Year One in Austin

I'm not sure if I am having a mid-life crisis early on or what, but lately, I've started thinking about "back in the days."

I always wanted to go to college but as I got older and closer to graduating high school and getting the heck out of my parents' house (and El Paso), the less possible my dream of college seemed to be. God had other plans though and before you knew it, I was done with my first summer after high school and on the road to Austin, Texas to attend Concordia University as a English major with a Criminal Justice minor. I don't think God really cared what my major was at the time, He just wanted to get me to Concordia, which He did.

The most significant moments of my first year at Concordia can be count in one or possibly two hands. The first one was stupid yet significant...first weekend before school started, my roommates and I headed off to sixth street and I got myself a tattoo...always wanted one but I knew it was going to be hell telling my mother about it. I did this in August of 2002...I told my mother November of 2002 and she finally saw it for the first time during my Christmas break at home. This event is significant because, incidentally, it reminds me that I am not perfect and it keeps me humble. I am human and I know I tend to get on my high horse, so to speak, so I now have something that keeps me from getting on said high horse. I am not perfect...I am loved though.

Second significant event would be in the Spring of 2003. This was the moment when I truly felt convicted of my sinful nature. I realized right then and there that I was lost and hopeless and that I did not deserve what God offered me. I realized I had spent most of my life as a Christian finding ways to earn the love and salvation that God offers freely. I remember that night as one of the worst nights of my life followed by one of the most amazing days ever when I asked God how I could earn His love, struggling under the burden of having to do so, and heard His voice, letting me know that there was no need for me to earn His love for His Son has done that for me. Ever since then, grace has taken on a new meaning and my relationship with Christ moved from shallow to personal.

Third significant moment was about a month after I started college. I was taking Old Testament with Professor Puffe and after a month of his intense and insanely interesting lessons, I finally stopped denying my one spiritual gift (being teaching and interpreting Scripture) and changed my minor from Criminal Justice to Theology. This is one decision I never regreted and never changed...unlike my major, which went from English to Secondary Lutheran Education. By the end of my first year of college, I knew I didn't want to teach and finally opened my mind up to contemplate the possibility of God calling me into the DCE ministry.

Here I am now, in the DCE world, out of college and praying for my first call. Interesting how it seems like my first year of college just ended yet at the same time, it feels like it was a lifetime ago.