Columbus Marathon

After homecoming I spent Saturday night at Ben and Gumi’s house. I was planning to drive home the next day, but not until I cheered Gumi on as she ran her 4th half marathon. It was gorgeous and the runners ran around the park that was down the street from Gumi’s house. So Sunday morning I woke up and walked down to watch the runners.

I was there for about a hour before I saw Gumi, but I was enjoying watching the runners and taking pictures. When I expected Gumi to run by it was a populated running time, so I was worried I wouldn’t see her, but luckily we were both looking for each other and she shouted out to me. Of course by then I wanted to cheer her on and I was too caught off guard to take a picture!

I don’t know what it is about marathons, but they make me emotional. As I’m walking around and watching the participants, there were times that I thought “I can’t cheer because if I do I’m going to start crying!” I think completing any kind of race is a huge accomplishment. People train long and hard to participate and they make sacrifices along the way to do so. It’s such a joyful experience to finish and say “I just did that!” Another emotional aspect was that the Columbus Nationwide Children’s Hospital sponsored the race. Every mile represented a child that did/does require medical attention. The day before I was reading through the paper they provide each participant and it shared each child’s struggle and story. I can’t imagine running that race and running past or high-fiving one of these kids as they cheered me on. What a privilege.

Right by Gumi’s house was Mile 11, the Angel Mile, representing all the children that have passed away. At this mile, parents of these passed children are cheering for the runners. Seriously, I would have cried. How encouraging to have these families cheer you on through your struggle (if I was running the half on that up hill mile, I definitely would have hit my wall and wanted to stop), knowing they have struggled through so much more, but they wanted to cheer you on as you run in honor of their children. Wow.

After the race I picked Gumi up at the finish line and got to hear all about her experience. After a shower and some relaxation, her husband and nephew got back to the house (they were filming the race) and we all went out to lunch to celebrate and hang out. And then I had to drive the 8 hours back to Princeton alone. But it was totally worth it to be able to see my friends and to cheer Gumi on!

Taylor Homecoming 2014

A week and a half ago was my 5 year college reunion at Taylor University. For months I contemplated whether or not I should go. I hadn’t been back since graduating and I wanted to see people, but the thought of traveling 11 hours each way sounded daunting. About a week before homecoming, I found out two of my roommates were going and at that point I couldn’t not go.

This summer when I read Bittersweet by Shauna Niequist, she emphasized the importance of friendship. She said, “Get up, make a phone call, buy a cheap ticket, open your front door. Because there really is nothing like good friends, like the sound of their laughter and the tones of their voices and the things they teach us in the quietest, smallest moments.” It gave me motivation to make more of an effort to see my friends, regardless of the time and money involved, and this was the perfect opportunity to make it happen.

So a week before homecoming I presented this idea to Chris and he was not so excited about driving 22 hours in 3 days, but eventually gave in as he saw how important is was for me to see my friends (and in the end he got to see his friends too). I also wanted him to get to know my friends as well as see where I went to school.

So on a Friday after work we made the 8 hour drive to Columbus, Ohio to stay with my roommate Megumi and her husband Ben. Saturday morning we got up and made the 3 hour drive to Taylor. When we got there we registered and then headed over to the alumni lunch. Everyone was in one big tent, but there were different sections for each reunion class. We got over to our section and only saw a few people. We thought it was early and that more people might show up, but then we started realizing that not many people would be coming, which really bummed me out. Part of the reason I wanted to go back was to see a bunch of people, but that didn’t happen. I get it. A lot of people just had babies, they live far away, they had plans that weekend, or they didn’t come because the weather was crappy that day. It’s the realization that what we had in college will never happen again, even though you hope for the reunions to be a little reminder of what we had in college. While I was disappointed, I had to remind myself that the main reason I went was to spend time with my best friends.

After lunch we walked around campus so Megumi could see one of her professors. There we met up with Brook and Eric, which was great to have a few minutes to chat just the four of us (while Gumi and Ben chatted with her prof) since Chris and Eric had never met. Then we all headed over to the football game. We stayed for about 15 minutes and then watched the halftime performance by the dance team, which they did not have when we were there (hence why we wanted to stay and see what it was all about).

After sitting on blankets on wet benches and still getting our pants soaked (it looked like we peed our pants), we decided to leave the game and walk around campus. We cut through the Dining Commons to get out of the rain and to peek at the changes when we ran into some friends from 3rd West. It so was fun to actually see people we hung out with in college and catch up with them for a few minutes. Then we headed over to see the new dorm, which has this crazy bridge-waterfall action going on. So cool! Then we headed over to our dorm, Olson Hall, to have a look around. It’s funny to walk through the dorms and realize how gross they actually are, with garage and unwashed dishes out in the hallway. I’m sure we were like that too and didn’t notice because it was normal then, but going back now it’s gross. It was also interesting to walk down our old hall and see almost all the doors closed. In college we just left our doors open, even sometimes when we went to class, because it allowed for more socializing. Maybe that is still normal on weekdays or on other weekends besides Homecoming, but it just felt weird.

Hanging out with Grace Olson. Note to self: work on posture so you don’t look pregnant.

After we headed over to the new science building, which was amazing! It was massive and beautiful. We went into some of the classrooms and just sat and talked in the comfy chairs, eating the snacks left in there from a meeting earlier in the day. After leaving the science building we drove past our house senior year, which is now a parking lot to a new apartment building (sad), and then headed over to Ivanhoe’s, the local hangout with awesome ice cream! While the salad I always got wasn’t as good as I remembered (I play things up way too much in my head) the ice cream was still amazing!

After Ivanhoe’s, we dropped Chris back off at Taylor because his college friends were coming to pick him up. I’m glad he got to spend some time with his friends, but it stunk for me because I had to drive 8 hours home by myself (but I did it! It was the longest I’ve ever driven alone). Of course the boys where so late that we got all the way back to Columbus before they got to Taylor. Yes, that is three hours late.

So overall it was a great time with my friends, but a little disappointing on the reunion end of things. It’s hard to reunite with people when they don’t show up, but it was still fun to see the changes on campus and show Chris around my old stomping grounds. Plus, this trip opened up the discussion of doing another trip for New Year’s, so yay to more friend time. We are even Skyping tonight to figure out the details 🙂

Deep Impact 2014

The first weekend of October we hosted Deep Impact, an in-town retreat, for the youth group. Every year we have done this retreat differently, but this year seemed to work the best. Because we had one speaker, all the students were at the church for meals and the speaker sessions and then we split off by grade to different houses for the sleepovers.

The topic this year was God & Sex. As adult leaders, we thought this was an important topic because we live in a very sexualized world, yet it is a topic rarely talked about in the church, and when it is talked about, it is usually negative. Our goal for the weekend was to start the conversation on sex in a safe environment for the students to learn and ask questions and I think that was accomplished.

Our speaker was Jason Soucinek with Projectsix19. Jason speaks regularly in churches and schools on the topic of sex and everything that comes with that topic. At the very beginning he started by asking the students how the world views sex (just physical, it’s everywhere, do whatever you want, etc.) and then asked how the church views sex (don’t do it before marriage, it’s a bad thing, etc.). Then he went to the Bible and described how God created sex in Genesis. He created it as a very good and pleasurable act between a husband and wife. He showed how God created us sexual beings before we were sinful. He explained how God created sex to be pleasurable, for procreation, and for our protection. Sex is so much more than a physical act. It is emotional and spiritual as well. The Bible says “the two become one” showing how sex welds two people together in a strong and powerful way. If that bond is broken, there is a lot of hurt and pain from the ripping apart of two that were welded together, which is why marriage is the safest place to have sex.

I was really excited for this topic of conversation among my sophomore girls because we had this conversation last year, and while I explained a lot of the same things Jason did, I don’t think they saw where I was coming from. Because this weekend provided more time for explanation and conversation, it allowed my girls to really think about the importance of sex and how they want to live that out in their lives. At the end of the weekend we were discussing what we learned and what was most impactful and I was so encouraged that my girls where taking this topic seriously and I could start to see their views changing to be more like God’s view. I seriously wanted to run out of the church doing fist pumps I was so excited. As an adult leader, the most encouraging thing to witness is your students engaging and growing.

I think the biggest message that Jason communicated is that we should live a life in obedience to Christ. When we are seeking to be in a relationship with God and desiring to be obedient to Him, everything else will fall into place. Does that mean that waiting until marriage to have sex will be easy. Absolutely not! One thing he kept saying is that what surrounds the “no” is a greater “yes”. So while we might choose to say no to something, even for a period of time, the result is a greater yes in our obedience to God. This made me realize that while there are so many topics I could talk about with my girls, the most important thing is for them to seek obedience in their relationship with Christ. So right now I want to focus with them on being confident in their identity in Christ, in who God created them to be. I think when they discover how precious they are to God and refute some of the lies they believe about themselves, that they will have a greater desire to be in relationship with Him and then be obedient to Him.

Not only did we have great conversations, but we also had a ton of fun! In the evening we had a sleepover with our grade (8 girls, 3 boys, Chris and I) and it was a great bonding time as a group. After arriving at the house we got snacks and then debriefed the first speaker session. After debriefing we played games for 2 hours and we laughed so much. First we played Fish Bowl and then we played Therapist, which definitely got the most laughs. One round our problem was everyone with blue eyes flirted with the therapist and everyone with brown eyes was mean. That got some hilarious responses when the therapist asked if we liked his shirt haha. After the game, the boys went downstairs to sleep and us girls started She’s the Man, the best sleepover movie ever! This was also my secret weapon to get them to fall asleep or at least be quiet 🙂

Another great component of the weekend was a Saturday night seminar with the parents where Jason shared advice on how to raise your children in a sexualized world. While I am not a parent, there was a lot of great information that I want to store up for the future (aka I wrote it down so I won’t forget).

Overall this was an awesome weekend of learning, good conversation, and fun bonding time! And it makes me even more excited for the time I have with my girls this year.