The purchase of a vacuum from a door-to-door salesperson is not the way to establish credit.

Treasure the day the Lord has made. Treasure your place in God’s great story. Treasure the gift of opportunity. Treasure your part, your place in the world around you.

It has taken me years to appreciate art. Providing a musical backdrop to my college years was rock and roll. But at the time it was “just” rock and roll: a lot of hair, a lot of drugs and alcohol, a lot of loud.

By my senior year at Pacific Lutheran University, I thought I knew everything! I was a very rugged, rugged individualist with red nail polish and hot rollers. At the time I didn’t even know what rugged individualism was, having skipped that history lesson in my own history of college misdeeds.

For Christmas my senior year in college, Kurt gave me a frying pan. Yep, a frying pan. But at that point in life, I was not thinking about culinary possibilities after a long day of student teaching. I was thinking about something a little more permanent, if you know what I mean.

In junior high I played basketball in PE class. I was expected to be good, because I was tall. I was tall, but I was not good. Let’s be honest I was terrible. I hogged the ball, planting myself under the hoop, taking shot after shot after shot ~ because I couldn’t hit the basket. Actually I could hit it; I just couldn’t get anything to go into it.

I have a special bracelet made up of words: family, hope, trust, joy, truth, charity, love. Those were not the words coming out of my mouth in college.

Coach Westering was a dynamic presence, whether exuding enthusiasm over x’s and o’s or sharing an “Atta, boy!” for one of life’s accomplishments. At PLU football was more than just a game.

At 21 I was beginning my senior year at Pacific Lutheran University. With my advancing age and new college transcript had come an air of entitlement.

The Doobie Brothers provided a musical backdrop to my college days. Their breakthrough song, “Listen to the music” is still a favorite decades later.

My degree in education would prepare me for a career, just not a career in education.

I argued with Mom and Dad about everything: blue eyeshadow, homework, grades, curfews. They were parents who wanted to know where I was going and what time I would be home, and I hated having to say. I wanted to be grown up ~ which for me meant independent ~ which for me meant not having to say.

During my time Pacific Lutheran University, we had a beloved football coach, Frosty Westering. He was inspiration’s example of inspiration. With a smile on his face and a coach’s booming sideline voice, he inspired not just a football team, but an entire college community.

In college I made wonderful friends, life-long friends. Some of us lived together; some of us didn’t, but all of us had several years in which to grow up together.

I do not like to sweat. Really, I do not like to sweat. Really. I do not like to sweat.

Kurt and I married eight years, six months, and three days after meeting at Pacific Lutheran University. Yep, you heard it correctly. A long time!

In college, classes came with homework and reading assignments. All came with books that had to be purchased. I read very, very little of them.

The summer of my senior year in college, I turned 21. It should have been a time of great celebration, great anticipation, but I was in the throes of an eating disorder.

Not wanting to go to Pacific Lutheran University included not wanting to go to class. And missing from my life as a coed was a huge dose of responsibility and accountability.

I turned 21 the summer before my senior year at Pacific Lutheran University, the one school I did not want to go to!