Sixteen years ago today was the first time I learned that someone my age had passed away, someone that I also knew. The rest of the summer felt weird to me, which included, about a month-and-a-half later, the first time that another friend "came out of the closet" to me. It was also noteworthy that this was a rare summer that I was at school, and that I had an absolute jerk (and bully) of a roommate, as well.
A massive hailstorm hit my college town at the end of that summer. I had already left, but my ex-roommate, plus one of his wrestling buddies, were still on campus. Most significantly, so were their cars, in an outdoor parking lot, easily exposed to the elements. For many years afterward, I thought of it as God having sent the hailstorm. (I've since been corrected by a couple different people in that God didn't send the hailstorm, but He certainly allowed it.) Same diff. Justice is justice, no matter how it was sliced.
The previous year, though, I had been attending Fellowship of Christian Athletes but kind of souring on it. I don't particularly remember why, but it was the first time that I had been around conservatives. Having grown up liberal (and still identifying as such at the time), this was a culture shock for me, even after having attended the meetings for a year, year-and-a-half, and by this point the shock was outweighing the initial good that was there at first. I also had had a roommate my sophomore year that I didn't like, to the point of covertly being a jerk to him. Specifically, when he was off-campus for J-term, I rearranged all the furniture in our dorm room, including his, because I simply wanted to. I'm sure there were other things, but that's the only thing I remember.
So to talk about justice, another way to slice it could be that I "deserved" the roommate I had that summer, on account of how I had disdained my previous roommate. At the end of this particular summer, I did apologize to my sophomore year roommate in an email for how I treated him (I forget what all I wrote), and he responded back saying we were cool.
Forgiveness has been on my mind lately, something that my love and I are talking through together (don't worry: there's nothing that's happened between her and me!), and something that I've even heard my pastor mention a little more often lately. I've long forgiven the jerk roommate. We were both still at an immature age; we both needed to grow up and hadn't yet. Ironically, if we were to cross paths anytime now, we might get along great.
As for my peer (really, a friend) who had passed away, he'd had cancer in his leg, I think perhaps in the bone itself. I got to ask him about it, about a year before he passed. It turned out to be the last time we ever talked. After he died, another mutual contact reached out to me, really needing to process our mutual friend's passing. Apparently he had had several conversations with him before he died, and had expressed concern about his eternal status. The mutual contact was apparently (freshly) on fire for the Lord; the guy who died had apparently settled on some form of pantheism. I was however in a completely different place and could not really be of much help with the mutual contact's grief.
When the summer ended, I got to be with family, and that was very refreshing for me. I did not want to return to school for junior year. I cried leaving Chicago to head back to school. Due to the falling out with my ex-roommate, I was moved to a different dorm, to a single room (the original plan was that we would be roommates and part of a pod of other Christians for the upcoming school year). I had declared (on Facebook, I'm sure) that I was going to be intentionally anti-social instead. Privately, though, I had also prayed for a "refund" on my summer. I got that refund, and then some. I was not only not anti-social, but I was actually more social than I had been over the previous two years. God moved in my life. And I had a powerful Holy Spirit experience at a Bible study halfway through the year, confirming for me that, yes, the God of the Bible was real.
God is a God of clean slates. King David committed a multitude of horrible sins in a short amount of time (including but not limited to: adultery, murder, and covering up a murder), but because his repentance was real, God forgave him and just as importantly restored him. Last I heard, my ex-roommate was married with 4 kids and a successful teaching career over in Michigan. I think he grew up.
God is good. And now, I'm going to add an online summer class to my list of responsibilities for the foreseeable future.
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