She was one of my first encounters with a personality so driven by presence and confidence- she both terrified and infatuated me. It was such that she never had to try out for the dance team- she was simply ushered in. Her grades were on-point. She was simply fascinating.
Julia would exaggerate her words in slow, southern speech. For a gal from Indiana, she was entirely her own person. She would say things like, oh, my dear...yes, momma...and does that man know that smoking cigarettes can kill him?
After spending one college day piled on her bottom bunk with Liz, the three of us eating Twinkies and watching Mansfield Park, we would later walk around reminding one another to, "brush your hair, but not all out", and "run mad as often as you chose, but do not faint".
Once I asked her if reading the Harry Potter series hurt her holy spirit. It was an expression I had heard not too long prior and it felt appropriate to my rebel-Harry-Potter-reading-Bible-College-Snow-White-and-Shirley-Temple-looking-roommate. Without skipping a beat, reconsidering her conviction, or loosing her cool, she put her finger in my face and stated:
you, are NOT my holy spirit.
Another time I told her something about the boy-man she liked. I saw something I wasn't supposed to see (his hairy chest peeking out of his shirt, people. Come on now), and I remember her falling backwards against our dorm-room closet, the back of her hand to her forehead, and ever-so-slowly, she fell to the floor bemoaning, my heart.
Today we are talking about hearts and Julia, my darling, I thought of you.
Hearts. Most of us have one.
Annie's Day Nine devotional tells about allowing God into our hearts. I realize for anyone outside of the Christian faith- and for some within it's walls- this it entirely foreign. The long and the short is that God loves you and wants to be in you and with you- in all the moments.
The moments when your roommate chops all of your hair off because you asked and she agreed.
The moments when you splurge to turn your bunk bed into the loveliest tulle-infused canopy on the floor.
The moments when she looked the other way as you washed your Pizza Inn apron in the micro sink and hung it in the bathroom to dry.
And the moments when she looks you dead in the eye and says that she cares about you and she also sees the way you are mistreating your body, and she is concerned.
In ways Julia never could -nor was she ever supposed to be- God was present.
So I hope to honor Julia with the sentimentality and honest deep-sighed, miss you, but more than Julia, I hope to honor God.
To, "do the little bits that I can to love Him back."
And what does that mean, Annie? How do I do that?
"Well", Annie begins, "it looks like making brave, God-honoring choices in response to His love."
...in response to His love...
Be Brave:
How do you see your heart responding to God's love?
Fanny and Edmund, yes and amen.
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