You discovered something you weren’t even looking for.

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power

and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from

what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

Romans 1:20

Dear Me,

Hey, past-me.

So, this is weird, but I guess I’ll tell you about you.

Right now, you're a college kid on summer break living in a Best Western because you’re a rebellious know-it-all that your parents don’t know how to deal with. You don’t think that’s the reason you’re living there, but it is, and you hold both bitterness and relief in your heart. You go to the hotel after work, and sit tucked away, out of sight, kicked out of the house, but not quite because it was your choice to, and you're still being taken care of. Hotel paid for. Believe it or not, you’ve always been taken care of and always will be.

But that’s all beside the point. You sitting around in a hotel is not the reason for this letter, so pay attention, I’m getting there. You’re in a hotel room and you're watching one of those nature shows, and this one is about kangaroos. You’re struggling. You feel dead inside because you discovered something you weren’t even looking for, and something you didn’t want: there is no God. You’ve always questioned God’s existence in one way or another, but now it’s definitive in your heart. And that discovery is breaking you. Hard. But something about the kangaroos speaks to you. Something picks at you as you watch them hopping around carrying their babies in pouches and kicking it out in crazy kangaroo fights, and it won’t go away. These animals were thought out. Created. All the amazing things they do to survive, and all the complexity of their mere existence, were designed and meticulously planned. And you fiddle with the idea that maybe you’re wrong. Maybe there is a God and He created kangaroos. Which means He created the world, which means He created you.

You fiddle with the idea, then drop it in the plastic trashcan beside the desk for the cleaning lady to pick up later. Hope is a delusion. No matter how much you want to believe in God, you can’t. There is no future beyond this life, no God, and you will not delude yourself into thinking there is. You’re smarter than that.

You won’t think about this nonsense again until many years later, after you're married and raising two kids who are shaping you in ways you never imagined. In ways that are sometimes wonderful, but most of the time, painful and hard. And then one day, with a ball of anxiety inside your chest that feels like a black hole, you’ll sit on your couch looking at a beautiful tree in your backyard. The tree is full of buzzing insects and little chirping birds, and that thought will creep back into your mind: these living things dancing in front of you and around you were created. Before this recurring thought, you can’t look at anything without seeing death. You can’t look at a person, pet a cat, or eat dinner with your family without thinking about how they all are going to die one day. About how you are going to die one day and no longer exist. And how you just wanted to get it all over with. But on this day, in the tree, you see life.

Staring at the tree brings up questions that are the only things keeping you from a complete existential breakdown. But they’re questions that seem unsolvable; how are the tree and the grass and the bees and the birds alive? Why am I alive? Why is there life? By this time, depression and anxiety leave you feeling desperate for truth, whether good, bad, or ugly. Delusion was never an option, and it still isn’t.

What happens next, I wish you had done back in that hotel room. It would have saved you years of heartache and destructive decision after decision that should’ve ended badly but somehow didn’t. Because a few days later after asking these questions, after feeling a weight of terror in your chest the size of the Pacific Ocean that you looked out on every day, you finally decide to ask God Himself if He is real. And like a gentle Father, He not only shows you that He is real by taking your hand and walking you through the trail of belief Himself (because you don’t trust people to tell you the truth, and you won’t trust people at this stage of life either), but He shows you that He has been right in front of your face your entire life. He gives you the truth (Jesus) and it’s so much to take in you feel physically nauseous for months. It’s so much that you can’t take a shower without crumbling and weeping from gratitude. Because there is hope. There is a way to know truth. And not only is God real, but He loves you.

Talk Soon,

Veronica