Hi.

Chances are, I probably don't know you. However, since you're reading this, I probably know how you're feeling. You're a bit discouraged, frustrated, confused, disappointed. Perhaps you're even a bit angry. You had so much planned for this year. You started the year off with high hopes, big plans, and fantastic goals that you wanted to achieve by the time May rolled around. It included everything from jobs, leadership positions, maybe even awards.

Suddenly, everything began to fall out of place.

You didn't get some leadership positions because of time commitment issues with other clubs. It's fine, just wrong timing, I'll try again next year, you said. You weren't that worried because it was September and you still had time to accomplish more goals. However, that was just the beginning of things that didn't go according to plan. Your relationship that was strong at the beginning of the year all of a sudden began to fall apart mid semester. You get denied more leadership positions the rest of the semester because of circumstances out of your control or because other people were better for the position. The last one you can understand, but you struggle with the feeling of not being enough. You grapple with this feeling the next semester where you get denied position after position after position. You talk with friends at other schools that are soaring and doing phenomenal things and they say "I know you're doing wonderful things at your school!" and the reality is, you're not. You did a couple of cool things this year and that was it. While you're happy for your friends, there's a small part of you that wishes you were successful as them. May finally shows up, and you only completed a few out of the 15-20 things you planned for this year.

"Why God? Why? Where did everything go wrong?" You have these conversations with Him throughout the whole entire year. You have trouble wrapping your head around why things are happening the way that they are. You think you did something wrong, and the truth is, you didn't. There's this saying I heard that I repeat to myself when situations like this happen: Thy will, not my will. You had all these things planned for this year, and God took a look at these things and allowed some to happen, but then said "nah, it's going to happen this way" for the rest of them. He did this because He wanted you to grow, to become resilient, to learn from the things that didn't go according to plan and the things that did. He wants you to take this year as a learning experience and work harder next year, but always remember that things go according to His plan, not yours.

Everything happens for a reason. Don't get too discouraged, the journey's not over yet. I wish you nothing but the best for next year, and I hope you accomplish most of what you planned, with some lessons learned along the way.

Best of luck,

J