the past four years

As kids return to school, and many dear friends to PBU, with Facebook updates and pictures of reunited friendships, something stirs inside of me.  This year... I'm not going back.  PBU is no longer my home away from home.  I'm not packing up and heading back to the place that taught me so much, to the home of (still!) so many dear friends.  It can't have been four years ago that I was on my way to Langhorne, PA, a bright-eyed and eager freshman - ready to experience real life outside the tiny world of Allegan, Michigan. And yet, considering who I was then and who I am now, it seems like much much longer.  I'm not who I was then.

While this is a rather cliche beginning to what ought to be classified as a journal entry - more for my benefit than anyone else's - I feel such an obligation to mention, encourage, and thank those of you whom God has used to build me up into the person that I am now.  Because it has been a journey: often bumpy, peopled with friends, fellow travelers and seekers.  I thank you all the same.

I entered PBU much like everyone else: searching for identity.  Believe it or not, I was disillusioned with relationships and bitter toward my parents' God.  During this time, I dated too much, made too many friends - some lightweight, others genuine and strong.  Even so, I thank those of you who witnessed and spoke into this part of my story.

God slowly became real to me, if at first only on an intellectual level.  There was still an enormous disconnect between my head and my heart; so much of what I learned I didn't apply to my life.  As parts of my life seemed to spiral out of control, I was adopted into a group of about eleven or twelve friends.  These people, these people.  To you, I owe an enormous debt.  Over the four years, a core group stayed true, though some have wandered and some were added.  This core was my foundation, my stability through the formation of my faith.  You watched, encouraged, blessed, reproved, and loved me through a few difficult years of my life.  You helped me learn to connect my head to my heart.  You know who you are, and I thank you.  Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Then, God brought some later friends: outside this core, but equally invaluable, and equally influential to me.  I thank you for helping me hone my faith - as iron sharpens iron.  I thank you for letting me serve you. I thank you for speaking truth into my life.  I thank you for revitalizing my faith, daily.  I thank you for causing me to think outside my brain.  You know who you are.

God brought along Kevin.  I could devote much more time to this section of my life... but suffice it to say, God has blessed me most through him, and I thank God for the friends who brought him into my life.  Again, you know who you are: setting up trips to the synagogue, having a birthday party at Olive Garden, organizing a day date into NYC because the train ride was free, and praying your heart out for a relationship you believed would be a beautiful thing.  You were right, and I owe you.  Big time.

I thank the people I dated, or tried to date, or tried not to date.  God used you to prepare my heart for Kevin.

I thank my professors for the thoughts, discussions, lectures, notes, and diagrams that have forever changed the way I think.

I am thankful for way-too-late night conversations, texts, and chats.
I am thankful for the drama, the plot, and the characters of my story at PBU.
I am thankful for Midge, FB, carnivorous rooster, g? g! g., hermits, threshing floors, sage, SS, dot dot dot, sugar in the raw, twelve minute smiles, heresy and buh-awesome.
I am thankful for movie nights, snow days, thrift stores, girl-talks, painting fingernails, twinkies and sparkling grape juice.
I am thankful to PBU Chorale, for giving me an outlet, for providing some deep friendships, and for the experience of having our director tear us down and build us up - pushing us to perfection.  I am thankful for the Christ Event program, and the beautiful and earth-shattering truths that music is still teaching me about our Savior.
I am thankful for the nights long spent at the pub, dance parties in dorm rooms, and athletic events.
I am thankful for coffee, theology, prayer groups, Bible studies, and walks around the pond.
I am thankful for Harry Potter, High School Musical, Dan in Real Life, Moulin Rouge, The Holiday, Chicago, Much Ado About Nothing, Monk, Lie to Me, The Office, countless Disney classics, and those of you who care - or cared - about these movies and shows, or were merely willing to watch them with me!
I am thankful for TeleCounseling, and the friends - and stories! - that went along with that.  I couldn't have asked for a funner job!
I am thankful for the caf, and the stories that went along with that.  Haha.  10th hour breakfasts come to mind, but so do late lunches and stale, cigarette coffee and sugar cookies.
I am thankful for learning side-by-side with friends, acquaintances, and friends-turned-acquaintances.  Because that's all there is at PBU.  And that's ok.
I am thankful to the school, for having a mission I could get behind, for having excellent professors and rigorous courses, and then for having the lightweight ones that enabled me to focus my energy on the 'important' things, and for chapel.  And for classes that imitated chapel, and chapels that imitated class.

I am thankful to my parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts, who have supported me, gone alongside me, and encouraged me while at PBU.
I am thankful for my siblings, who have become closer than two brothers and a sister to me during my time away from home.

I am thankful to the LORD - from whom all blessings flow, and who delights in giving good and perfect gifts!  He knew what He was doing in me and through me at PBU, and His plans for me have not ended!  He still delights in blessing me, and still demands my worship, and still is placing people in my life that will continue refining my faith, encouraging me, and pointing me toward Him.

SDG forever and ever.