Encouraged

In my short time as an SAU alumna, I have made several trips back to my alma matter. (It helps that my sister is a sophomore there and so I have at least excusable reasons other than homesickness to venture back as often as I do/have.) But I always try to make the most of my trips on the campus that is still familiar and comfortable if not quite still mine, if no longer quite home. With connections to people on faculty and staff and students freshmen through super-senior, there is any number of people I could run into, recognize, purposefully seek out, spend meaningful time with.

I think my favorite part has been that selfish part of me that doesn’t need the recognition but appreciates the affirmation and the acceptance. I do try to be intentional with my visits. To connect with people I may have missed the last time around. But I am always amazed by the people who find me first. In the last few visits I have laughed: “I am WAY more popular as has-been then I EVER was a student!” I can’t think of a visit where someone(s) – and sometimes someone(s) I would have not at all expected – has not seen me and I am greeted with a face that was lit up. With an “Anika! You’re here! It’s SO good to see you!” With a hug.

In the awkward land of “so now you’re a college graduate”...a land that college students realize is coming and hope will never happen to them...a land where even the most basic experienced community is ripped from underneath of them and disconnect is a painful reminder that four years is plenty long and never long enough...these pieces come as welcome and needed respites from day-to-day life. I come back from SAU notoriously exhausted with a spirit that’s curiously light.

I easily forget what it is like to be around people who affirm your personhood...just for being you. I forget the importance of former professors and bosses and advisors who are still eager to be involved in your life and to speak truth into it. I forget that feeding into people in little ways has this way of feeding back into you. I forget that there is freedom in being known and still loved...even and despite the deals and messes in your life. I forget the power of asking people where God is working in their lives and being uplifted by the accountability and strength in the answers. I forget that God shows up somehow clearer in the faces of fellow believers who together seek to mirror Christ in their lives.

And those things, those people, encourage me. The reminders of things so easily forgotten encourage me. I am reminded of how much I love people...and that endeavoring towards ministry I can’t articulate isn’t stupid. I’m reminded that there are people who ask real questions and stick around to hear real answers. I am reminded that I am part of a bigger picture...and that I can’t sit in my brokenness without recognizing the brokenness in the lives of others. I am reminded of things I shouldn’t need to be reminded of...like the fact I have an intrinsic worth as the daughter of the King too. It is easy to be okay being an involuntary celebrity when the encouragement reminds me of the joy that is already mine...

Something tells me that this marked way that encouragement is a natural response to the life we live and the people we interact with is part of the way things were meant to be. I feel...blessed...to be a recipient of it and only hope I reciprocate in such a way as to be part of the strengthening of the Body as whole...

“Therefore, encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.”
1 Thessalonians 5:11