Who Do You Want To Be?

"Us"

I’ll start with the summer before my freshman year at Crown. I thought of it as the last summer that I might be reasonably classified as a kid, and the time I spent with people, I spent with my brothers and my parents. There they are on the screen—all Christians, and all some of my best friends. My dad, who wakes up at 4:45 every morning so he has time to read his Bible before he goes to work; my mama, who is like my identical twin, except with more wisdom and joy; my sister, Em, who’s four years older than me and married to that wonderful giant named Eric; my older brother, Joe, who loves music and has always been my best bud; and David, the baby of the family who’s as unique as the day is long, and always makes me smile when he’s not tackling me or pulling my hair. (…He’s 20.) When I spent any time away from them that summer, I thought about college. I had decided the previous April to go to Crown, a decision driven by a statement that a family friend made: If you don’t know what you want to do, then go to a college that will help you become who you want to be.

Crown College was that place. But who did I want to be? There are far too many answers to that question to count, but I’ll focus on three for now. I wanted to be the person with that close-knit group of new, smiling, lifelong friends that seems to be guaranteed on every college brochure. I wanted to learn how to put God above school. And, coming from public school, I didn’t want to be that person who was stuck at Crown with only Christians all the time.

I hoped, and I prayed (at least off and on, when I thought of it), for all this to happen.

Finally, Welcome Weekend came. We packed up the car and drove two hours and unpacked and ate lunch and went to a chapel and then my parents left. And I immediately turned into a puddle. Seriously, I’m surprised the room didn’t flood, I was crying so hard. (It did flood later that year…but I lived in First Strohm before the renovations, so I think that’s a separate issue.) All of what I wanted to do and dreamed of being was overshadowed by the fact that I. Was. Homesick.

For my entire freshman year.

I didn’t count the number of times I was alone in my room crying or out on walks just trying to get out all that steam somewhere. I would avoid people before breaks because if they said they would miss me, I wouldn’t have honestly been able to say that I would miss them back as I had made no room in my heart for those people who were replacing my family. Every time someone would refer to Crown as “home” I would wince and internally shake my head. Home was Rochester. Home was my family. Home was not Crown. I read my high school friends’ facebook statuses—they were happy at college; I looked around Crown—everyone I talked to was glad to be free. Then what was wrong with me? This wasn’t the “who” that God was supposed to make me into while I was here.

I don’t say all this to make you feel sorry for me or even to pretend that my experience was the worst that could have happened. Many of you have had to go through much worse. For many of you, going through a lot worse is why you were glad to be here from the moment you stepped on campus. My point is this: what I wanted—what I prayed for—was not what I got.  Looking back, I realize it also wasn’t who God created me to be.  

So why in the world did I stay if I hated being here so much? Really, I can’t say I hated being here—there are so many reasons that I loved it, too. I did like the atmosphere of Crown—the chapels and praying before classes and the beautiful campus; I couldn’t escape the joy God was giving me throughout the confusion and heartache of the transition to college. Just so the people who knew me then don’t think of me as a complete liar, I should mention that I liked the people, but I was so homesick and stuck that I wouldn’t let myself love most of them until later. The biggest reasons that I stayed, however, are the ways God did answer (or not quite answer) two of those prayers about who I wanted to be.

What I had wanted was the ability to go out and make a bunch of friends—to be that person who is friends with anyone and everyone on campus. As I already mentioned, and as those of you who know me understand, that hasn’t happened. My freshman year, I hadn’t yet accepted that that’s not the kind of person I am. I do much better when I get to know just a few people well, and even better when those people seek me out. God knew, though. And God protected me from myself. What He gave me instead of what I requested was the best friend I could have asked for living in my own room, stuck with me: my roommate, Jessica Joy Tuley. She and I understood each other from those first few e-mails, when I told her she was my new favorite person for using a semi-colon correctly, and she didn’t reject me for that. To me, she was a model of the verse, “Be completely humble and gentle, bearing with one another in love.” She bore with me when I accidentally dropped my alarm clock on her before 7:00 in the morning while it was still going off, and she bore with me when I had random bouts of pain that kept me in bed or when I had questions about Jesus that I just needed to talk through. God knows who you need to stand by your side. Trust him as he provides those people.

What I had wanted was to become someone who put God ahead of school, ahead of learning.  We all have weaknesses—those things that we want to put above God time and time again. For me, one of the strongest ones has always been school, learning, academia—however you want to phrase it. In my thinking, I saw all the things I had to do for God in one category, and learning in another. I thought that all I had to do was spend more time and energy on the first category and detach myself a bit from the second. Enter into this a professor that only a few of you know and love, as he’s now retired and off in Texas: Dr. Ratledge.  Having a class with Dr. Ratledge was undoubtedly an intense experience, but it was also the first time in my life that a teacher showed me how to love the Lord our God with all my mind. At the end of the year, he recommended a book to me, Basic Theology by Charles Ryrie. In that book was a quote which sums up the change that happened for me in that year: 

“Studying theology is no mere academic exercise, though it is that. It is an experience that changes, convicts, broadens, challenges, and ultimately leads to a deep reverence for God. Worship means to recognize the worth of the object worshiped. How can any mortal put his mind to the study of God and fail to increase his recognition of His worth?"

I would take this one step further. Nothing is a mere academic exercise—or at least, nothing has to be. When I study history, how can I fail to see the ways that God has been at work and the reasons this world needs a Savior? When I study math, how can I miss the fact that our God has made a world with patterns and rhythms that make sense to us? When I dig into educational theory, how can I forget that He has made our minds to learn and grow so that we can know Him? If we leave out that side of things, we omit what brings meaning to the hours we spend in classes and doing homework over our years at college.

Throughout that first and stressful year of college, Dr. Ratledge cautioned my small class of honors students not to do what he had done—to avoid doing all this schoolwork to build up a resume or puff ourselves up so that we would be the ones everyone would look at. Instead, we are here to learn in order to serve Christ, other Christians, and non-Christians. We are here to know so that we can listen before teaching. Still, we must still do everything with excellence because Jesus deserves that from us. God didn’t make me give up my passion for knowledge in order to put Him first; instead, he showed me a way to love Him more through it.

So I came back the next year, and the next, and the next, and here we are. As for everything else I wanted to be, well, I’ve gotten some of it, and I haven’t gotten other parts, at least not yet. I have many amazing friends now, and this year I finally managed to come back to Crown and only cry once for wanting to be with my family. (I know. It’s pathetic.) Just last semester I finally started to get off-campus and meet people who don’t know Jesus. Shameless plug for Street Level Ministry on Friday nights. I couldn’t figure out for the longest time why in the world God would call quiet little me to that ministry, but as I prepared this testimony, I wondered if those prayers, prayed over three years ago, might have something to do with it. Let me encourage you with this: our prayers do not expire. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. 

Who I wanted to be those three years ago was a list of character traits. Who I want to be now? I don’t have time to go into everything that brought this change about—all the professors and staff who spoke into my life, all the students who have become dear friends, all the conversations with the Lord—but it’s no longer about who I want to be. All three of these prayers, and so many more throughout the years have been answered in ways that made my requests like mere shadows. What I received from God was so much richer and deeper and better—but not what I wanted, and often, much harder. So now, it’s about who I want: and His name is Jesus. Whatever I do, whoever I am, I want more of Jesus. His name needs to be greater, His work the center of attention in this testimony and my whole life. My salvation and my honor depend on him. Joy in Jesus.