Experience MHGS

This weekend, I helped out with a student recruitment event called "Experience Mars Hill." In conjunction with one of 3 interview dates, the admissions department put together a schedule of events that provides a taste of the Mars Hill experience. However, since the actual Mars Hill experience is nothing short of putting your mouth over a fire hose and then having it turned on full blast, nothing can adequately be summed up in 2 days.

But this weekend provided an opportunity for me to pause and reflect on what has happened over the last 8 months. Even now, I cannot fully describe the significance of this experience or how it is shaping and impacting me, but I know that I am no longer the same person I was. I guess a more accurate statement is this, "I am more myself now than I've ever been before." In other words, I understand myself more, and I am accepting myself - all of me. My anger, my hurt, my confusion, my desire, my hope. My sorrow is magnified, yet so is my joy. Often, my emotions are boiling just beneath the surface, where I can gain access to them at any moment. Emotions that I have found too anxiety-provoking to acknowledge before, I am now willing to experience.
I feel tender towards myself. The callouses are wearing away and exposing rawness - a rawness that is painful and that requires kindness towards myself.
I am more myself now than ever before because I'm letting all parts of me be present, and I feel more connected to each part.

Have you ever been in a conversation with someone where you just didn't understand what they were saying? Or maybe you thought you understood, but you really didn't? This was so familiar to my own connection to my life.
But what about a conversation where you really connected with the other person, where everything they said seemed to be real and true, where you knew the interaction was something unique, something deep and mysterious, the connection profound and beyond comprehension?
This has been my experience thus far at Mars Hill. I am discovering Troy - not the Troy that I've always wanted or hoped to be, but the Troy that I am, in all my glory and in all my depravity, in all my disappointments and in all my desires, in all my cowardice and fear and in all my courageous faith.

And this, regardless of the degree or any academic information, this personal discovery and transformation, is well worth the price of tuition.