Wednesday, February 24, 2016

NOBTS Life: part I

Life is an adventure. A glorious, messy, challenging, fulfilling, wonderful adventure. It is constantly enhanced by the people the Lord puts in our lives. Even though people come and go, they leave a lasting impact on some aspect of our adventure. Growing up on a southern baptist seminary campus in the heart of New Orleans, I became accustomed to people leaving my life. Friendships were painful to form when that friend would leave one or two years later. For a young girl figuring out her life and where she fit into the world, friendships were most important.
Over the 9 years that my family was living on the NOBTS (New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary), I witnessed many families come and go. I vividly remember the "moving parties" all of us children would accidentally throw for families coming or going. We would all congregate around the moving truck and help the strangers tote their things up 2 or 4 flights of stairs. By the time the truck was empty, the new family would have a brief knowledge of the crazy kids who lived on the campus and would by default know the parents. It became a sort of ritual to drop whatever we were doing when a moving truck was seen pulling onto campus and rush to help. Then, when the task was completed, we would resume our adventures as if helping people move was just a normal thing. I suppose growing up in an environment of ministry students who come to the campus for training and can leave at any time made the sight of moving trucks normal.
"Normal". That is not a word I would ever use to describe my childhood in New Orleans. By witnessing people come and go so often, I was exposed to so many exciting perspectives, peoples, and cultures. I remember meeting a newly married couple from the Philippines. I met them by helping them move into their apartment and then baking them some goodies and delivering them to them without my parents even coming with me. Through that connection, my family was able to minister to them when they had their child. We kept their adorable little girl for many hours during the day and her parents taught her to call us family. Loving on that little girl and ministering to that family was one experience that I will never forget. Thinking back on it seems like it happened a hundred years ago.
Another experience that I will never forget was when the planet Mars was coming the closest to earth it had ever been in some crazy number of years. In the dead of night, the seminary was coming to life. My family set up our telescope in a large field where others were doing the same. People arrayed in a myriad of colorful pajamas congregated around the telescopes waiting a turn to look through the amazing inventions and gaze at the night sky. Us children ran and played when we weren't awestruck by the view through the telescope. I got to see Mars. And, I got to meet so many new friends. It seems like something from a dream.
I am so blessed to have had so many different people in my life and to have had the unique experiences I was allowed. Even though I will never encounter many of those people again, I am so thankful for their influence in my life and the times I had with them. My life has been a great adventure and it was shaped by many of the people on the NOBTS!