You matter.

A man on my campus took his life last week.  My brain can't decide if I should call him a boy or a man, because he was too old to be one and too young to be the other.  He didn't even have enough time to decide.  I didn't know him.  I wasn't friends with him, but my heart is broken.  He was a person.  We, we are just people.  None of us are perfect.  And none of us, for any reason, should be made to feel like we don't matter.
Because we do matter.
You matter.

You're precious and valuable.  You get one life.  One, and only one.

And you are not replaceable.

be. known.

That's it.  Don't go through today without telling someone how you really are.  Not a cute anecdote about your day, or laundry list of how busy you are.  Tell someone about you.  Invite them into your head, into your mess.  Let someone walk next to you- in the dirt, in the sun, through all the crap and all the goodness.  It's these moments and this transparency with one another that makes community come alive.  We each have a story- things in our lives that we've experienced, places we've come from and things that have happened.  We've all walked a million miles in lives have been given to us, down roads no one else knows.  The truth is that your story is unique and important.  So start by letting someone in on it, even if it feels like you don't have everything together.  Don't worry.  I don't have everything together either.  Maybe the idea is that none of that matters.  The idea is that maybe we're more loved then we'll ever really know.