From Tana

I promised many of you in our annual Christmas letter that the long version of my letter (100, even 250 words, are not enough for this wordy girl!) would be posted on our blog. So, this is what I have to say.

At this time last year I had just finished my first semester of college. My last assignment for my favorite class (Rhetoric) was to create a Revision Portfolio, including revised papers from the semester, one new paper and a reflection paper, which focused on what I had learned from the semester. I realized in putting together my portfolio just how much I loved looking back on things that had happened and how I have grown or changed from them. My family says I have changed every time I come home from school. I never think so, of course, but, looking back at my year as a whole shows me how all of the little lessons and insignificant changes have resulted in immense growth over the past year.

Tana&Jojo at Christmas last year

In a normal end-of-the-year update, I would spend this entire paragraph telling everyone how I finished my freshman year at Belmont Abbey, declared my English major, and am loving sophomore year playing soccer for the Conference Carolinas champions (BAC Crusaders) and working in the Admissions office! Or I would focus on my end-of-semester literary road trip of the century to Andalusia, our family vacation to London in the summer where I flipped out over Olympic preparations and then coming home to lifeguard all summer. Or how I potentially set my future career as a Children’s librarian in motion by staffing Camp Read-a-Rama with the Augusta Baker Chair of Children’s Literacy at USC, who is now my friend on Skype. I would mention that I still play flute as part of a small woodwind ensemble at BAC.

But, what I would really rather tell you is: The Heart of Christ is Intensely Beautiful.

Just think about it for a minute. It blows my mind.

On our first day back this January, Dr. Miss had everyone in our Rhetoric class choose a motto for the year. It could be a quote, or something we created ourselves. Mine was “I may not like you, but I love you, which sometimes makes things curiouser and curiouser.” While I was pondering this, instead of making a New Year’s resolution, I was praying “Come, Lord Jesus, bring me nearer to your Heart.” As the year went on my prayer changed to “God, make salvation real to me. Help me recognize the beauty and significance of grace.”

Let me tell you folks. He has. God has answered my prayers in too many ways to count and it has been a crazy, intense journey. I have been filled with laughter and anger, tears and joy. I have learned that sometimes it hurts to love. That I am capable of not liking someone in the least while loving her (or him) fiercely. I have learned to love people I do not even know. I am still blessed to be part of the Imagine magazine staff as an editor. I love the time I spend reading, pondering and editing devotions—by girls I have never met, for girls I have never met.

I have learned that, as a freshman, you think you know everything, but sophomore year reminds you of how much there is to learn. I have discovered the beauty and worth of a liberal arts education and its idealism, while also recognizing that it has its shortcomings. I am learning that I can’t do it all, have it all, or be friends with everyone. I am still working on how to say, “no.” I had to loosen my desperate hold of perfection and take God’s hand instead.

It brings me so much joy to tell you that this semester I have built lasing and meaningful relationships not only with my friends and fellow students, but with faculty and staff at my college. That I am as close with my coaches and my advisor as I am with my family. That, even though we are small, my Bible Study (filled with only girls from the soccer team) is one of the highlights of my week. That a few of my giving, flexible and Christ-centered friends have formed the core of a group that meets weekly for Christian fellowship and prayer. We meet in the dorm room that is the cleanest, usually on the floor. We eat whatever food we can scrounge up, anything from full-blown feasts to just tea and nutella. But we talk, pray and call ourselves the Protestant Club (we love our Catholic friends, but we like to stick together too!). And, even though my heart broke when St. Paul’s (the church I attended for the entire spring semester) folded over the summer, Jesus pieced it back together with hands full of kindness and love. He provided an intimate, passionate group of believers at St. Patrick’s Anglican Mission in Charlotte to worship with. Now I love them dearly too.

So, yes, I have changed. I changed this year by recognizing that I will never realize how incredible grace and mercy are and how freely Jesus gives both to us. I grew this year because, if you ask God for something, be prepared to get it. I learned this year, more than ever, that I am a sinful, broken person who will never be able to fully comprehend the nature of God or how intimately and passionately he pursues our hearts. That I am a person who makes countless mistakes and has hurt too many people, but that somehow, through God’s provision, two incredible women whom I have never met chose some things that I said in an email interview to include in their new devotional book, “Becoming God’s True Woman…While I Still Have a Curfew.” I was shown that the heart of Christ is intensely beautiful.

Christmas this year :)

I will never realize how blessed I am. I will never fully get over my first-world problems. But, I am learning, and growing, and changing.