As you can tell from my previous blog posts, I had quite a tough spring semester this year. But as I’ve expressed, life can’t always be easy, but it’s those moments when you find out who you really are.

Those moments also make you realize who supports you in life. I’ve heard people say “I have the greatest support system” or “The best people are in my life,” and I’d like to disagree with them. I think I do. I don’t intend to sound cocky or selfish when I say that, but I have friends around the world who genuinely care about me.

My support system is composed of so many different groups of people. There are 4-Hers on the other side of the world who want to know what I’m doing & how I am, there are people who went to my high school who I have a connection with when they learn I went to NDP or see my class ring, and there are people from my hometown who I’ve grown up with and have always referred to as “my best friends” who would drop anything to talk to me or to help me, even though we can go for months on end without talking to/seeing each other. As a Hokie, I can connect with Virginia Tech alumni and fans alike and bond over how phenomenal Virginia Tech is. I am bound to agriculturalists throughout the nation and state because we have a greater desire to feed the world and make the world a better place through agriculture and its development.

My support system feels limitless at times. It feels that there are people everywhere who are looking out for me, and I feel that love every day. I couldn’t be more grateful for it. The connections that I’ve been blessed to share with people around the world make me feel like the luckiest person to have ever lived.

(Please don’t take this as bragging – I’m just excited that these people exist in my life and I am grateful for each and every person who supports me)

Although this year has been hard, I have not once felt alone. Through it all, I’ve made some of the most meaningful connections or relationships with people that I’ve ever had. I have definitely realized that having someone who genuinely cares about you and will be there for you is essential in life. Yes, connecting with someone in a sense of networking for a potential job is important, but I think that having someone that you connect with on a deep level who understands you and who cares about you is even more important. Without that person or those people, hard times are even more difficult and happy times aren’t as joyful. Thank you to those people in my life – you know who you are – for being so loving and real with me. And thank you for keeping me sane. I love you more than you’ll ever know.

But I connected even more with someone else this year – God. Going to a Catholic school until 12^th grade when I am not Catholic forced religion upon me and rubbed me in all the wrong ways. I had to go to mass every week until high school and take religion classes every year, and my individual sense of spirituality doesn’t look the same as a Catholic’s typically does. I have nothing against Catholicism, but it isn’t how I would describe the relationship I have with God.

I was confirmed a Presbyterian in middle school and am still very proud of that. I love my church family and congregation and feel at home at Highland. But connecting to that church and then not connecting to the other part of religion (through school) in my life didn’t work out. It almost ruined the idea of spirituality completely to me.

Over winter & spring break, I realized that God needed to come back into my life and that I can’t do this whole “life” thing alone. It’s not that I didn’t pray in times of struggle nor did I not give thanks to God in times of praise, but the average times in the middle were missing God. By feeling that I had a forced relationship with Him for years actually pushed me away from Him, except during those times, no matter how much it pains me to admit it.

But this semester God has come into my life through my friends – whether it be encouraging me with a Bible verse, helping me understand God’s plan a little bit better, or inviting me to a campus ministry group, I’ve been reached out to by amazing people. Through their actions and selflessness, I’ve realized that I see God in them. And not just in those specific people, but in all of the people in my life. That support system I’m so fortunate enough to have isn’t just luck – it’s the work of God working every single day in my life.

So why am I telling you about this spiritual awakening (if you will) of mine? First of all, to say thank you to each of you for being such a light in my life. I don’t go a day without thinking about how blessed I am to be where I am and with the people I’m with. Thank you all for being beautiful people, inside and out. Secondly, I write to be honest, as I always strive to do with this blog. And finally (and most importantly), I don’t write to push my religion (or I like to refer to it as spirituality) upon you, but I write to hope that you find how you see God in your own life. I see Him in you wonderful people and in the beauty of nature, especially on my farm. For me, by loving all of you, it’s so much easier to love God, and vice versa. God acts differently in all of our lives, but I couldn’t be more grateful that He chose to reach out to me via some of the greatest people in the world.

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:18)