I went up to Covenant yesterday to meet the always-wonderful-to-hang-out-with Peri to go for a spontaneous run around campus. The air was cold, it was cloudy, but the trees…oh, the trees…still managed to shine some light on us as we ran and it was GORGEOUS. I hadn’t really noticed that fall foliage had arrived until I drove up Lookout Mountain with my mouth open. I love fall.
We managed to get in some good conversation despite our huffing and puffing up the hills with half frozen lungs, and we also did some quiet walking and lots of stretching. It was sort of bizarre to be running around my ex-college while whining about how we were going to be into our MID-TWENTIES soon and noting every 5 minutes the fact that we didn’t recognize anyone on campus.
We caught what we thought was the last of the soccer game, saw a few fellow alumni and those left behind. Lately I’ve found myself feeling so incredibly glad I am out of Covenant, but yesterday I stood there in the freezing cold wind listening to the siblings of my graduated friends cheer, “Ohhh CC, ohhh CC” to the Scots on the field, heard the familiar whistle blowing, and all of the sudden there was an ache for that place. As we’d walked to the game, Peri goes, “I am drinking tea and walking around Covenant, when was the last time THIS happened?” And I agreed. It’s the little things we miss. The way the buildings used to look. The old Carter Circle. Drinking coffee in the library. Cheering at a soccer game. I’m all grown up now, and all my friends are moving in different directions to the military, to missions, to jobs in other cities, to marriage…it all makes me ache inside, to be back together at Covenant making it the Covenant Peri and I knew. Not the Covenant it is now. The people are different, the culture somewhat different (although we did see some guys battling with some kind of sword out on Brock lawn- oh, Covenant), and even the buildings different. My hall no longer has random paintings from previous students and carpet in the rooms and the same color hallway. Now it’s just a stage on which memories flood out and play out in my head when I go back and visit.
Even when I start to get all achy and sentimental and pensive (what a great word), I always feel this thankfulness too. I walked back from the soccer game slowly because of my frozen limbs and I just got the urge to say, “Hey God, you did a lot here the past four years. Thanks.” I can’t even list all the ways I grew, changed, learned, all the experiences I had, all the meaningful conversations that were spoken, all the lifelong friends I made, all the ways I found myself and God while at Covenant. No one knows but Him anyway. As I gear up to start the loan payments next month (insert horrifying scream here), I remember that you really can’t buy that kind of growth and that God knew exactly what he was doing. And every experience is different. Covenant’s not for everyone, but it was for me. The good and the bad, the pain and the joy, the stressful and the peaceful.
I hope that the next 4 years are as full and as meaningful. All I have to do to get the courage to continue on the road I’m on now is to look back at the last snaky and sometimes road that led to a pretty darn good place: here.
