Wonderings

I'm not okay.

How many times do I need to say this until it becomes a phrase without any meaning, a random stringing together of syllables, until it loses its potency and its bare-faced truth?

I don't want to be uncertain. I don't want to feel the solid ground beneath my feet shaking and trembling in anticipation of an earthquake that will turn my world upside-down and sideways. I want to pretend I'm not confused. I want to look like everything's fine and dandy, and heartily believe it too.

But, the truth is, I am unsure. I'm wondering how much of my faith in God was borrowed and assimilated from the surrounding Christian environment, and how much is truly in me. How deep my roots are if I don't even protest when people take His name in vain. When I find His word remote and the everyday business of my little world so much more arresting and real. How I can live a life of holiness when there is so much sin happening around me- tolerated, gossiped about, even approved.

Is this the real challenge I have taken on by coming to college abroad, then? Not just the demanding academic programme, the diverse multinational and multicultural environment, the community service and whole-person development focus, becoming more independent...but rather, learning each day how to live my life following Him and rejecting whatever is not of Him. Not to bow to peer pressure and mindlessly follow the fashions of the world and specifically, my generation. Living together, yet set apart.

That in itself would not be so hard if mixing around with people from different backgrounds and personalities, self-discovery and making a new start by attempting to know and connect with as many people here as possible were not some of the strong reasons I came here. Where do you draw the line with your peers? How much should my decisions on what to do and who I mix with deviate from my personality, my beliefs even; in the name (or excuse) of discovery and exploration?

And as for everyone who professes themselves proudly as Christians:

It's not the cross on your neck that makes you a Christian, it's the cross on your back.