friendship

At my birthday dinner, Lindsay passed me gift bag. I gleefully tore away the crinkly paper to pull out a red t-shirt. I gasped. “Gryffindor Quidditch? Team Captain!?” Lindsay nodded proudly. She had just returned from a vacation in Harry Potter World.

“How did you know she was Gryffindor?” another of my birthday guests asked.

“I wrestled with it a lot, actually,” Lindsay explained. “I think you’re 50% Gryffindor, 50% Ravenclaw.”

“That’s exactly how I describe myself!” I agreed.

“So I couldn’t decide which shirt to buy, but eventually my mom told me to choose whichever house you would most want to be in. And I thought, Tricia is both smart and brave, but I think she wants to be more brave, so she would choose Gryffindor.” Continue reading →

When I first went to Dallas Theological Seminary, I was scared I wouldn’t fit in. I’ve always been too conservative for the liberals and too liberal for the conservatives. Voluntarily walking into a place that churns out pastors intimidated me to no end. My first class was Introduction to Bible Study in a tiered-seating room for 200. Doing my best to go unnoticed, I slipped into an empty seat in the second to last row. A blond girl was next to me, and we smiled hellos before directing our attention to our laptop screens.

The next week we sat beside each other again, and this time I glanced at what she was doing online before class started. She was reading Rachel Held Evans’s blog, and I blurted, “I love her!” before I could stop myself. The girl next to me smiled widely.

“I might, uh,” I stammered. “I might consider myself a feminist, I mean, a little.” Continue reading →