reflecting on my time at Briercrest

So, last week I was back at Briercrest for the week. After over 4 years away it was interesting to be back in the community there. I was visiting my sister.

While I was there I took some time to just walk around the campus and the town and see what had changed and say hi to a few people I still knew who were around. As I walked down some of the familiar streets of the town and hallways of the school buildings I found many memories of the two years I spent as a student there coming flooding back. Those two years are filled with many really good memories of friends, classmates, dorm-mates, profs, classes I took that challenged me, chapels that encouraged me and spoke in to where I was at in life. Many of them things I had forgotten in the years since.

I know that my time at Briercrest was important to my life and my spiritual journey overall. But, until last week I had forgotten about many of the little things that have impacted the way I think or the way I do things. I'm beginning to think that sometimes it is those little things that are the most important. I may have forgotten in my day-to-day life about many of those little things, but when I do remember I realize they are what has impacted my life more than the big events that I remember.

Things like the friend who helped me to learn that sometimes it's OK to admit that you aren't "fine" when someone asks how things are going. Or the prof from a class who sees that you are not yourself that day and stops to ask what's going on and then through really listening and encouraging or challenging you, teaches you that they don't just say they care about their students, they really do care about them. And then, there's the roommates and close friends in the dorm who teach you how to live life with people authentically rather than putting up walls around those who aren't family.

Those seemingly little things in comparison to all the Bible, Theology, and other things I studied are what really influenced me during my time there. But, they're the easier ones to forget in some ways, because they just changed who I was. It's easier to remember the things I learned and that I use when I study the Bible with friends now. But it's the people who really changed me and helped me to grow, not the things I studied.