One day, I heard the sound of waves crashing against the shore. The next day, I heard the horn and rattle of a train running by on its tracks.
In the summer of 2023, I traded my home in Southern California for an empty freshman dorm room in the Bronx at Fordham University. I said goodbye to my beloved Pacific Ocean. Stepping foot onto campus, I wished that I could paddleboard with my dad, walk along the shore with my mom, or sit by the pier with my friends just one more time. Everything was different. Everything was changing, and I felt lost being so far away from all that I had ever known.
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So, I did what I always do when things feel like too much: I turned to nature. Thankfully, I did not have to look too far. The New York Botanical Garden, with its forests, conservatories, and oasis of green space, sat right across the street from our campus. When I miss the water and the waves, I go to the plants and the trees, and it feels like home.
Transitioning to college was a sudden and hard change in my life and turning to nature and noticing its patterns helped me notice the patterns of my own heart, too. Nature is my teacher, and here is what she taught me.
Patience
In my freshman year of college, I was impatient. I wanted to accomplish things and make a place for myself right away.
But I learned that growth is not something I could force or accelerate. It requires good soil — that is, time, experience, and learning from the people who came before me. In the parable of the sower, Jesus speaks of four types of seeds. The ones on bad soil fail, but those that fall among good soil bring forth grain, “some one hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty” (Matthew 13:8).
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As a student, I needed the soil of learning: to work through the core curriculum classes before I could move on to upper division ones, to spend time reading and studying before I could discern my gifts and passions. On my volleyball team, I needed the soil of training: to work through the introductory program in the weight room, to learn how our practice drills worked from the older athletes, and to lug big Gatorade jugs full of water for everybody to drink (a task kindly reserved for first years). And as a friend, I needed the soil of conversation, quality time, and shared experiences to be able to grow into my relationships.
Cultivating soil takes time. I will not see the fruits of my experiences right away, but I can trust that good soil eventually brings forth grain.
Cycles
Being used to sunny days all year round, I felt the East Coast cycle of seasons acutely. And, I felt myself moving right along with it.
As the seasons moved in their natural cycle, I, too, found my own rhythm in college. The excitement of the beginning of the school year and volleyball season cooled to a steady pace of work and training during midterms, which slowed down after finals and became a period of rest during winter break. My levels of homesickness, my energy, and my workload rose and fell, moved and changed in cycles that mirrored the natural world.
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From observing the seasons, I’ve learned that growth comes in waves. It moves up and down, it swells and recedes like the tides. It moves in circles, not lines. Even when it felt like I was taking one step forward and two steps back during my first year (like when I locked myself out of my dorm room or got lost trying to find my Spanish class in the basement of Keating Hall), I was still growing.
In Genesis, God makes a promise to Noah: “As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease” (Genesis 8:22). The world will always be moving and changing, and so will we.
Mystery
In many ways, nature is beyond our understanding. I cannot fathom how deep the ocean is or how far below the earth a tree’s roots go. Our lives hold this same quality of mystery, especially in times of transition. Moving away from home for the first time was accompanied by uncertainty and unanswered questions. What will school be like? Is the cafeteria food as bad as everyone says? Who will my friends be?
Even now as I enter my junior year, there is a lot that remains a mystery. What will the future hold? What will life after college look like?
The short answer is, I don’t know. But maybe I don’t have to know.
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In uncertainty, there is an invitation to move from fear to hope. Hope for the future frees us to experience the changes in our lives without having to understand them, just like how I don’t have to understand nature to appreciate it.
When I feel uncertain, Jesus reminds me to trust him: “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches” (John 15:4-5).
As my life continues to change, my prayer is to abide in Jesus. My home is not in California or New York, but on the vine with him. I pray that I may put down roots here and stay grounded in the moment at hand.
And whatever the future may hold, one thing is certain: Nature (and her divine creator) will never be too far away.
