Rockin' the Frat House

I just got back from my first fraternity party, the Delta Chi Indian party. I've gotta admit that I had a great time getting all dressed up and the party was fun, the typical mix of college students mingling and getting drunk. It brought me back to my early college days. Freshman year me and my friends would get dressed up and go out dancing and just hope to meet cool people. We wanted to belong. I remember I spent most of my time during those nights comparing myself to other girls and feeling ugly, fat, and uninteresting because guys weren't just dying to talk to me or dance with me. That's what I saw tonight in the faces of those girls at the party. They want to belong, they want someone to show them that they're beautiful and worth it, they're out to prove that they've got something that no other girl in the room can offer, they're gauging their every action by the reactions of the people they think they desperately need love from, and I know that all of that is exhausting. I didn't know what to do tonight. I saw alot of girls that I've met and I made sure to at least say hi to them or give them a hug but I felt kind of helpless. I didn't want to cling onto anyone and I think that my desire not to be a burden may have communicated to some of them that I'm not really interested in deepening our relationship. When I left I said goodbye to one of my staff partners and he looked at his watch and said, "Lightweight". It made me feel bad, like I wasn't doing my job well because I left at midnight and I could've hung around later. I don't know, maybe I should have stayed. There's definitely no rule book for this job that tells me when I should push myself and when it's ok to go on home but I do have a relationship. I'm finding more and more that it's harder to draw near to Jesus than it is to adhere to the list of rules I've erected in my mind but Jesus is sweeter, warmer, and a hundred times more full of grace than my cold self-regulations.