When the pressure sets in.
I remember when it happened for me. Welcome week was over. Classes had begun. Early alarms were set. My new reality was setting in…The overwhelming, all-consuming pressure hit me out of nowhere, without warning.
Social media shows the joys of college. The date parties, college football Saturdays, dorm hangs, and lunch dates with new friends. But what people don’t show is the immense pressure so many students carry on the daily. It’s masked with an “I’m fine” and a perfect highlight reel, but deep down, they’re drowning, just trying to keep it all together.
My public speaking professor during my freshman year of college got real with us. Maybe only a few people got real, or maybe it was just me. She asked us to raise our hand according to how we were doing; thriving, surviving, or dying. “Raise your hand if you’re dying,” she asked. To which I was the only one to raise my hand. Was I alone in feeling this pressure or were students just not willing to be vulnerable? Whatever it was, my face couldn’t hide the effects this pressure had on me.
Whether it’s one hard class on your schedule this semester, finding a school/social life balance, not having time to eat or sleep, or if you’re like me and you feel like a toddler who lost their swimmies in the deep end, we all can relate to the feeling of pressure. The kind that feels like a weight on your chest so heavy to bear that it feels so physical and real.
You are not left in the deep end alone, friend. The rescuer has come and He is here today throwing a raft in your direction saying, “Quit trying to swim on your strength or you will drown. Take my hand and get on the raft.” In the middle of a million reasons to have pressure, Jesus erases every single one by saying, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”
Jesus carried your pressure once and for all when He carried your cross up to Calvery’s Hill and died. He bore the pressure you are feeling once and for all so you can experience His overwhelming peace and rest today. Don’t insult the shoulders of our suffering Savior by carrying a weight that He never intended for you to carry.
A life of walking with Jesus doesn’t make sense, so in circumstances when you could have every right to give into the pressure, you can be sustained by the peace that surpasses all understanding.
Only Jesus can turn pressure into peace and panic into praise.
