I was home schooled in grade school so my first public school experience was college. When I first started out I remember being terrified that everyone was going to be so much smarter than me. hahaha yeah…that wasn’t true! I realized real quick that we were all just the same; nervous, ignorant, and confused about where our classrooms were on top of worrying whether we chose the right major or not. I would say, after that first day, my fears of being the dumbest person in the room quickly vanished. My first semester was spent doing all the core subjects that just feel like an extension of high school anyway so I like to think of those few months as my high school experience. My mom drove me to class most days as well due to our shared car situation and the fact that I didn’t even get my license till about a month into college.

At the risk of sounding prideful, to me college wasn’t all that difficult as far as course load was concerned. I got straight A’s my entire college career and graduated Summa Cum Laude. Honestly, I am almost upset that I didn’t fail a course or at least get a lower final mark somewhere along the way. That may sound odd to you but I think I would have learned so much more in my college days about life, had I experienced a bit more failure and disappointments during that season. I am not saying I was perfect and never failed personally at all during that time, but as far as the world was concerned from the outside, I had it all together with a job and perfect scores in all my classes so I was doing alright for myself! It made it easy to hide the lessons my private failures were teaching me and to choose to ignore the implications they should have had on my daily behavior. I had no accountability and therefore no outside pressure to correct myself.

I did, however, put a lot of internal pressure on myself to maintain good grades and never let people see how overwhelmed I could get. I didn’t want to ever be a burden to anyone. I wanted to be the self-sufficient one everyone could trust and depend on, not the one that always needed help. Looking back, that was my big failure in that season. Had I opened myself up to some true accountability then, maybe I would not have as many stress induced grey hairs as I do now! haha and maybe life would have grown in a slightly different direction by reaching towards a community of genuine accountability earlier on. I say genuine because it is not like I didn’t think I had a community that would care enough to correct me lovingly through life. That is another mistake I made, by choosing comfortable and going with the flow most of my early life, I fooled myself into thinking certain relationships were more meaningful than they obviously were. I was blind to how alone I was and privileged to not have any true discomfort in life to help me realize the void until much later than I would like to admit.

As a fan of a particular British time travel sci-fi show, I understand the implications of changing the past and therefore would not wish to change my story in any way since without things happening exactly how they did, I would not be exactly who I am today. Failures are the best way to learn. Arguably, they are the only way we learn since even as kids it seems we have to touch the hot stove (or in my case, a car cigarette lighter) before we believe that it’ll actually burn us. Some of us…more than once! In order to change our behavior and work towards better results, we have to sit in the classroom of our failures. We must study and reflect back on the things we have done or the things we have believed that were wrong, accept that we are imperfect and give grace to ourselves to try again. If we ignore our mistakes and hide them from everyone, we have no outer force pressuring us to correct ourselves. However, the internal anguish remains, whether we acknowledge it or not. It is this dissonance of knowing the discipline we need and denying ourselves of it that causes such anxiety and depression to rule our lives.

The lesson I learned by sitting in this classroom today is this: Find your genuine community and do not hide away your failures from them. Let them see all of you so they can lovingly correct you and hold you accountable to the things you already know you need to change in your life or better yet, the things you are too blind to see in yourself! The bible says in Proverbs 27:17, “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” We cannot sharpen ourselves and in order to sharpen each other, we must be in close community together. Knives have to rub up against each other in order to shave away the rough edges. It will be hard and probably painful at times, but that is what we are called to do in Godly community! In the end we will all benefit by being more effective versions of the people God made us to be.

Blessings FAM!

Who do you have in your life to hold you accountable? Who do you hold accountability for? If it is hard to think of answers to these two questions, do you truly have genuine Godly community? If not, find it! Surrounding yourself with genuine community is like fertilizer for your soul! It helps you grow! If you do know that you are surrounded by a good Godly community then thank God for them! There is no sweeter gift than the friendship of those who love you enough to call you out when you need it and graciously tell it like it is!