Follow the Heavenly Whisper.
I was homeschooled my whole life until age 17 when I went to the community college where my sister was enrolled. Joy had always been my leader in everything, so I never questioned what college I would go to, I just followed her as I always had done. It was a huge culture shock for me, coming out of the sheltered environment I'd grown up in, where I'd experienced very little of the wilder side of life, and had very little interaction with strangers. My world had been made up of my family, and a few neighborhood friends, but I had never even gone to school outside of my home or been part of a home school group. Therefore, to be around so many strangers on a daily basis, many of them rather rough characters, to have several teachers, all having different teaching methods and rules and to see and hear things that were so foreign to me was very frightening. Joy tried to guide and shelter me as she always had done, and thanks to her, I made it through my first college experience with few serious scars and many less scares than I would've had without her. But Joy could not always be by my side, and I frequently found myself being picked on, frightened, laughed at and tempted, when she was out of reach. After two years in this environment I started to feel, even more than hear, God's whisper in my heart, telling me that I needed to leave this place and find a college where I could really bloom and thrive. But I was scared and tried to ignore the whisper and to convince myself that I had just imagined it. In spite of being unhappy where I was, I was more afraid of the unknown then of the things I had to deal with in the present. Change terrified me, and still does. I felt like I would rather stay where things were familiar than risk going somewhere new, especially because if I left the school I was at, I would have to leave Joy behind. I knew that if I followed God's lead, it would take me to a place where I'd have to make it without my big sis, something I had never had to do before. But finally, after months of many tears, much prayer and intense internal conflict, I made the decision to move on and continue my education somewhere else. It wasn't long after this, that I found my way to Greenville College. I had known of GC my whole life, from my parents, who had gone there, and from a very dear family friend, JoAnn Nobel, who had been Aunt JoAnn ever since I could remember. It was JoAnn who showed me around campus one rainy February day in 2013. I was pleased with all that I saw and heard of GC, but the thing that drew me to this place the most, was the fact that God was the center of all that went on there, and the knowledge that here I would be able to freely talk about my faith. As I finished up my tour and walked past the Whitlock Music Center, I looked up at the cross on the top of the building, then gazed all around the campus, beautiful and welcoming in spite of the wet sidewalks, bare trees and dead leaves blowing about. Then I felt that heavenly whisper again, stronger and clearer this time, say to my heart, "This is where you belong. Welcome home."
