A New Era

This is Katie, college freshman at Cornerstone University as of today. This isn't quite the photo I had hoped for, but it was a busy day, and in the end, the photo that I had envisioned, of Katie sitting at her desk in her freshly organized dorm room, just didn't happen.

Maybe this one is better though. As we backed out of the driveway, the car loaded with boxes and suitcases (you can see them in the background), Katie pulled my camera out, took a picture of herself, and said, "This is how I look now. In four years, when I'm done with college, we'll take a picture and see how I've changed."

It will be interesting in four years to see how she's changed, but I'm pretty sure a camera won't be able to capture it all. If Katie's college experience is anything like mine was, she will experience tremendous spiritual, intellectual, emotional growth and change--the kind of things a camera won't capture.

It was a busy day. We began and ended it in lines. This morning we waited briefly for a student ID and the laptop incentive that Cornerstone offers to its new students. Laptop and student ID in hand, we drove over to Katie's dorm, and we barely got the trunks open when Cornerstone staffers picked up all the boxes and carried them to her room. A most impressive display of help!

After lunch, we left Katie and her roommate, Shanda from Indiana (that rhymes!), to assemble their room but returned for the late afternoon welcome ceremony, with praise and worship music (more on that in a future post), an address from Cornerstone president Joe Stowell, and prayers for parents and students.

We ended the day with a dinner in the gym (after an hour-long wait in line) and a quick good-bye back at Katie's dorm. Stowell commented that today, the students all feel like they're at summer camp, and I think I'm having a hard time not thinking that as well. About October, he said, reality will hit the students, and that's when they'll start feeling homesick. I'm thinking that may be when it hits me too. Right now, I can walk upstairs, open her bedroom door--and the mess everywhere won't let me believe that she's too far away.

As Jonathan and I pulled out of the parking lot, I said, "Well, it's the end of an era. You'll get to see what it's like to be an only child." He's not sure what he thinks about that, but I think he'll come to like it. He said to me, "Another four years, and you'll have one kid out of the house." He obviously thinks she's just at summer camp, too.