Through the Eyes of a CFAW
February 24, 2016
I was once a CFAW.
I remember standing in front of my red-cushioned seat, looking around the half golf ball-shaped building, wide-eyed and wondering where this place would take me. I was singing the words of old and new hymns along with Justin Kintzel and the rest of the campus band. I recall closing my eyes and asking myself, “What would you do if you made it here? What if this were your life?”
My journey at Liberty University began in the fall of 2012, after I graduated from high school and left everything I knew in Fleming Island, Florida behind. Before I moved to Lynchburg, I had visited Liberty twice for College for a Weekend events. Both CFAW’s that I visited made me desire more and more to come to this place that seemed so different from the rest. Liberty is the only school I applied to; it was really the only school I cared about at all. That was all because of CFAW.
Now, my life at Liberty looks extremely different from the life I experienced when I came to CFAW, or even my life freshman year. I am an Event Supervisor here at Student Activities and I have no residential classes, so I spend most of my time on campus at work. Because of this, I feel a little disconnected from the student body. At Student Activities, we work so hard to make things great for students that sometimes it’s easy to forget what it’s like to have the wonder of being a student.
Last week, we had a CFAW concert in the Vines Center featuring Citizens and Saints, Kings Kaleidoscope and John Mark McMillan. I spent the day doing laps around the building, making sure everyone was taken care of and generally happy. At one point in the night, I made my way to the floor and looked around for a few minutes. I saw how absorbed in the concert the students and visitors were; whether their eyes were open or closed, they were soaking in every moment, just like I did when I first visited.
It’s so easy to be caught up in the lives we have found ourselves in here at Liberty. We get into a routine, it feels monotonous, and we forget why we chose to come here in the first place. Seeing those thousands of students at the concert made me regain perspective. It made me stop for a moment and remember that I’m here because I know I’m supposed to be here. It reminded me to find the joy of every moment here, so that even in the everyday, routine moments, I will remember to be thankful.