A Glimpse Back in Time
It’s easy to tell
stories of life’s adventures, to write about getting lost on bicycles in
Uruguay or climbing waterfalls in the jungle just outside the
Amazon. And with the backdrop of such exciting tales, it’s even fairly easy to tell you what God showed me through
those adventures. But I fear that I
deceive you by writing blog posts only when I’m hundreds of miles from home doing something exotic or experiencing poverty firsthand. If you know me from my posts alone, your understanding of my life is surely
askew. Because there’s another story I’ve
yet to tell. It might not sound like an
adventure. There are no gypsies, no
soups full of chicken feet, and no venomous spiders in my bathroom. Instead, there’s just a humdrum of daily activity
that doesn’t really make for the best story.
So I could skip this one. I could
let you keep believing that everything I do is either exciting or terrifying or
hilarious. I could…yet, I can’t. Because THIS is the story through which God
has changed my life. THIS is who I am in
the day to day. Not an adventurer. Not a world traveler. Just me, a Potter’s Daughter.
Once upon a time, God invaded the life of a curly haired high
school senior. He’d always been a big
part of her life, but just weeks after she uttered the prayer, “Here I am! Send
me!” He truly took over. Like a giant claw machine in an arcade, He
lifted her out of Morgantown, sent her all over the world, and then gently set
her back down in the heart of the Shenandoah Valley at a university where He
would transform her life.
That’s where we begin our story…my story if somehow the curly hair reference wasn’t enough to give
it away. I showed up at Washington and
Lee University (hereafter "W&L") excited about volunteering, studying poverty, and getting
involved in campus ministry. But that
excitement was pretty short lived.
The first real night I spent on campus was a disaster, and
not just because I fell off my lofted bed (which really hurt and made me very
glad that my roommate wasn’t planning to arrive for several more days). Anyway, I learned quickly that following
Jesus in college was going to be the hardest thing I’d ever done. After roaming around campus with the only two
people I could find who hadn’t gone out to the parties, I returned to my room
and cried. Hadn’t God heard me when I
said, “Anywhere but a party school, Lord!”?
[Since I starting writing this almost 3 years ago, I’ve realized that
pretty much every college could probably be considered a “party school,” but
at the same time, I continue to insist that W&L is particularly so.] The night was horrible, and I spent the next day calling
my closest friends at home and sobbing over the four years of misery I was sure
to endure. Never in a million years
would I have guessed that just eight months later, I would be crying because I
didn’t want to leave.
I spent the first week or so drowning in self-pity. But eventually I had a change of heart. Although I wasn’t sure why God had sent me to
such a place of darkness, I figured it wasn’t to sit around and cry. At that point, I had to take action. I could join in with the other freshmen waiting in line for the bus to the frat parties, or I could resist. And fully
aware that it would be the lonelier path, I chose the latter. I had no idea what I was getting into.
Thankfully, I at least had the sense to know that there was nothing in the
world that I could do to change
W&L on my own. The culture of the school was the result of a couple hundred years, and I was very certain that it was going to take a
miracle to bring light forth from the darkness.
But thankfully, I happened to have a pretty tight relationship
with the Creator of the Universe. And I believed that He would change our campus if we took the time to ask.
So after about another week, I wiped away my bitter tears and put my game face on. Without wasting time, I grabbed a friend and a dean and started
up weekly prayer meetings in the library.
And little by little, God began to take control.
It quickly became evident that an
hour of prayer a week wasn’t going to cut it.
Although our Tuesday morning numbers faded away (probably at least partly due to the 7:30am start time), a tiny band of
dedicated prayer warriors began to develop. Two became three and three became
four as we spent hours in d-hall strategizing about how to conquer our school
for Christ. Though I’d rarely spent time
with guys in the past, Brandon, Daniel, and Chris soon became my closest friends.
“What if we were to pray 5 hours a week?” asked Chris one
day from the other side of a booth in d-hall. Over the past month or so, Chris had become our leader. He had experienced more of God than the rest of us, and He gave me vision to really know God's heart and see Him as my friend. Chris challenged me to read the Bible more and to talk to God like a real person, and it began changing everything.
Looking back, I think Chris' question was probably rhetorical,
but in that moment, my hungry heart would have agreed to pretty much anything
to get more of Jesus. “Let’s do it!” I
said, without hesitation.
I watched the three faces around me. Brandon’s sparkling eyes reflected my excitement as he nodded
vigorously. Daniel didn’t seem so sure,
but I knew he’d be willing to join. And
Chris just looked surprised. I don’t
think he’d actually expected us to say yes. Who wants to pray, anyway?
But we did. So that
night, I started on a journey that I know will continue throughout every season
of my life: the journey of DAILY prayer.
To be continued…
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