jodygreenwood

Emmaus House Episcopal Chapel, Atlanta, GA

7th Sunday of Easter – Year A (RCL) – Acts 1:6-14, Psalm 68:1-10, 33-36, 1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11, John 17:1-11

For those who don’t know it, I have a twin sister whose name is Nancy. When we were seniors in high school, one of the biggest decisions we each had to make was what college we would go to.

Now, unlike some twins, neither Nancy nor I cared about going to the same school as each other, but as it turns out, we both wanted to go to the same school. We both wanted to go to Sewanee – in Tennessee. And we were both happy when we were each accepted. It wasn’t until later that we found out that this was a problem.

My parents knew that college was an important time to find your own way in the world – to discover who you are as an individual. Twins going to a small school on top of a mountain was not a good idea, and one afternoon in March of our senior year, my father said as much. So, since Nancy had chosen Sewanee first, it was incumbent upon me to find another place to go.

I knew if I stayed in Texas it would be very easy for me to fall back into the comfortable care of my youth-group friends and family spread out across southeast Texas. In light of this, going out-of-state seemed to be a better option.

After some direction from my mom, I settled on Wittenberg University, a small Lutheran liberal arts school in Springfield, Ohio. My uncle had worked there when I was very young so we spent many summer vacations with cousins running around the empty campus – this element of familiarity was a plus considering that I’d be so far from home, so Wittenberg was the choice.

In early September, the time had come to leave for school. My mom decided that it would be best for her to fly with me as opposed to me traveling alone. She realized that I wasn’t experienced enough to make that trip by myself… and she was right. Read the rest of this entry »