Recently I have attended some of my favorite Christian club meetings and gatherings for the last time until September 2017. These nights were full of mixed emotions, from sadness that I will be leaving, to excitement for what lies ahead, to joy that I just get to spend at least one more night with these friends who have become like family and Christian mentors who have always had some piece of wisdom, and made themselves available to be a listening ear, or made themselves available to be a Christian sounding board in my life.
This past Friday I attended my last Jersey Cru meeting for at least a year and a Christian staff couple was wished goodbye as they embarked on their new calling to serve with the humanitarian arm of Cru, GAIN, after serving with the campus staff team for 12 years. One of the staff members wishing them well reminded several of us who came from colleges in south Jersey that this couple was the reason we were all at Jersey Cru in the first place.
God gave me this moment to think back on how true that statement was. Two years ago as a new Christian with high hopes, I rode in a car packed with new acquaintances who would become lifetime friends, none of us knowing quite what to expect. We knew it would be a Christian gathering of students coming from across the state to learn about and worship God, but that was about it. Matt Baehr (the husband in the couple I mentioned above) just told one of my best friends Alex to come out and bring some people from Stockton Christian Fellowship (SCF), so that’s what we did.
When I got there, I was surprised at the enormity of how many Christians were in one lecture hall, how powerful the worship music was, and how each talk brought me closer to God. I had experienced something similar when I was invited to SCF the first time, but experiencing it on a larger scale for the first time was an entirely different thing.
I made new memories, I cemented new friendships, and most importantly, I experienced God in a whole new way.
Sending Matt and Heather Baehr off to work at GAIN this past Friday night brought me to tears as I was reminded that without them, none of us would have been there. Thinking about what I was like when I first came to Jersey Cru two years ago, I was a new Christian, somewhat like a young deer: Quiet, uncertain, wobbly in my faith, but finally starting to stand on firm ground, yet all the while eager to grow and to experience more of God. I compared that to who I have become since then: More talkative, more firm in my faith, more confident in who God created me to be, more separated from the sins of my past, more bold, and less afraid. My last night at Cru, I cried tears of joy for what God has done with me in 2 short years and how much more He’s going to change me while I’m away, mixed with tears of sadness that I won’t have Stockton Christian Fellowship, Ratio Christi, Newman Club, or Jersey Cru as a support system for this next year of my life.
But looking back at how much I have grown in just 2 short years also makes me smile at how far I’ve come and how much farther my Father in Heaven is going to pursue me and change me for the better while I’m away and for the rest of my life. And that’s something I can’t wait to see, looking back on this moment someday and seeing how much I’ve grown from now.
I went from lost, to a new Christian, to firm in faith, to a missionary as of this upcoming August. Whenever I mess up these days, and of course I still mess up because I’m human, my Father in Heaven calls me redeemed. He calls me chosen, and loved, and daughter. He has created me in His image. And now is the time to step out in faith and learn what it truly means to find my identity in Christ and not in things of this world.
2 Corinthians 4:18 “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (NIV).
1 John 2:17 “The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever” (NIV).
