Senior Share Chapel: The Grey and Yellow Comforter
I had the opportunity to share this message at our senior share chapel. The prompt answers the question, "What does Taylor community mean to you?"
I didn’t have Christian friends until I came to Taylor. Not until my two random roommates, Maggie and Maggie, got us all matching grey-and-yellow comforters to match the hand-painted 406 that we mounted with sticky tack on our Bergwall door. We thought that everyone got matching comforters and were shocked to find that we were the only three out of sixty on our floor who had gotten the memo. But It wasn’t long before those matching grey-and-yellow comforters were stained with We Covs from mid-day coffee breaks, seasoned with movie-night popcorn salt, and soaked by tears from the trials of freshman year – DTRs gone wrong, tests failed, jobs rejected, hard conversations, doubts and lies and tricky friendships and the time they sat me down on that grey-and-yellow comforter and said, “Cali, we think you’re a little too flirty.” And it was the first time I had ever been called out – not because I was living well but because I didn’t have Christian friends before and no one had ever loved me enough to call me out like that. And I cried as I wrestled with my idolatry and people pleasing, and I desperately wanted to make a change and all of a sudden, those tears were dried, wiped from my eyes, not just by my grey-and-yellow comforter, but by my two random-roommate comforters, Maggie and Maggie, two girls with matching names and matching comforters who were willing to dry my tears and walk with me in the trenches. My first Christian friends. My first college roommates. My comforter triplets, Maggie and Maggie.
I remember hearing on a tour that most people at Taylor stick with their roommate all four years. We said, “Promise that will be us?” and we shook on it. But over time, of course, things changed and we didn’t like change but we needed change, so we changed, but in every place, that grey-and-yellow comforter stayed the same. I rolled up my comforter and laid it next to all of my subsequent roommates- Amanda, then Taylor, then Alex, then Audrey, then Reyna and Megan and Megan’s dog and every single time, the comforter was with me, accumulating more tear stains and popcorn salt as more and more friends gathered around the grey-and-yellow comforter.
I’m a senior now. I’ve been rejected by thirteen schools, and the first people I cry to are Maggie and Maggie. I come back to Campbell and cry into that comforter. I rant to Audrey and Reyna while we rest on its grey-and-yellow grooves. I notice the coffee stains from convos with Kate and muscle milk marks from mornings with Morgan. It’s got sparkles from Karli’s cards and pen marks from people who have poured over pages of Scripture with me on that poofy patterned piece of pillowy patchwork. It’s a comforter that’s been more than a comforter – a collector of hopes and dreams and fears and fights and faith and tears. A gathering place, a holy ground, and a reminder of the community that has been found – the community that has stuck like cement around this gray-and-yellow sanctuary.
But above all, more than anything, this comforter has reminded me that things in this life will change. The places I live will change and the people I live with will change. But we’re all gathered around a Comforter, a capital-C comforter, a second Corinthians one comforter, who dries our tears and holds our messes. A comforter that I can keep bringing with me, no matter where I go or who I’m with. A comforter, just like my grey and yellow one, who will never change. Taylor community has taught me what it looks like to have people who will not just get matching comforters, but who will keep bringing me back to THE comforter – the One we can run to with our coffee convos and torrential tears, our job rejections and failed DTRs. Professors, admissions team, faculty, staff, students, servants: you’ve brought me back to The Real Comforter and I am forever changed by your love. Thank you, Taylor community, for not just meeting me on the comforter, but for bringing me back to the Real comforter. Time and time and time again.