Dear Seven North: Eighteen More Days

Dear Seven North,

As I write this, I am eighteen days and eleven hours from graduating.

That’s it.

In eighteen days and eleven hours, I will be unleashed from this place, all the strings cut. I’ll be able to drink and dance and dress in leggings if I want to. (Don’t worry, though, the plan is not to go wild. I still have some self-control. 😉)

The severing of those ties, though, implies the severing of other ties—namely, my ties to you. You will no longer be my floor and I will no longer be your RA. Every time I think of the end, I am confronted with the reality that you are not mine. It’s like the Lord is prying open my fingers, over and over, reminding me that you belong to Him and He gives you as a gift to whomever He chooses.

And goodness gracious, girls, you have been a gift to me.

Tonight, Bre asked me, point blank, if I ever regretted applying to become an RA*. And I said yes. As a sophomore applying for this job, I truly had no idea what I was getting myself into. Even as a junior in November 2019, signing on for a second year, I had no idea what I was actually signing up for. I couldn’t imagine what it would actually look like, walking someone into the emergency room at midnight and not being allowed to go with her. I didn’t know what it would mean to talk someone through panic attacks or depression or obsessive-compulsive episodes. I wasn’t aware of the boundary conversations, the places I would have to draw all my courage and call others out. I could never have imagined all the dozens and dozens of ways I would fail and disappoint and hurt you.

And in some ways, I do regret it, taking this road that was hard and not necessary. God could have sanctified me in other ways; why did I have to be a martyr about it? Sometimes I think that pride was the only reason I said yes to this job. I thought that I would be good at it and that talent equaled calling.

Don’t ever do things just because you’re good at them. Do them because God tells you to and you want to be obedient. Obedience is joy; a martyr complex is a recipe for burnout.

So, yes, there have been many days when I have regretted being your RA.

But I cannot regret being in your lives, and you being in mine.

Seven North, I know there are more than a dozen of you who I have missed. I haven’t seen all of you. I haven’t pursued all of you. I haven’t welcomed all of you the way I wanted to. As my time here draws to a close, I am recognizing all of the many relationships I missed out on, primarily because I was too insecure to reach for them. I am seeing the ways I have let you down, the ways I dropped the ball, the ways I’ve failed.

And, in the midst of these regrets, I am also seeing how much joy came from these years with you. It is a sober joy, tempered by difficulty—but it is joy nonetheless, maybe even more for the hard things it came out of.

Even those of you I’ve not connected with the way I wanted to have taught me things. I cherish the moments we do have, every one of them. (Truly. I’m extensively attentive to the little things; you actually do not know all the little ways you have blessed me.) And I am relishing these last days with you, staying up all the hours and laughing and crying and listening and coaching.

As this season draws to a close, the reality is that my place as your RA will ebb away into nothing...but my place as your sister remains. My hope and prayer is that we live into that these last eighteen days.

You overflow my heart, dear ones. I thank God in my remembrance of you, every day.

Love,

Jessi Bee

*Which, for the record, made me feel quite seen and cared for, because she was probing for the real me and not the RA.