Driving Through a Campus Full Memories

Clearwater Christian College

This month I got some sad news: my old college is closing its doors.  Clearwater Christian College will close at the end of June.

Although college was several years ago for me, it’s one of those unique times that gets filed away under the category of “becoming who you are.” And the choices I made there, good or bad, began the DNA of who I turned out to be.

Clearwater Christian College (CCC) is nestled on a body of water at the end of a long causeway lined with tall palm trees. The drive always feels like a classic Florida image, and out-of-state students took the drive feeling that they were going to school in paradise.  Although I love being a Floridian, I always took the drive less with rose-colored glasses and more with the knowledge that this place is hot.  But during that first drive, that first stretch over the causeway, in my parents’ minivan loaded with all my stuff, I remember feeling like that drive was full of potential.  

I’ve driven that causeway many times since.  I live only minutes from the college, and a day or so ago, as I came over that lovely bridge, I decided to drive through the campus.  

As I made my lap around the grounds, the first thing I passed was the dining hall, Cathcart.  There are several white steps leading up to Cathcart, and it’s unusual to see the steps not littered with backpacks, since students weren’t allowed to bring them inside during meals.  The idea that those stairs will be empty now drove home the finality of the college’s closing.

A little further on, I drove on past Rehearsal Hall.  Everything I loved to do happened in that place.  Choir rehearsals, voice lessons, play rehearsals, drama class, improv – the rest of the campus was just a school compared to this small building.  This building felt like a playground. 

 

Others I’m sure had different spots on campus that felt like their home away from the room.  For the sports-minded I’m sure it was the gym next to Rehearsal Hall.  For the literature majors, it was probably the library.  We all had our spot on campus where we felt like we honed our craft, for lack of a less pretentious phrase.

I eventually went past the building that held most of our classes and the smaller Chapel.  They stopped holding the campus-wide chapel services in that building after my freshman year due to the size of the student body, but I always felt there was something homier about chapel in that space.  Especially when we would sing Holy Holy Holy, and the song leader would instruct the basses alone to sing the first verse, then add the tenors for the next, then altos, and then sopranos.  The song would build with every verse, and for one moment it felt like the whole college was a choir.

As I drove around, I found memories around every corner.  There was the Café where I worked for a few semesters making milkshakes, and the track where I attempted to run and earn points for Coach Denny’s killer fitness class.  I passed the dorms where I stayed up far too late and forged friendships that stuck.  I remembered the challenges I met there and the people I met there.  But I saw something else around every corner.  The memories that flooded through me the most were the times the Lord met me there.

I remembered the things I worried about and prayed about as I walked over the footbridges on campus.  I thought about the things that kept me up at night.  I can remember praying, on the way to the dining hall, about my brother-in-law, who was separated from my sister and waiting for a visa.  I remember worrying about my future after picking up a note from the post office that said I needed to schedule my graduation interview.  I remember many a discussion about when and if I would meet someone I could share my life with.  And also the general feeling that the Lord would ask things of me that were just too hard for me to handle.

Now, as I looked at the campus again, what I was struck with was that so much of what I worried about then has been answered or sorted out. I still have the feeling that the Lord asks things of me that are too hard for me to handle on my own, but I’m starting to learn that’s the point. I was never meant to handle them on my own.

I thought of the concerns I have now, the concerns for my husband’s illness, for raising up our child to know the Lord, and whether I can change the things in my life that seem to confine me.  And I wondered if someday they will just be a memory tied to a spot.  That someday I will drive down the street we live on now and again think of how the Lord met me there and how great is His faithfulness.

The Lord walked that campus with me then and now.

As I was about to pull off the grounds I thought, “Just say it.”  It was surprisingly hard but I said out loud, “Good-bye,” and I cried a little.  I guess I always believed that college was where I began to learn who I was, but really, more accurately, it was where God began to teach me who He is.  And He teaches me still.

So, I said good-bye to the little school on the edge of the bay at the end of that long causeway.  It really is a lovely drive.  It really is a lovely campus.  It really was a lovely school. He really is a lovely Savior.  Some things will never pass away.