here we are and there we go...

I graduate from college in 6 days. 6 days. That's it. In 6 days, I embark on a new journey. I am scared and excited and sad and overwhelmed. I know that this is how it is supposed to be. This is the plan that God has for my life, but I've become so comfortable where I am. I was meant to spend 4 years here, and I have done that. My life must continue. Mars Hill has become my home.

I've always considered home to be the place where you have most of your memories, most of your friends, and the place where you leave most of your heart, and, for right now, that place is Mars Hill. There is something about the way the entire campus turns bright orange and red in October, and the way it turns into a cornucopia of color in March...but, most of all, there's something about the way a professor from a freshman year gen. ed. course still remembers your name when you see him in the cafeteria. That, my friends, is home.

Home, to me, is a place where one can grow and struggle and cry and laugh and change. Most of all of those, I have changed. I never like embracing change, in fact, I tend to be quite opposed to it, but the changes that have taken place in me have made me a better person. I love not because I am supposed to, but because I need to. I care not because someone in Sunday School told me to, but because I want to. I give not because it's "the right thing to do" but because my time and money cannot be better spent otherwise. That, my friends, is home.

The love that I have experienced on this campus has taught me how to love. My brilliant roommate wrote an incredible facebook note all about love. About seeing God in people's character, not in the celestial greatness above us. I like to think of God as being synonymous with upper-case "L" love. God is Love. I have learned to see Love in the eyes of a homeless man when I give him my carry-out that I probably wasn't going to eat anyway...I have learned to see Love in the eyes of the drug addicted men and women attending church and finding peace outside of dependency. So much of this newly acquired vision is because of Mars Hill. That, my friends, is home.

It is hard to say, but we are merely nomads in this life. In 6 days I'll move on to a new home. Somewhere else where I can learn and grow and change into someone even better, even greater. But, I can guarantee, that none of that could happen without the foundation that Mars Hill has created. To all my friends, professors, and colleagues, thank you. You, my friends, are home.