One Month In

One month.

It flies by and yet so much happens in it. Saturday was the one-month anniversary of my move to college. I don't feel like a different person--exactly. More like one straddling the line between the girl that moved here and the one who calls it home. This transition ransacked and rearranged my mental order so that I have spent this month repurposing what was already there. Some days I feel utterly in love with this place; other days I wish I could quit and go home. Nevertheless, I am anchored and will remain so.

The blessings have been many, and the burdens light. If I were to name them all, we would all be bored, but on this anniversary it seemed appropriate to invite you into the highlights.

...

All my life, I've had a burning desire that never left: I wanted an older sister. For years, I wrestled with God over the issue, wondering why He saddled me with the responsibility of being the oldest. In my young mind, having someone older and wiser inseparably tied to me seemed a necessity for my happiness.

God, obviously, knew better. He placed this desire on my heart knowing full well it would remain unmet within my family. Instead, He met it in the Family of Christ. Year after year, starting in junior high, I was surrounded by courageous mentors who cherished me and cultivated my growth. Most stayed only for seasons until they were called to move on, but I was never without at least one.

Until last year.

The gap year was the first time in seven years I was without a consistent, mentoring older sister, and the first time in my life I was okay with it. Perhaps it was time, I reasoned. Perhaps it was simply my turn to nurture others in the same way. The thought saddened me slightly--but only slightly.

And then I came to Moody. Dread suddenly clenched my heart like an icy hand, and everything in me wailed that I wasn't ready, I'd never be ready. Gone was the strong and content mentor I had become in the last year; in her place stood a puddle of tears.

Trembling, I got in the elevator anyway.

Smith 4. I had read the words a month ago and been excited. That was my building, and that was my floor. My parents had pointed it out to me from the street. "I was on the next floor," my mother said of her time at Moody. My heart had swelled then.

Now it constricted. The elevator beeped at each floor: two...three...Four.

The doors opened and all was quiet. In front of me was a couch covered in orange and blue pillows and surrounded by paper chains hanging from the wall in every color of the sunrise. And on the couch, draped in yet unfinished paper chains herself, sat a peaceful young woman who I immediately recognized as my resident advisor.

She was nothing like I had expected.

I had received an email from her, six weeks  prior, a collective letter sent to each of the freshman girls on Smith 4. "This summer," she said, "I'm living on an island in Asia where an average day consists of surfing, spearfishing, and telling people about Jesus." After that one sentence, I barely comprehended anything else of her words, except that Abraham Lincoln was our floor mascot. That one sentence seemed all I needed to define who she was. I could picture her, a compact, sturdy little blonde with the heart of a warrior, the voice of a coach, and the ever-present high ponytail of a diehard athlete.

The woman sitting on the couch was not that woman.

She was, instead, a tall, slender, soft-spoken thing, with a mass of light brown curls, who stood when I stepped off the elevator. "Hi," she said, coming over with a smile.

I fumbled with my load. "Hi, I'm Jessi."

"I'm Kelsey." It was indeed her, no matter how different she looked from my mental picture.

"Nice to meet you," I said, shifting my burden and offering a hand. When I met her eyes, I realized she had been ready to give me a hug.

"Do you know where you're going?" she asked, as I turned down the hallway with my family.

"Um, 408." I looked at the sign. "So, this way."

"Yep! It's right down this hall, and if you wanna loft the beds, just let me know and I'll get you a lofting kit."

"Thanks!" I said, aloof. I was too overwhelmed to be invitational. I would know Kelsey later.

Later that night, all nine freshman girls crept out to the same lounge where I had first seen Kelsey, looking like lost puppies. We sat down in silence, peripherally studying each other while at the same time trying to avoid standing out. Every one of us felt out of place and uncomfortable--and Kelsey addressed that. "You may be really excited right now," she told us. "Or you may be completely freaking out and unable to find the excitement. Or a little bit of both. I want you to have space to feel whatever you're feeling." I think perhaps it was those words that crumbled my walls. My heart latched onto her as a safe place, a refuge amid the newfound chaos I was expected now to call home. That night, I came to a realization.

God had given me a new older sister.

...

"Dad?" I asked one night in the kitchen, a few weeks before move-in day. "What's the point of brother and sister floors?"

"So that the girls have someone to call if they need protection...." He poured coffee beans into the grinder. "So that you have someone to go with to social events like Junior-Senior Banquet. And..." He plugged the grinder into the wall. "To preserve the heritage of Moody Bridal Institute."

I laughed...but the stereotype persisted in my own household. Every female dorm floor at Moody was paired with a male floor, for the various above reasons. People joked that it was a match-making ploy, and I certainly wasn't going to say they were wrong. My parents had fallen in love because of the arrangement. If not for bro-sis floors, I might not even exist.

But night one, with the freshmen gathered around her like small children listening to a bedtime story, Kelsey set about putting the myths to rest. "It is not a dating pool," she said. "It's to give you a safe place for relationships with those guys without the pressure of it turning into something else." If any single hearts in the room sank at her words, I couldn't tell. No one seemed to mind the disproving of the long-held legends. "Our brother floor is Culby Five, they were our brother floor last year. Our brother RA is Alexander, he's super cool. And they're super willing to take care of us and hang out, and they're just a really--really sweet group of guys." A certain fondness colored her voice, and I could see in her eyes that she was picturing their faces. I wished I could do the same.

"Aria is our assistant RA, she's not here yet, but she's really cool." She stared off for a moment, frowning, pondering things to tell us about Aria. I would later learn that pensive frown was one of her trademarks. "She's a dancer...and she's wonderful, so...yeah." She looked around at all of us and smiled, gathering our reactions, assessing our state of mind. Gradually, we started to talk, and then to laugh. The icy dread in me began to thaw and I found myself content for this moment at least. Funny how I hadn't expected the very thing bro-sis was meant to give me.

Family.

...

"Everyone here wants to be friends with you really fast." Too fast, in some cases, was the implication of Gena's words. It didn't take me long to realize that she was right, and the freshmen perpetuated that stereotype. After all, I made the jump from the first awkward conversations to family in one paragraph.

That's actually how it happened in my head.

Humans crave fellowship. Some may be jaded, or guarded, or cynical, or struggling to trust, but relationship is a basic human need, and Moody students, in particular, are acutely aware of the need. All nine of the freshman girls on my floor came here seeking life-long friendships--and wanting to find them in the first week. Heaven forbid we take longer than that, or else we'd be floundering in solitude for the rest of the semester.

Sometimes I wished to flounder in solitude.

If there was one thing Moody had, it was community, in all its forms. The illusion of relationship, as well as the real thing, presented itself in a myriad of ways, and by the end of our first bro-sis event, not only the freshman girls but also our male counterparts had latched onto each other with a death grip. We would have community if it killed us...or our sanity. My introverted spirit trembled.

I loved them. Truly. I wanted them, clung to them, shared with them, found solace in them. We spent two nights listening to each other's testimonies, becoming safe and invested with each other. It was beautiful. But it was not enough.

I wanted deep commitment. The upperclassmen began to arrive and I began to ache for home. Because though I had vulnerability with some people here, I had no history with them. They knew my story, but they had not lived it with me. Suddenly, the idea of family seemed very far away from here. For two weeks, I lost solitude, yet somehow still floundered in loneliness.

...

The signs started appearing around my third week: Life Group. Thursday night. 8:30. Room 425. I had plans with my brother that night and casually decided I probably wouldn't go, but by the time 8:30 on Thursday night rolled around, he was gone and I was free. I appeared at Room 425 before the Life Group leader did.

A few at a time, we all wandered into the most Pinterest-worthy room on Smith 4. Ana and Josie, the room's residents who I really only knew by face and name, had been roommates since freshman year and knew how to coordinate styles. Fairy lights lined the ceiling, plants stood in the window, gorgeous photography covered every wall. Everyone who entered murmured awe.

Josie, our Life Group leader, thanked us quietly and settled on the rug, waiting for everyone to arrive. She was this petite blonde and one of the upperclassmen who chipped at the wall between them and the freshmen. Her presence was easy, a comfortable place for our hearts to rest. This was the root of her beauty.

The first thing she did was ask us to tell her one delight and one struggle from our time at Moody, however long or short. In doing so, she pulled out a brick from the wall between all of us. As we went around the circle, every mask loosened and we learned each other in ways we hadn't before. One brick out of the dividing wall, one more added to the foundation of our community. I would build a history with these girls yet.

The culmination of the night, though, came in Josie's single statement: "I have been praying for you all by name since the beginning of the semester." By name. My heart was shaken by the joyful tenacity of her commitment to us.

By the end of the night, we had coffee plans.

...

I found myself in the coffee shop the next morning, waiting at the end of the counter, chilly on the first day of September. Ana and Ashleigh, upperclassmen who were hipster and gorgeous and totally unattainable, wandered in after me. I pulled out my phone and busied myself with nothing important, pretending that I didn't care whether or not they said hi.

I didn't want to be disappointed.

"Jessi!"

I turned, startled, and almost bumped into Ana, who was suddenly at my side and pulling me into a hug.

"How are you, sweetie? How's your day?"

Before I could answer, Ashleigh was holding out her arms to me, eager to embrace me next.

The walls were tumbling down.

...

"We have nothing on our bulletin board!" Savy lamented one afternoon.

What bulletin board? I rounded the corner to my room and there it was--a blank bulletin board at our end of the hall. "I'll decorate it, Savy, don't worry." I had no idea what I would do, but I could throw something together.

Later that night, it came to me and I enlisted the help of the floor for two weeks of creative process. By the end, we had a banner in five different styles of calligraphy, each letter done by a Smith 4 girl. I strung it up over the board and invited them to post their God-stories on it, for our mutual edification.

"Great is Thy faithfulness," it read.

...

"Hey, guys!" Kelsey stepped off of the elevator and greeted me and one of the other girls with genuine pleasure. Somehow this always surprised me. Nearly every time she saw me, she smiled like I had great value in her eyes, like our interaction brightened her day. And she did this with all of us. It was dawning on me that she truly, deeply loved us. "I'm going to the Harold Washington Library with Ben, do you guys wanna come? There's like a conservatory on the top floor."

I looked at Victoria. "I have work to do," she said. "But go ahead."

"I think I'll come," I said, and slipped off the couch.

"I've never been before," Kelsey said on the way down. "I didn't actually agree to go, he was just kinda like, 'Okay, meet you in the plaza!'"

I laughed.

"Ben's great, though," she continued. "He does crazy things. Like he'll be like, 'Let's go jump in the lake!' And I'm like, 'Ben, it's February!' But we did it." Somehow I could not reconcile this image. Kelsey was simultaneously a hopeless romantic and an adrenaline junkie; it made no sense to me. From the little I knew of Ben, though, I wasn't surprised that he could bring this out in people.

"Ah, you convinced one," he said as we met him.

"Didn't take much convincing," I said, smiling. Hang out with seniors in a library conservatory? They didn't have to ask me twice.

We jogged up the steps to catch the Brown Line and stood in the crowded train like city folks. I clung white-knuckled to the bar, while Ben and Kelsey stood on seasoned balance in the midst of our very own roller coaster ride. Kelsey asked questions, bridging the gap between a senior brother and a freshman sister with ease. For all my aching over home, there was something familial about this.

We reached our stop and descended into the bowels of the Harold Washington Library, a dark and ornate entrance hallway leading into even more grandeur. An elevator ride carried us past each level of more books than I could fathom, and opened on the top floor. I drew in a breath. This was the crowning glory of the building, probably the neighborhood, an oasis of sunlight and peace in the heart of Chicago. We settled in the shady osmosis between indoors and outdoors and pulled out our books.

I adore companionable silence, and for an hour, that's what we shared, connected and yet separate in our work. Ben's words broke the stillness: "You headed out?"

I looked up to see Kelsey packing up her things. "Yeah," she said. "My computer's not working, and I forgot I told my sister we'd do something this afternoon."

"Are you comfortable going back by yourself?" Ben was ready to pack up at a moment's notice, taking his role as our brother seriously.

"Yeah." She smiled him to at ease and walked away.

Not until she was out of sight did I fully comprehend that I was now alone with Ben. "Are you okay with this?"

"Yeah." Now he smiled. "Thank you."

We settled back into our work until he asked if I was ready to leave. I nodded and packed up, and as I followed him up to the railway platform, I had the fleeting sense that this was a taste of what it felt like to have an older brother.

...

"So I thought I'd take you to one of my favorite coffee shops." Josie and I were striding across campus in pursuit of friendship. She swore me to secrecy. Nothing was sacred in Chicago, and she didn't want a half dozen Moodies haunting her favorite spots every time she went.

Josie exuded humble wisdom. I wanted to sit at her feet and listen to all she had to say about the Lord and our relationship to Him. She had gushed at Life Group about how much she loved to pray and I wanted to know why. Thus, the coffee date.

We talked for an hour about boys and Jesus and college and family and why we were the way we were. She had insight on everything, though she would never have claimed to. The truth she spoke came from years of hard-winning, walking with God and learning through experience. And yet she was less than two years older than I.

"Okay," I said finally. "The real reason I wanted to have coffee with you was because the other night at Life Group, you said you loved to pray, and I have never been that excited about prayer. Why do you love it so much?"

"Wow, yeah." She sat back and pondered as I often saw her do. When someone asked her a big question, she was rarely quick to speak; instead, she furrowed her brow and searched for the answer. After a moment, she began to tell me how, as a girl, she had spent afternoons with her aunt being still and listening for God's voice, and then how she was challenged to use prayer as a weapon against Satan when she got to college. "I had a twenty-five-minute commute every day, and I just used that time to pray for people. And then I started seeing those prayers answered. Like, family issues resolved, and not always big things but I was seeing God move, and so...yeah. I just love to pray."

Her story stirred my heart. We finished our beverages and hopped on the train back to campus, to our ordinary lives, but that night, something was different.

That night, for the first time in a while, I desired to pray.

...

"Coffee date?" I slipped the notecard into the envelope outside my ARA's door, along with my number, and walked away to wait. My best friend had said once that my thing was coffee and Jesus. I was beginning to see just how right she was.

A few days later, Aria texted me: "Totally yes for the coffee date!" with several additional exclamation points. And then she asked for a time.

Trying to coordinate schedules with college girls is like trying to catch the one annoying fly in the room--you usually miss. After two weeks trying to set a date, we finally put it on the calendar, and then she asked me if I wanted to go on an adventure.

Oblivious, I said yes.

So she gave me directions to a coffee shop thirty minutes away from Moody and then told me she'd meet me there. Pretending I knew what I was doing, I agreed to this nonsense, with the whole hour-long safety briefing I had taken playing the back of my mind. But all the upperclassmen did it, so I could do it, too.

Saturday afternoon found me walking off campus, trying to be "confidently lost," as our Moody Public Safety officer had told us. Thankfully, Aria gave good directions. I made it there, all in one piece no less, and waited outside.

Aria had lived up to all that Kelsey said about her. She was wonderful. She was also adorable and came riding up on her bicycle. "Hey girl!" she said. Again, as with Kelsey, the swelling in my heart that she wanted to spend these hours with me. I stood and followed her inside. We ordered our drinks, which came to us in jars, and she produced a box from her backpack, containing a single brownie, which she set between us. "This is mostly for you," she said, and I tore it in half. We ate with sticky, unwashed fingers, and bonded.

She asked good questions. It seemed the trademark of the girls on my floor was a simple, genuine faith, a treasure in the midst of deep theological study. She spoke softly, humbly, of the things the Lord had taught her in her years at Moody, of a deep wrestling with Him and her own brokenness. My respect and even love for her increased in the listening.

The next morning, when she stepped off the elevator to find me reading my Bible in the lounge, she asked, "Is the Lord teaching you?"

And she stayed to talk about the answer.

...

Tonight, one month and two days after moving in, I'm sitting in the same lounge I had that first impression in, next to Kelsey. She is writing a paper and I am desperately trying to cram a whole month of life into one blog post, and this weekend, the first time, I felt like I could call this place home. Anna and Savy ran out an hour ago and attacked me with hugs, declaring how much they love me. I am still straddling the line between who I was and who I will be...but the Lord is teaching me that He will build this part of my life as He has all the others.

Great is His faithfulness.