Introducing

I've realized how little blogspace I've dedicated to the new people in my life. I want to begin introducing you to each of them.

-- AARON --

Aaron sat across the room from me the first summer session. When we introduced ourselves in "first day of class" fashion, he said he was married and so I figured he wouldn't really be hanging around with us that much. Married men tend to back off from college girls (at least we hope) and he didn't seem like the underhanded cheating type from first impressions. So I pretty much immediately wrote him off as "not real friend potential" and began focusing on other classmates in my quest to make new friends in Columbia. There was Louise and Ruth who were always together and didn't seem to need more friends. Sarah was from Lancaster and I was pretty sure she didn't want to hang out with another Lancaster person. I kind of didn't. Mara was also married with a little boy so I dumped her in the same category as Aaron. And I was too intimidated by Chrissy to even consider that she would like me. She seemed like the really popular type and she wore sorority t-shirts so I figured we wouldn't mesh. Shaverra was the only black girl and I wondered if she didn't want to hang out with a bunch of white girls. First impressions are funny...

A few Sundays ago, Chrissy and I drove about an hour to North Augusta to see Aaron preach at his church. I remember the day I found out Aaron was a preacher. My jaw dropped because he was so nice, had a good sense of humor and didn't seem judgmental at all. Not that preachers can't be those things, but well, sometimes you just expect a really uptight person. I had a sneaking suspicion that he was a Christian or a nice guy, one or the other because he was always offering to help and being more gentlemanly than any male I've ever met. Chrissy, Mara, Aaron and I ended up sitting together on the back row of both summer session II classes. There is no place quite like the back row of a summer class to break first impressions and make friends. Aaron was a bad influence on me, or maybe I was on him, I can't quite remember anymore who started cracking jokes first. But from the first stifled laugh, I knew that I was wrong about Aaron being just another married guy. We were going to be good friends.

Aaron talked about seeing God's face. Did you know that the majority of college students surveyed think that if they could see God looking at them, he would look disgusted with them, like he didn't like them? According to Aaron that's the case. "I keep wondering if maybe people are getting God's face confused with the face they see when Christians look at them." Aaron accused himself, along with other Christians, of the same crime of "the face" but I've never seen Aaron give that face to anyone.

"Aaron's really insightful," Chrissy said. "He just seems to pick up on a lot of stuff that other people don't and that is funny because, you know, he's a boy in a big group of girls and most guys couldn't do that very well." He does it with Jesus too. Later in the sermon (I feel strange calling it that because it seemed more like a conversation I'd have with him after class ... except I didn't really talk), he was talking about the Prodigal Son story. I was seriously considering zoning out. I mean how many times have I heard this. But out of courtesy for Aaron, I let my brain stick around and he drew a conclusion I'd never heard come from the Prodigal Son story. He didn't talk about the love of the Father for the wayward Son or the sin equivalents in our lives or Gospel parallels that we can see in the story (not that those aren't good things). He just said, "You know both sons had it wrong. They were so concerned about figuring out the best way to go about enjoying what their Father was going to leave them when the whole time they had their father in their presence to enjoy right then." Aaron's insight reached my life that Sunday.