Submitted by Anonymous
Upon explaining my background, I have often been asked by Asburians, “So why are you here?”
I didn’t believe in God when I enrolled at Asbury. Now I do, I think. Usually. Definitely on the days chapel is not offensive and I have enough energy to be intentional. Maybe on the days people ask why am I even here.
What they really mean is, why would I choose to come to a school that prohibits drinking when most of my party stories come from my mom’s kitchen? And why would I choose to come to a school where sexual immorality leads to consequences, when I told my mom I lost my virginity the day after it happened, and she met me with so much love? My first Sexual Wholeness Week came years too late, and I struggle now to accept that anybody, from peers to professors to chaplains to God, has anything to do with the decisions I make with my body.
Do non-believers who are seeking something more have a place on Asbury’s campus? Where is my place? Is there room for the children of once-drug-addicted now-dead fathers here? I leave classrooms to cry in bathrooms when I feel so broken I cannot look at my peers. My dad called me selfish on my 12th birthday and, just over 12 hours later, his body fell to the kitchen floor, dead under a table covered in pills. Who around me understands this much pain? Where do you hide? In public school, you were so easy to find.
Students give years-late condolences when I say my dad is not alive. They probably assume it was cancer, a heart attack, a car wreck, a freak waterslide accident, anything but what it was. I say it is okay and I stop there, but what I really mean is it is okay because I do not miss him and my life is better without him. I do not tell them my blood is not “Asbury Appropriate.”
Community is a beautiful thing if you fit into it, but this community often reminds me of my brokenness. I do not know how to find others like me, others who are hearing Bible stories for the first time in foundational classes. Perhaps we need more recruitment in public schools and from underprivileged areas. We must welcome the disturbed. We need to love them and show them there is a place for them in Christian community. We must reach out to and recruit broken people into our school. We seem to forget we can “make an impact” right where we are. I have been impacted at Asbury, and I am better because of it. I have learned I am valuable and worthy of love and grace. Still, why am I here?
I am here because I want an environment that is not saturated with parties and that does not objectify my body. I am here because I hate the smell of smoke. I am here because I want to learn about Christianity from scholars. I am here because I want to be held to high standards. I am here because I know there are people to catch me if I fall. I am here because I want to be challenged daily to better myself.
Do not ask me why I am here as though I do not belong. I have made my place, and now I advocate for you to make an impact and a space for those who inherently are not “Asbury Appropriate.”
