Aotearoa Diaries: Life Support

It has been nearly ten years since I first met Melissa. I was a college freshman (first year of uni) at Anderson University who had been crying herself to sleep out of homesickness. Within the first few minutes of our interaction, I had made the decision to snap out of my painfully shy, socially awkward self to allow her in, whatever that meant.

Melissa was the residence director of the dorm I lived in. At first, she was like the house-mum that made sure I wasn't skipping meals (which happens whenever I'm stressed or homesick). She was only a few years older than I was, but she seemed so much wiser. As the years went by, she became a mentor and friend--someone I came to rely on as part of my life-support network.

A few years later as I was starting seminary, I had to take a class called Spiritual Formation that required us to be paired with a mentor who would journey with us for that first semester. An important part of preparing for the ministerial journey involved exploring our life stories, including some of the deepest, darkest, and possibly most painful chapters, and to begin dealing with some of them. I could think of no better person I wanted to take that journey with than Melissa. We shared the painful loss of Keren and she understood my quirks. But she was also just far ahead enough in life that she would call me out and kick me in the (you know where) as necessary.


The more time I'm spending with the uni students and young adults here in Aotearoa, the more thankful I am for the small town college experience I had in Anderson, Indiana. I recall the long conversations with Melissa about the transition into the young adult stage of life and this new found semi-independence, the cross-cultural move and how relationships with family and the previous "home culture" change in this new phase of life, and all the other "life stuff" I threw at her. And in spite of the season of struggle with Park Place, that church family taught me heaps about the importance of being in an intergenerational community, and I'm richer for having adopted grandparents, spiritual parents and kid-brothers and sisters to do life with. That small town college experience created a life-support network for me that can be hard to create in a city of about 1.5 million people. It can be easy to get lost in the crowd as a university student in the midst of about 40,000 other people.


A few weeks ago on the last week of uni break, a group of about thirteen of us went away for the week. Most of us in this group are involved in some form of leadership in church, and each time we get together, it's about agendas and programmes and coaching and training. But just for those five days, we simply hung out, played games, ate too much, took in the beach, and just for once... be together. On several occasions, Carmel and I found ourselves saying over and over how much we longed for this group to have a few more people just a little ahead of them in life to ask questions as necessary, to poke or prod or kick in the (you know where) as necessary, and simply to just walk alongside in life.

I may have said this too many times now, but I truly, truly love what I get to do in this season. And I truly, truly love each of these crazy young adults I've had the privilege of walking (and mostly laughing at) with. But there's just not enough of us to help support and mentor them through this season of discovering that it's ok to have more questions than answers, and that it's ok to not know what they are doing after graduation regardless of what pressures society might give them. Because if we can be to them who Melissa was to me, how many more generations can be impacted from this group of phenomenal young adults we currently have?

And that's when I realise again that since the very beginning stages as I was thinking about strategies for The Bridge, this life-support network structure was written into the very DNA of the ministry. The vision was never to form another big club or organisation for students or young adults to get lost in, but to create small, intimate settings for life to happen. And just to indulge my need for "success" for a second: If we can have small groups of people gathering regularly to do life together, I think we have a win for our first year.

Have I said yet that I love what I get to do? Because I really, really do.