Lets Grow! – The Art of Individuality

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November 23, 2021

Growing up, I was always the curious child that did not want to do what everyone else was doing. When kids were playing football on the playground, I would dig in the dirt and search for rocks. When my classmates started developing a sense of fashion in elementary school, I took it upon myself to wear long multicolored socks to school every day. When people began to listen to pop music, I dove headfirst into EDM. Conformity was not in my dictionary. For the longest time, I remember often feeling left out or looked down upon because of my lack of interests in what everyone else seemed to be enjoying. However, I carried on and did what I liked without thinking too deeply about how this was beginning to shape my personality.

After elementary school my family moved to another town, and I entered junior high with no friends, no familiarity, and no understanding of pop culture. Even worse, I lacked an identity. I viewed seventh grade as an opportunity to start over, to have a clean slate. No one knew me, so I could become whoever I wanted to be. The issue was that I set my sights on the wrong goals, and that I started to strive for the affirmation of the people around me. The transition to high school was even unhealthier, as I lost my sense of self in a sea of identity confusion. I lost myself to those around me, and I came out of high school without knowing who I was or what I wanted to do with my life.

Transitioning to college was a repeat of what I had been living for those seven years: an unchanging cycle of unhappiness, comparison, and a lack of self-worth and confidence in who I was called to be. I arrived on campus at Liberty University with no friends, no familiarity, and I was in a new city five hours from home. I lost most of my freshman year to poor time management, superficial friendships, and the lie that I did not belong here. I begged God to help me fit in, to bring good friends into my life, and to show me true joy. Nevertheless, I continued to seek affirmation from the people and things around me.

My sophomore year at Liberty began much like my freshman year. A new hall, few friends, and a stage of life that I was still quite unfamiliar with. This year was different, as my faith and trust in the Lord began to grow, and my appreciation for this community began to expand. God began to slowly answer my prayers by giving me deeper, healthier friendships. One of these friends in particular, my RA, recommended that I check out Student Activities as a place to work. He was on event staff, and he enjoyed it, so he felt that I would appreciate the job too. The following spring semester, I began working for Student Activities as an event staff. The position forced me to quickly build my confidence while at the coffee promos across campus, and it challenged me to think outside the box, something I had not valued in years. My identity was so caught up in what others wanted to hear, that I had forgotten to value my own creativity. Student Activities gave me that push to regain my confidence in who I am, what I stand for, and what makes me unapologetically me.

Fast forward to today, and most people who know me would say that I am a different person now. Student Activities continually plays a large role in helping me realize the value of my own unique perspective, and it has given me the freedom to share that unique angle with a team of diverse coworkers and life-long friends. I am grateful to God for softening my heart over the past two years to the truth that my identity was not in the things or people of this world, but in Him alone. Paul writes about our identity in Christ saying, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17, ESV). We are fearfully and wonderfully made, and we are called to stand out from the crowd in a world full of conformity.

I can proudly say I have been working on turning back to the way I lived before conformity, back to that child-like curiosity I always had deep inside.

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