to take action in a different situation,
Even when I absolutely hated the experience.
The fact is, as much as I hated the social scene at Skidmore, I don't know if I would be in OT without my experiences with saving lives, or the poster on the wall of the psych department, or the Double H info session.
Most of my anxiety about the test stemmed from fear of failing something so big that everyone would find out about (unlike that calc exam in high school)
But God gave me the insight that he was going to use this experience to humble me or advance me.
Because
God’s love doesn’t mean that I will pass every test.
It does not mean that I will win every big game.
It doesn’t mean that I will be spared from harm.
It does mean that I will not suffer without purpose.
It does mean that whether I win or lose, I'm playing
for a bigger team.
And while I may let down family and/or friends from time to time,
God loves me either way
And I will love him either way.
There would be a purpose to whatever the result of that test was, and from then on, I did not really worry about the result.
I prayed for calmness and focus (snoring in the exam room would probably not be well received).
Several other friends prayed for me.
And truly, I felt it in that room, when I realized that the last hour, I would need to answer 3 questions a minute.
My gut instinct would be to panic.
But I said a quick prayer, and with continued peace, plowed on. I focused on the process.
I left and laughed hysterically in my car while texting Rheanna that I had made such a big error in pacing.
In my effort to stay awake, I had rewritten a lot of key words on the scrap paper provided (on a paper test, I underline and cross out answers). Too many, it turned out. That had taken too much time.
It has not been all peaceful moments since the exam. I have had to fight off moments of anxiety over the results. I didn't have time during the test to realize what I knew and didn't know, so even though it didn't feel that hard, who knows how many I got wrong?
I won't know the exact score for several more weeks when the report is mailed, but our board uploaded the unofficial results today.
So yeah, I guess the lesson in that is it really isn't about the outcome.
It's really not about the destination, or the journey either.
It's how we think about them.
It's how we let them mold us for the better.
It's how we accept the lesson that God wants us to learn.
It's how we trust so much that we dare to fail.
A comforting song
And also, love anyone who appreciate STL.
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