And Marvelous Things Were Born

January 3, 2018

They dropped me off and I felt every bit a blubbery mess. All the excitement I had cherished for the break’s entirety was gone, replaced by a longing to just go back home. I spent three hours in this state, alone, unsure of what to do. Finally, I gave in and texted Kelsey.

“Hey friend, are you around?”

An hour later, the response came: “Hey! Sorry, I was at dinner. What’s up?”

“You’re good!” I replied. “I was just seeing where people were at.”

“ARE YOU HERE?!!?!” Even through text, her words felt deafening.

“Yeah haha,” I typed back, as if I wasn’t equally as excited.

“Omg so fun!!!!” she said.

“Lol when I see someone it will be,” I said. “I don’t know where anyone is or what’s open.”

“I’m in my room for ten minutes,” she said quickly.

I set off down the hall.

She screamed when she opened her door. “Betz asked me if any of the girls were here,” she told me when the screaming had stopped. “And I said, ‘Jessi Bee, and I am dancing with happiness!’”

I smiled big. It wasn’t everyday somebody danced with happiness over me.

…

“Hudson, you’re a gem.” Victoria said it and I hadn’t realized until that exact moment how perfectly those words described him.

…

January 5, 2018

I don’t know what I expected. But it wasn’t this. I understand now why it’s so hard for Gena to transition here each semester. I spent all of my break longing to be here, just ready to be back, and now there are moments when everything in me wants to go home. I am magnetized to what is most familiar, and this is not familiar like it was when I left. There’s a new room, a new role, a new roommate, new students, a new floor dynamic, and all that was broken in has either been reset or is racing toward a goodbye.

It’s exhausting.

I feel stuck on, lonely and surrounded all at once. I can’t sleep. Yesterday was one of the most draining days I’ve experienced in my time at Moody. I remembered again how much I hate small talk and experienced a dozen awkward moments that make me want to hide under the covers, never to come out. I feel like I have to be not a real person for the freshman, above them somehow, the way Kelsey and Sarah Youssef felt to me when I got here, and still feel sometimes. Leadership has always felt like an act of unattainability to me. I have to look like I’ve arrived, even when I haven’t.

That’s the bad. Those are the things I am mourning and muddling through. But I have a great deal of faith that the good will continue to outweigh it.

…

“Do you feel worse?” I studied Kelsey’s swollen, sniffling face.

She nodded.

“Great,” I said, chuckling. That, and I hadn’t slept much last night. We were a pathetic welcoming committee, the ailing RA and her sleep-deprived assistant. And yet, the freshmen would come anyway. We could not call in sick today.

Despite all this, we could smile. We ate breakfast together, just us, and I spent most of it making her laugh. We would make it through the day.

We sat in the lounge for hours, just waiting, resetting things, fixing what had been neglected before. There was a quiet sweetness to joining her in the wait that she had so recently performed for me. I didn’t mind that they took a while.

Finally, though, the first girl arrived. Tracey, with her family and a few student leaders, dragging two carts. We shook hands all around, introduced ourselves. She apologized for the amount of stuff; we assured her it was only normal. The whole time there were knots in my stomach. I wondered if I could possibly be as nervous as she was.

The second girl, Hajin, arrived right after, no family, one cart, only eight days in the States from China. We led her to her room and by the time we left, she was hugging us.

We plopped down in the lounge once more, a little less miserable. “I feel better now,” Kelsey said. “Now that all my chicks are here.”

…

“ARE YOU HERE YET??” I texted Trevor, bored out of my mind. Once her “chicks” had arrived, Kelsey had decided to take a nap. I had tried to do the same and found myself unable to quiet my thoughts. Trevor’s train had been delayed three hours, but he was due to arrive any minute. I wanted to see him.

He called me. “Hey,” I said.

“Hey, so, I’m in Chicago, but my Uber was driving all over creation and I was like, ‘I ain’t waiting for you.’ So I canceled it and now I’m walking.”

“What?” The bitter cold of Chicago winters had set in and I was certain he should not be walking in it for that long.

“I’ll be there soon.”

“Okay,” I said. “Text me when you get here.”

He finally arrived and I met him in the arch, brimming with excitement. Finally, people were returning! Trevor and I had commiserated over break about how much we missed being here; the thought rarely left our minds. But I had realized that being here without all our people didn’t fulfill my longings. The swelling in my heart at each reunion would be hard to contain.

…

“Alexander!” I called my brother RA on my way into the dedication service, but he didn’t hear or see me in the throng of people. I watched him pass and realized he looked rather haggard, eyes bloodshot, beard untrimmed. Kelsey had told me he had spent most of his break in Indonesia. Jet lag, I realized.

I took a seat by myself. I had been to the dedication service a semester ago but hadn’t had the presence of mind to take it all in then. Still, sitting here, I looked a lot like one of the freshmen, all by myself and unsure where to go. Not much had changed, it seemed.

Alexander took his place standing a few yards away and I rose to stand beside him. Better that than sitting alone. Kelsey had texted me but I didn’t see her anywhere. I touched Alexander’s shoulder.

“Hey!” he said, turning around and opening his arms for a hug. I embraced him briefly and smiled.

I had missed this.

…

“You are not here by accident.” President Nyquist had said the same thing to my class last semester. “There will be moments,” he told the new students, “when you feel like that isn’t true. But every semester, we survey the applicants and we say, ‘Lord, you choose.’”

As if for the first time, I found myself realizing he was right. There had been moments, many moments, of wondering if I had been placed here on purpose, if I was truly living where I was meant to be. Even this week, the thought had crossed my mind. But here he was telling me all over again that I belonged.

This time I believed him.

…

I stepped into the elevator, fobbed, and pressed the button for four.

It didn't light up.

I pressed again and the elevator moved. The button still didn't light, so I pressed again and again, until the mammoth machine passed my floor. I looked up and watched the floor numbers pass. Five. "Stop." Six. "Please stop." Seven. "No, no, no, please!"

Eight.

Sarah Youssef's apartment.

The door opened to reveal Rachel Monfette, the Associate Dean of Students, and I'm nearly certain that I turned pink.

"Sarah, it's here!" called Rachel to my resident supervisor, whom everyone held in high esteem. Then she asked, "Can you hold it for a second? Sorry, I didn't expect anybody to be in here."

"It's all good," I said, holding the door and my breath.

Rachel went to Sarah's door. "Sarah, they're fine, c'mon."

A moment later, Sarah appeared. "Hi, Jessi," she said, stepping lightly into the elevator, acting as if it were ordinary to me here. "Sorry, I was just worried my pants looked like leggings."

We began the ride down and I tried the button again. Sarah recognized my predicament, having recently experienced it herself, and tried to help me. Our efforts were vain, however, and we reached the ground floor.

The door opened again, this time to a young woman with luggage. Sarah continued to fiddle with the button. Moved with pity, I said to the young woman, "If it doesn't work, I will help you carry those up the stairs."

"Aw, you're an angel!" Sarah said, finally giving up. "Rachel, this is the one I was telling you ab--" She was interrupted by more discussion about the elevator, but I was touched. She had caught me a moment of kindness, rarely pure. Often, I was kind out of a desire to do my job well; this time, it was a true, natural impulse of my heart. I couldn't believe it. I had earned her favor in a genuine act, and I praised God that He had allowed such a miracle.

…

January 8, 2018

“Thanks for being such an awesome friend,” I said after Kelsey and I looked up from praying. I had finally confessed that I felt overwhelmed and she had held my hands and asked God for rest. My appreciation for her was changing, deepening already.

“Jessi, I don’t feel like I have been an awesome friend. I feel like I just dropped you here and left you to do it all by yourself!”

The hurt rose up again and I didn’t know how to say, “Yeah, I feel like that, too” without sounding like it negated my first statement. It didn’t. I still thought she was awesome. Voicing offense to someone I looked up to was a struggle. But somehow in her acknowledgment, a weight was lifted. It was real. I didn’t have to feel pathetic or needy. To feel neglected was, in a way, valid. I squirmed in the reality that I had no reason to apologize.

“I think we maybe just need to get better at communicating,” I said.

“Yeah, I think you’re right,” she said, holding my gaze, searching my soul. “I think that could be a good learning experience for both of us.”

I felt both honor and relief. She wanted to learn with me. She wanted to work with me. She was not checked out in this last semester and she was not neglectful. My desire for communication and growth would be equally met.

I had told her earlier in the week that I was excited to serve her, and meant it. As I got ready for bed, I remembered what I had said and realized it was still true: I was still excited to serve her, this time in truer, deeper ways that acknowledged our imperfections. Sarah had told the incoming students that hospitality and community were hard and messy, and I had known on one level that she was right. Tonight, I had reached a new level. Yes, it was hard and messy, but that was real life. The loveliness of it was not undone even in the difficulty.

The next day, classes started and I sat under a professor who spoke of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theology of community. “That’s how you’re gonna grow,” he said. “With a roommate and a floor and a bro-sis that’s dysfunctional. With a family that’s dysfunctional. We are all dysfunctional. It’s messy. But marvelous things happen as we engage with the messiness and dysfunction.” I gathered this truth to myself, held it close and examined it in the light of all I had experienced in the last week. Marvelous things. From the ugly reality of exhausted sinners, marvelous things would come. I was digging deeper and deeper into the truth that “awesome friendship” was defined not by perfect, unbroken affection, but by the loving of another even in imperfection and brokenness.

In the face of this definition, I knew that Kelsey and I were finding just such a thing.

…

Kelsey pulled my hand close to read the words on the bracelet, the gift from Gena to remind me of my worth: I am strong, I am worthy, I am loved, I am enough. Knowing better than most the state I had been in this week, she squeezed my wrist gently and said, "That's perfect for you."

…

January 13, 2018

"Jessi Bee," said Sam, grinning and fixing his eyes on me in his easy, brotherly way. "You look marvelous.”

…

January 23, 2018

Breaking the stillness of the lounge in the afternoon, I heard a gasp from the hallway, alarming me slightly. But then I heard the exclamation that followed:

"Our trash chute's fixed!"

I sighed with relief. That chute had been broken for a month.

This was proof that there was a God in heaven.

...

January 31, 2018

My first semester had been one of bliss and beginnings. My love for Moody had swelled big until it was the only place in the world I wanted to be.

And then I came back. This semester, grades dropped and struggles resurfaced and frustration haunted me at every turn. Change swirled all around the student body, threatening and uncertain. Some days, I ran ragged, failing to catch my breath. My love felt cracked, fractured by a hundred unmet expectations.

But it was still love. I couldn't deny that. Regardless of what I felt some days, I still wanted to be here, in the deep, rooted way that I wanted Jesus even on days when everything in me squirmed to get away. Here was where He called me to be, not by accident. And here I would stay.

I sat in chapel this morning, hearing the call to stay from a woman who knew what staying really meant. She had been burdened for missions ten years ago and today told us how cool she thought it would be to say that she was on furlough and would be going back soon to her job overseas. But she didn't say that. Instead, she described how she had graduated from Bible college only to spend years working at Starbucks and waiting for God to tell her it was time to go. One day He asked her: "What would you be doing if you were overseas?"

She responded with enthusiasm. "I would be helping kids and feeding people and leading Bible studies, in big groups, or little groups, or whatever You want, Lord!"

And the Lord asked her, "Are you doing that now?"

As she recounted her story, I felt the question shake my own heart. Are you doing that now? Are you doing ministry to those around you now? Are you cultivating your relationship with Jesus now? Are you building good skills and habits now? Are you preparing for whatever plans God may have in the future, now? So often Moody students talk about that glorious day when we will go out and live "real" lives. The Lord's question made me wonder if today might be as real a day as I'd ever get.

I was convicted, scribbling quotes and verses onto the pages of my journal. I wanted to be faithful in the staying, in this moment. Truly, this moment was all I would ever have. Around me, others felt the same. We were called here, now, however painful, however mundane it proved to be. It reminded me of Dr. Baker's declaration that "marvelous things" happen in the dysfunction of everyday life. Out of my exhaustion, out of the pain and stress around me, marvelous things would be born.

Staying meant seeing them come to life.