Judge’s story

Being the first one in my family to go to college made me feel that there were a lot of unspoken hopes and expectations placed on me as I entered Berkeley. I had become a Christian in 8th grade, and I came to Berkeley that August holding tight to the notion that my life was simply about the personal relationship I had with God, that I really didn’t need very deep relationships with other people, and never really would.

When I checked into Unit 1 Freeborn I was immediately greeted by Tom, and along with Matt and Franklin. Though they may have been a little startled at my spiked black hair, black clothes, and earrings, they were the most welcoming people I had met so far. I joined these seniors to church on my first Sunday in Berkeley and I began to notice that something was different about the way people at Gracepoint lived their lives. Pastor Ed Kang’s messages were encouraging, but I would tune out whenever something challenging came up because I figured I had already dealt with that.

Sophomore year I was back in the dorms with Josh as my roommate. We fought a lot during this year, including one memorable episode where I pulled him off the top bunk and he threw a book at my head, but all in all this was the year where I really began to feel convicted about my character and see the need for other people in my life. Up until this point I had been planning on graduating in three years and getting a cushy government job somewhere. My perspective was a very selfish one, equating success in worldly endeavors with God’s blessing, and my faith was extremely shallow as a result. Throughout my second year, I started to see that our church really believed there was something higher to live for than what this world had to offer. Yet, in spite of all I saw I clung to the idea that I might be an exception and could indefinitely live following my own path and never putting down roots. This all began to change when my mom was admitted to the hospital with a severe abdominal infection and had to have emergency surgery to save her life. I flew home to Palm Springs and spent the next two weeks in critical care with her as she recovered. During that time I received hundred of emails from our church members, many of whom I had never met but who were praying for us nonetheless. Esther called almost everyday to see how we were holding up, and these phone calls became a source of strength, reminding me of the community I had in Berkeley.

I spent the summer of my junior year abroad and away from our church for the most part. When I returned for senior year I was still not fully committed to Gracepoint Fellowship Church and the biblical vision we carried out. Fall semester was consumed by grad school apps, and my leaders and peers began to notice how far my heart was drifting. At a time when my heart was drifting away from commitment to our church, God used my non-Christian professor whom I had many conversations with to give me a very strong wake up call. She spends most of her time in Berkeley but her family is in Washington, D.C. and she gets back as often as she can. She has shared with me how difficult this is for her. She’s had a very successful academic career and made a prominent name for herself, but when she talks about her family I can’t help but notice a tinge of sadness and regret that she spent so many year devoted to her work and career and as a result had to give up so much time with the people who mattered most in her life.

One day, during one of our many conversations, she told me flat out that I need to think hard about how difficult graduate school is and the kind of life it is preparing me for. Without knowing the struggle I was in, she told me that its important to have something besides this single pursuit in my life or eventually I will see that I’ve missed what is really important in life. Having taught at Harvard, she told me that she knew people who were miserable even though they had everything their careers had to offer, and than in deciding on where to go to graduate school I shouldn’t care about the name of the school but what impact it will have on my life as a whole and what kind of life I was preparing myself for. In short, she told me that what was most important was that I have a community that I was rooted in and that I could do life with.

Unbeknownst to her, my mom was echoing these same sentiments at the same time. She has lived alone since I left for college, and the last few years have been some of the toughest of my life for the both of us. She has been hospitalized twelve times in the last two years, and the biggest lesson that has come out of this for both of us is the importance of community. My mom has only a few real friends in Palm Springs, and spends all her time either at work or at home watching TV or sleeping. It has been a hard struggle during her sicknesses and a lot of the time my mom had had to struggle through it alone. Her medical bills have been steadily increasing and because of her health problems she hasn’t been able to work much. Earlier this year, my mom came to the conclusion that she just couldn’t handle it anymore and decided to declare bankruptcy and move back to Tennessee to live with her father. We lost the house and car and she began reducing her hours at work until she stopped all together about a month ago, but my mom had said she couldn’t be happier. It’s the first time she is going to have real friends and family in a long time. Through all this she has been supportive of me staying with our church because she has seen how the community has really become my family. Even though she said she supported me in whatever decision I made, she wanted me to really think about what kind of life I was leaving if I left our church.

I went home for winter break to ponder my future. Over these last four years God had shown me how we are made to live in community. Life wasn’t supposed to be about aimlessly going wherever the wind blew me, never putting down roots and never committing to anyone for very long. I struggled a lot over break: the Bible was clear that the church was about the body of believers and the Gospel must be the highest priority in my life. I came to a place where I was willing to give up the PhD that I had been pursuing for the last several years and trust God with my career.

Then came the Senior Retreat. I was still really unsure about this choice but trusting God that He would use this retreat to confirm my decision and provide me with more guidance. Through Pastor Ed and Kelly’s messages that weekend, I really began to question what I was holding onto, and committed once again to make serving God the top priority in my life, no matter what else may happen.

After that, I was admitted to UT Austin, but by this time graduate school was not the idol it had been. I was given the opportunity to study with and work under a professor who is one of the leading Christian apologists in the country. Further, I’ve also been given the chance to teach discussion for his students, which happens much less often at UT than here, and this is giving me the chance to interact with undergraduates at a level not usually given to graduate students.

Now, as I prepare to move to Texas, I can view school as the thing getting me to Austin, but the real purpose for why I am going is to help bring the Gospel to people there. God has used these last four years to show me how much I really need the Church, and now I go to Texas with the hope of meeting students just like I was, and loving them just as I was loved, all in the hope that they might find salvation through the Gospel and come to find how abundant and blessed life can be when we join together and each lose ourselves in something greater.