This String of Ordinary Moments

One of my professor’s confided with my class in the first couple of weeks of the semester, “The days are long but the years are short.” Now, as the semester closes, I am realizing how right he must be.

People from home keep asking me to “tell them about school.” That’s such a sweeping request. Freshman year has so far felt as formative as kindergarten, difficult in all the same ways on a larger scale. It has uncovered a dozen character flaws, sent me to my knees begging God to show me how and in what areas to change, forced me to think differently than I ever have, challenged my worldview, confronted me with a myriad of priorities to choose from, and exhausted me in every way possible.

People from home also ask me how I am, and I almost always respond that I am tired.

The semester is almost over and I am both thankful and grieved. It means both sad endings and good beginnings. It means new depths to plumb and a whole lot of growth to process. It means a shift in responsibility.

For this week, it also means a lot of reading and studying and maybe a little stress…and some reflection. So here, dear readers, is a collection of stories from my first semester of college, extracted from a journal and compiled for your amusement and encouragement.

…

August 29th

My RA had this terrifying gift, to hold my gaze in silence, with no agenda. I flinched every time, waiting for her to speak...and sometimes she never did. So always I looked away.

But today, I fully comprehended it, that she did not fear the silence. So I sat on her couch, which she had named Leah after her first roommate, and when the conversation lulled and she still looked at me, I smiled and said, "You're not afraid of silence."

"No," she said, still meeting my eyes. "Well...what do you mean?"

"You can make eye contact and not say anything."

"Yeah..." She pondered this. "I think it's good to not have to fill the silence with anything."

"It's challenging," I said.

She nodded. "It is."

For the rest of the conversation, I tried to lock my eyes with hers as she did to me, studying them, the clarity and empathy of them. They call it opia--the ambiguity of looking someone in the eyes and feeling both invasive and vulnerable. I squirmed.

"Do I need to go?" I said, at one lull.

"No," she said, still settled and quiet, unfazed by my insecurities. "No, you do not.”

…

I came into the room, haphazard, gathering things. I had little time and places to be. And then I stopped. Something was different.

I hadn't made my bed this morning, for fear of waking Camryn. But the bed was made.

I snapped a picture, sent it to her, called her crazy. She had no idea what she had done. In one simple act of service, she had warmed my heart toward her. Kelsey had asked me who I thought my soul friends would be. In that moment, I wondered if Camryn just might make the list after all.

…

September 11th

“In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength…”

Everything moves so fast here. I'm learning to savor the moments of stillness. This is one of them. I'm sitting class on a break and hardly anyone is talking. We are calm. We are orienting. We are quiet. We are becoming confident.

I am drawing strength.

…

September 13th

A knock next door. Savy's voice, "Hello!"

And then Anna's voice: "'Ello, poppet!"

And both of them my age, Anna born in '98. '98! The year of college kids now. The freshman scales had fallen off of my eyes and now I saw:

I belonged.

…

Alyssa Button grasped my hand before I recognized her, in passing. I never even caught her face, but I knew that she loved me.

…

September 14th

I looked across at Kelsey after extended orientation, as the room cleared out, and asked, "Are we gonna find out about lead team soon?"

Almost before I finished, she nodded. "You're on lead team." I came to sit next to her on her bed, and she put a hand on my knee. "I wanted to do something cute to announce it, but, yes, you're on it."

The next day I came to my door and there was a bag of Trader Joe's peanut butter cups outside my door, wrapped in a note that said, "Jessi Bee, it's such a TREAT to have you on lead team!”

…

September 16th

I got myself into a debate with Ian at breakfast this morning. The entire time, it felt like I was digging myself a hole. But halfway through I realized he was demonstrating active listening better than I’d ever seen anyone do it before. His truth was seasoned with love. Gena watched the whole thing, which kept me humble.

When we all walked away, she said I’d done well

…

September 19th

Two nights ago, I posted on Instagram about Anna, Savy's best friend. Savy turned around in the hallway yesterday, looked me in the eye, and said, "Jessi, I love your Instagram. Like, I just really appreciate your heart for people."

My heart softened. I had been planning to post about her but hadn't known exactly what to say. This was fuel for my flames. I wrote the post an hour later.

That night, I sat in the lounge doing homework and Savy passed by. She said hey, and I could tell she hadn't read it. Thirty minutes later, she and Anna crept out from the hallway, crouched like raptors in all their craziness, sights trained on me.

Suddenly, I was engulfed in their hugs.

"We love you!" they shouted in unison. I smiled big and told them how they had made my day…

…

October 6th

Groups of two to three, Josie told us. Prayer groups. I could see what would happen: the freshman would go together and then Josie and Zsofie would be together. That was the plan in everyone's mind, the perpetual cycle.

So I decided to mix it up a bit.

"Zsofie," I said across the circle. "You wanna be my partner?"

She nodded and scooted over. We shared for a while, good things, heavy things, and then we prayed. I was too shy to ask if she would hold hands, so I bowed my head, closed my eyes, and put a hand on her knee.

In an instant, I felt her fingers grasping mine.

…

October  22nd

"Do you have people who call you out on things?" Aria asked over coffee. It was an interesting question, probably more important than either of us knew.

I thought for a moment. "Maybe some at home. But not here. I just don't think anyone at Moody knows me well enough."

She looked at me, smiling with excitement. "Let's get there," she said. I kinda couldn't believe it. I had seen the potential for friendship somewhere during our last coffee date, or maybe even that first time I learned how close we were in age. But somehow I didn't think it would happen, not like this. Yet here she was pursuing my mess. And thing was, she wasn't asking for it right then and there. She didn't need me to spill my guts all at once. She was asking to be in it for the long haul.

"What time do you wanna head back?" I asked a minute later.

"Oh." She checked her watch, having lost track. "Any minute now."

"Okay."

I bent to gather up my purse and before I came back up she asked, "But can I pray for you first?"

I was little taken aback, but I agreed, and slipped my hands into hers. Gently, earnestly, she asked God for the very friendship she had proposed, not a mentorship, not a temporary kinship, but a lasting, invested relationship. "An intentional spiritual friendship," my father called it later. She asked for wisdom for each other, the ability to see what needed to be challenged and encouraged in the other person. She asked for a deepening of love. It felt somehow covenantal, a deeper commitment than her words alone conveyed.

And in her asking, He moved.

…

October 29th

"I was thinking about you all morning, how wonderful you are." Gena’s words were sudden and sure, startling me a bit somewhere deep in my spirit. "And it just made me think--you know when you have a piece of jewelry that's so pretty and expensive that you love it and cherish it but almost don't know what to do with it? That's how you are." She came to a stumbling end, waking up to the reality that people don't usually express themselves to each other that way. And I didn't have the words to respond.

Because people don't usually express themselves that way--but I do. My heart communicates in the exact language of love she was speaking, and the dialect is a unique one. Like a sojourner hearing her native tongue for the first time in ages, I sat there both awash in relief and paralyzed by surprise. Sometimes I wonder if God intentionally makes me unable to articulate, so that I simply have to receive and not give in return.

The truth was, though, that in describing my effect on her heart, she had described hers on mine. Maybe that was the cause of my paralysis. Her words, her presence, were so exquisitely precious that I didn't know what to do with them. So I did the only thing I could: pulled her close and whispered thanks, cupping my hands to cherish the blessing God had lavished.

…

November 13th

At 9:08, I figured I had given her enough time to get back from whatever places she went before floor hours. That woman was always occupied with one thing or another. At 9:10, I knocked.

"Come in," said a voice. Either Kelsey was sick or that was not Kelsey.

I opened the door to find Meghan, Kelsey’s sister, perfectly at home in Kelsey's bed, looking like she'd been there all her life. "Is your sister around?" I asked.

"She's not," said Meghan.

"Do you know where she is?"

"I don't, actually." She frowned. "Sorry."

I smiled faintly and said some fumbling thing about messaging Meghan about coffee.

"Please do," she said.

"Goodnight," I responded, and let the door close, shaking my head at the small amusing twists God put before me.

…

November 15th

I was seated in the lounge, typing up a paper, when Gabrielle came out with her laundry. She was one of the faithful ones, who did laundry at least once a week, so the sight was not unusual and I paid her little heed. On her way back, she almost entered our hallway and then hesitated, suddenly alerting me to her presence.

She came over, pressed one key of my keyboard, and walked away, waving as she went.

…

November 20th

"You weren't in your room on Saturday!" Aria’s lament startled me a bit, coming as I got up to leave. 

"I mean, I'm glad you went home but..."

"Were you there?" I asked, frowning.

"Yeah," she said sadly.

"Why?" I asked, a little delighted that we were on this level.

She looked up forlornly. "I wanted you.”

…

"A boy leaves the home over his mother's dead body." Ben Swingle quoted this and I deeply resonated with it. Girls, too, struggle to truly leave home, even if we didn't live there anymore.

But he quoted it in reference to himself. Ben, who I thought of as a man, fully functioning in society. Visibly, by all accounts he was. And yet here he was confessing that he still had some growing up to do. It was at once immensely vulnerable and immensely comforting, because it meant I wasn't alone.

…

November 26th

My first night of homestretch discipline was interrupted by Kelsey's dormcoming, and I found myself in Chinatown past 9, a fly on the wall of a friendly adventure. I met Nate, Kelsey’s brother, and his roommate Drew. They are boisterous and brotherly and exactly as they should be. More perfect characters in this epic. I sipped jasmine tea and noted eye color and mannerisms and all the subtleties of siblinghood.

And I meant to write one sentence, but my life inspired too many words…

...

December 2nd

I stumbled upon Meg in the lounge, working hard on her doctrinal statements. I crashed down next to her and found myself enveloped in one of her enormous hugs. I stayed there for a long time. She kissed the top of my head and said, “You’ve grown so much.”