"Where did you graduate?"

I struggled to answer the question. I have never felt more awkward than this.

It was my first day in college. God answered my prayers of landing in a good school for my last lap in the educational race. I didn’t know If He was joking but he didn’t just send me to a good school, He sent me to the best (sfx: UP Naming Mahal…).

I was in the top university in the Philippines. Being on top meant that this lap would be the fiercest there ever is or ever was. It was the medical arm of the university, too, so you could just imagine what I was going through.

So there I was. After learning that most of my classmates pranced around the valedictory or salutatory race of their respective high schools, I felt like burrowing my head on the pavement to dodge any question they may pose about where I came from.

I really had no choice but to get along with these people whose heads were still full of joining premiere competitions or standing on the stage for too long. Personally, I never even made it to the top ten of our school and the only moment I went up the stage was when I got my diploma – less than 5 minutes of stage presence. So until now, even after more than a year of graduating, it was still the mystery of mysteries how I landed in that school.

That was how I spent my first few weeks. I kept on dodging questions like Keanu Reeves dodging bullets. It was always high pressure when I was asked. Much more when it was about religion. I tried to avoid it as hard as I could, not because I didn’t want to, but because the explanation was more like a boring lecture.

I am a Seventh-day Adventist. A religion where most people would remember the things we eat rather than what we believe in. They had no idea how much fun they were missing with what they didn’t know. Yet somehow, it made me feel quite alone.

Just when I thought that my whole college life would be spent like an island amidst an ocean, I found a smile. It happened as I was about to go up the steps in the RH building of AS. There she was, an upper classman whose face seemed vaguely familiar. I smiled on thin air while racking my head on who this person is. It was amazing when she smiled back.

There was no tingling sensation the way you get when someone you like smiles back at you. It was somewhat a comforting smile – something that that tells me I am not alone at some point.

The Sabbath after that fateful week, I was surprised to see the same girl. This time she was surrounded by people I seemed to have bumped into once or twice around campus. They were in church! And they belong!

One of the prettier ones approached me and said, “Are you from UPManila? Would you like to join AMiCUS?” It turned out that her name was Abbie. The one I smiled at was her older sister Shelly. That was the start of the saga. My saga.

After that point, I found myself in the pulpit more often as a participant in various church activities. I also found myself having that special place of service to other people, when I joined my first Voice of Youth and Medical Mission in Baler, Aurora. There I met others from other schools.

I have heard about the struggles of a lot of Adventist Youth. That lonesome feeling when you learn that you’re the only SDA on campus. The life of hiding from the world what you really are. Or the opposite, showing the world what you really are and get humiliated.

I have tried both. It wasn’t nice. Especially when you are on fire and feeling that you could share the whole Bible in one go, that was when reality hits you that your classmates don’t like listening to a pastor or they misunderstand you for trying to win them over to your side. In the end, it’s not a power struggle but an identity crisis.

From what I learned all throughout my days outside the Adventist world, you were never alone. NEVER.

I’m supposed to say that other people from non-SDA schools have the same feeling as you but that wouldn’t help at all. If it does, it would just be relief that somewhere on this planet is another lonely person brooding over similar problems. Yet that is not usually the case.

What I wanted to point out is that God never sends you to war without any equipment. He wouldn’t send Jonah or Elijah without preparing the way beforehand, right? Have you read about Moses getting lost along the way to the Egyptian Pharaoh? Have you heard about John the Baptist going hungry?

Now that’s something to think about.

So now think. What has God given you to make you ready for war? Hint. It’s not supposed to make you feel lonely.