I’m someone who feels emotions to an extreme. It’s simultaneously my weakness and my greatest strength. So as recruitment week begins again I can’t help but feel an overwhelming amount of excitement and anticipation because I know the blessings it will pour over the girls that go through it. However, I feel and remember the worries and doubts that consumed me as I stepped into recruitment myself a few years ago.
A few weeks ago I took a trip to the lake with some of my roommates. Those extreme emotions of course struck up within me. Three years ago I sat in that same lake house, a few weeks before I moved to Auburn, drenched in fear and a desperate desire for control over my future. I didn’t know what I was walking into and that petrified me. I was comfortable in high school! I was involved, I had incredible friends, I had mentors I adored and I loved my every day. I couldn’t wrap my head around why God had to completely uproot me from all of that and how that could be a good thing. Everyone couldn’t wait to move to their colleges and I was absolutely dreading it.
Three years later I sat in that house with some of my roommates and closest friends. My life looks vastly different from what eighteen year old me hoped it would look like. Here’s what I’ve found… friends that surpass every expectation I ever had coming into college. The very friends who have taught me and pushed more than I could have imagined. Girls that have each shown me the Lord’s love, joy, and faithfulness in a different way. Girls that have made me laugh until I cried and girls that have allowed me to be an open book (a side of me that in high school I wouldn’t dare have imagined).
I know these girls because of the push I took through fear to go through recruitment. Because of these girls, I’ve learned to press into the abundant life the Lord intends for us to live. Here’s the thing… It was never because of the letters they wore on Bid Day but because of the God I serve and clung to in that fear. The One who is faithful to providing community that pushes us closer to Him.
Recruitment week is HARD! It’s exhausting and overwhelming. You will experience the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. You might not feel like enough or you may feel like too much. You will have to make hard decisions and some will be made for you. However, I’ve learned that there is immense beauty in the uncomfortable. God is not surprised by ONE THING that you will face in your week! He has seen this week, your year, your four (or more!) years in its entirety and He KNOWS it. is. good.
In the book of Joshua, we watch as God finally leads the Isrealites into the land He had promised to Moses. It wasn’t easy. There were wars and uncertainty. There were prolonged periods in the wilderness and doubt in the Lord. Even so, “None of the good promises the Lord had made to the house of Israel failed. Everything was fulfilled” (Joshua 21:45).
While it seems silly to compare sorority recruitment to these books in the Bible, sometimes the unknown, the rejection, and the fear can feel like we are “in the wilderness.” But the same God who walked the Israelites through the depths is the One who walks you into those chapter room doors. He’s the same One who stands with you wm8mhen what seemed like your home doesn’t show up on your schedule the next day. The One who gives you the words to say to the new friend that is conflicted. The One who puts you next to that girl in line who will become your best friend. The One who perfectly and divinely orchestrated what this week will lead you into, whether that’s what you had planned or not.
Philippians 1:6 tells us that He who started a good work within you will see it to completion. God’s not surprised by your week. When you are, rest in the fact that He has seen this situation in its entirety and He knows that it is good.
– Alley Mc Sizemore