∆Remember Us∆

Entry — October Reflection

Part 1

Very useful, and thank you for keeping everyone filled in. You’ve also managed to prompt me into writing a closing message for the week.

At the end of each week, I take time to slow down and reflect on how we’ve grown. I look closely at how each of you learns, how you adapt, and how your individual paths begin to unfold. With some of you, it takes longer for me to see what truly helps you thrive. With others, the understanding comes right away. Either way, I can see something distinct forming in each of you, a direction that feels alive and personal.

All I ask is that you continue to show me what you want to learn and why that matters to you. Keep showing that you are here for one another. Believe that learning happens when we stand together in honesty and purpose. This week, your individuality has been vivid, your creativity undeniable. Each of you holds strength and potential that reaches far beyond this space.

Still, we must stay open to feedback. When it is given, it is not meant to harm you but to awaken you. Feedback is an act of belief. It means someone sees your potential and refuses to let you settle for anything less. We each have something within ourselves that still needs to be faced, something that keeps us from becoming who we truly are. Find that place. Confront it. Transform it. And through that transformation, learn how to lift others as they rise too.

Expect a weekly reflection from me moving forward. I usually write these sorts of messages into my own logs, which I keep to help me organize my thoughts. But I’d like to begin offering my thoughts not as jargon, but as structure — something that might give strength when we are uncertain. I offer you courage to remind yourself what allows you to move forward with purpose.

And let me say this clearly: you could build one of the strongest portfolios I have ever seen if you truly recognized how powerful your mind is. Your cognitive abilities are rare, and I hope you stop taking them for granted. I am genuinely impressed by what you have shown. But remember, part of true intelligence is the willingness to listen, to grow, and to receive feedback with humility and grace. I’d like to see what you’ve been working on this past week on Monday.

Stay open-minded and remember that you hold the keys to your remembrance as a Carleton alumnus. Make us proud.

Part 2

I’ll get her address next time I talk to her. And yes — it’s unreal, to be honest. God’s gift to me. I quite literally run a school of teenagers who have been cast out of a system I spent my entire adolescence trying to understand and find worth within. That gives me a unique empathy, a way of guiding how others learn and think. It’s like I can read their minds sometimes — wild, almost unexplainable.

At twenty-six, I’ve never been closer to Christ. My faith has been forged through isolation and long seasons of grief. I’ve stopped asking into the sky, “Why me?” and instead seek the Giver of Gifts to converse beyond time — the testament that answers, “Why not me?” That’s the conversation I long to have with our Creator someday.

My faith is blindingly strong, perhaps so strong that I cannot hold my own heart against the weight of it. Does that make sense? At times, I nearly neglect my body under its intensity. Some days I don’t even like the taste of water. My neurotic tendencies lead me to fear that some sickness is growing inside me — superstition, perhaps, but I am afraid of hospitals. I do have a precancerous throat condition that I probably need to treat with more personal care and self-compassion.

The truth is, I feel too much — not merely in the emotional sense people often label “feminine,” which is absurd — but in an otherworldly sense of what moves Feeling itself into existence. I need to think about that, to make meaning of it.

So yes, my life and career may align, but do I? Am I supposed to? Does that even matter when most of existence ends, and all things are remembered — redundantly, perhaps — without Faith?

I am overwhelmed with thought today. Forgive me. This is why I justify my reclusiveness. I feel safest expressing myself freely, though I worry I might overwhelm others. I don’t mean to come across as excessive or diluted. It’s simply how my mind works, and I share it with you because you are accepting — and I recognize that about you.

I hope your day is well. Happy Halloween.

Christ is King.