Do you ever feel the pressure of creating a Spotify playlist? I do. I go back and forth about how I should organize my playlists. Should they be based on genres? Feelings? Months of the year? Because of this, I’ve ended up doing it all. I like making monthly playlists because then I can go back and get a glimpse of what I was feeling that month. But I also like making genre-specific playlists because sometimes you’re just in a specific music mood. You feel?
Going into freshman year of college, I had what I thought was a brilliant idea. What if I used a playlist like journal entries? I could document my year through songs that had some sort of significance to me.
And this gave birth to one of the most diverse playlists on my Spotify.
Right now, I’m about halfway through my first semester of sophomore year, and already, it has been so different than freshman year. There’s a sense of belonging that was never present freshman year, but I was feeling nostalgic one day and decided to listen to my freshman year playlist.
I pressed play, and immediately, memories of freshman year flitted through my head. I’m at a concert in Barefoots, my legs sticking to a leather couch, simultaneously enjoying the music and thinking about how I don’t really know the people sitting next to me.
I’m on a different couch in a different building, watching a movie with my life group. There’s more talking throughout the movie than I would normally like. But it’s okay because the movie is familiar to me, and it’s more important that the people I’m with become familiar too.
I’m in my dorm room alone, wishing I was back home and that it was summer again. I want to see the soft pinks and blues of the sunset over the water. I want to ride over the bridge with the windows down and my friends laughing in the back seat. I want to have an ice cream picnic on the dock and gaze at the stars. I want to be at Waffle House, eating chocolate chip waffles and laughing so hard that I can’t breathe.
I’m in the car with my roommate, and we’re running errands together. We keep playing the same song on repeat and belting it out together. We think we can become the next Lady Gaga.
Spoiler alert: we can’t.
I’m getting off of the interstate at 10:30 p.m., driving down a deserted road and turning to go up the hill that I’ve ridden my bike up and down for 15 years. I’m going home after being gone for almost two months, and I can’t stop smiling.
I’m in Barefoots again, but it’s almost summer break. This time, I’m surrounded by people who I’m starting to know and love and who are starting to know and love me. We’re singing “do be do be deep” off-key and dancing and laughing, and I realize that maybe I’m not quite ready to go home, and maybe this place can become my home.
I don’t think I’ve realized how fitting the title of my playlist is until now. I called it “and yet” because of something I heard somewhere. I know that sounds vague, and that’s because my memory of where I heard the concept is vague. The general idea, though, has stuck with me, which is that life isn’t perfect, and yet God is still faithful.
Freshman year wasn’t the greatest year of my life. In fact, I think it might have been the hardest. I was desperately homesick, lonely a lot of the time, and mostly just wishing I was still in high school, surrounded by the familiar.
And yet, God was faithful. And yet, I still laughed. And yet, I made new friends.
And yet. And yet. And yet. And yet.
It was a mantra that I repeated over and over, in joy and in sorrow. Looking back, it’s humbling to see all the ways that God cared for me and grew me during my freshman year. It was painful and even unwanted, but now that I can call Union a second home, I am grateful that God ignored my weak desires and gave me something so much better.
So here’s my advice. Weep in times of sorrow. Laugh in times of joy. Journal it all in songs. And then, go back and listen to those playlists. Remember the person you were and be thankful that you have grown since then.
Yes, life is hard. And yet. . .