God-Worshipping

By attending a Christian college, college was a great life phase for me. Don't get me wrong... Christian colleges aren't anywhere near perfect, and actually if it occurred at a secular college, it happened at our school-even if it was in a very small diluded amount. Many great things happened to me during that time... I developed wonderful friendships, grew and stretched spiritually, blossomed from child to young adult, met my husband, completed 5 very hard years accademically... the list could go on. Also, there were the trying times, the times that I hit a brick wall in front of me, causing me to learn to trust God more than I could ever even imagine. There were plenty of tears too, loosing my first "love"- the guy that I thought I was supposed to marry, a unpleasent diagnosis of an anxiety disorder and depression, failures, and what not.

I attended a church about 30 minutes away... lots of my classmates did too. It was a "college church" as I often called it. You could tell when school was in session, and when it wasn't... the attendence was a dead give away. I fell in love w/ the church, and eventually after my husband and I married we stayed at that church. The thing that I learned that first summer that Shawn and I were married is how in a "college church" a young married couple could fall in the cracks. There was no place for us... we couldn't fit easily into a Sunday school class yet because there was a gap... some was church made, some where made by our own thinking. Honestly though, our age group really did dissapear during the summer. Luckily later, I was able to reach out, make friends, and find our "place" in the church, we were no longer "seasonal attenders" but active members.

Before this acceptance though it was tough. Because of Shawn's jobs there were many Sunday's that first summer in which he couldn't attend worship with me. I remember plenty of Sundays with and without Shawn that we could enter and exit main doors of the church, and not be noticed. No smiles, no hellos, no nothing... if we missed a Sunday, noone questioned us, we were really that missable. There was one family though... one week it started w/ a smile, the next a hello, nothing major, but it meant everything to me at the time... someone actually cared. Could it be that this could be the beginning of a "church family" for us, while we were so far from our own family? That family was the Mark Angel family... honestly that one family helped me not to loose faith in the church... we were noticed, and honestly b/c of these small encounters I was able to start reaching out to others in the church to start developing relationships. The smiles, the hellos, the brief conversations helped me to break out of my shell. No our families were never super close, but they meant so much more to me than they could possibly every know. I watched Mark and his family, how they interacted w/ each other and others. Sadly, I heard the news late last night that while Mark was leading a mission trip to Mexico he drowned in the gulf of Mexico Sunday, caught by a rip tide. My heart is breaking for his wife and their 4 year old daughter, but I honestly believe that Mark is dancing in Heaven right now, after hearing the voice of the Almighty saying, "Good job my good and faithful servant!"