It’s a cliche, but it’s true. Junior year is a juggling act.
In fact, my entire high school experience has been one step away from a train wreck. Forget one assignment, miss one interview, skip a single practice and everything will suddenly pile up and drown me.
This year has been different. Junior year is the one all students — especially Advanced Placement students — anticipate with a combination of excitement and dread. In a very Dickens fashion, it is the best of times and the worst of times. This is supposed to be the year that students find themselves. If they survive.
I’m surviving so far, although I’ll admit that my test scores are directly proportional to the amount of nights I’ve had breakdowns over American History AP or Calculus.
I’ve been getting by because I’ve been making sacrifices. Most of them were good sacrifices, like my Tumblr account. Yet I’m not proud of the greatest sacrifice I’ve been making: church.
My faith is probably the most important part of my life. Last year, I spent six to eight hours of my Sundays in church choir, youth group or Sunday school. But time logged in a pew doesn’t really capture how much I love being a Christian.
Maybe some people will laugh at this. I certainly have friends who tease me about being a “Jesus freak.” I honestly don’t care. God has blessed my life at every turn, given me a church family that supports me, a newspaper staff that inspires me, a family that loves me unconditionally. My love of Christ shapes my every thought; I pray in the mornings and evenings, I never take off my necklace that I got at a church convention three years ago.
This summer, I spent over 20 days in the South, celebrating my Presbyterian faith with other youth at various conventions. Those two weeks, I felt closer to God than I have felt all my life. I vowed to return home as a zealous Christian, ready to lead my youth group and let all of my steps and actions follow in Christ’s stead.
Want to know my dirty little secret? I haven’t gone to youth group since school started.
I hate myself for that. Because I love my youth group.
I have excuses. My basketball team’s fall league schedules games on Sunday afternoons. I have to coach my Special Olympic team during their Sunday soccer tournaments. I have a deadline and a math test.
I could give you a whole sermon here about sacrifice and putting God first, but I won’t. A majority of the kids who read this probably fall asleep during sermons anyways, so I won’t bore you.
But please listen to this. No matter how stressed junior year gets, or how many tests and assignments and essays teachers assign — no matter what, don’t give up what is most important to you.
Be kind. Be patient. Spend time with your family and friends. Go to church or temple or synagogue. Walk your dog.
In two years, I will graduate. I will never be able to participate in my church’s youth group again. I won’t be able to sing in our youth choir, except during the Christmas Eve reunion performance.
In two years, I will lose the greatest part of my youth. I can’t get those Sundays back, but I am determined to get back into church.
Test grades are important. But my faith, my family, my youth group — the things that I truly love? Those are going to start coming first again.
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