Graduation: Celebrations, Ceremonies, and Remembering to Say Thank You

Memories, misty-watercolored or otherwise, can foreshadow future events as well as reinforce occasions we should never forget.

When I graduated from high school, a friend invited me and a few other girls to lunch at the Zodiac Room inside Neiman Marcus, downtown Dallas, Texas. [1] This made me feel like Cinderella going to the ball, celebrating graduation in this world-famous upscale restaurant, all dressed up and wearing hats, like we did on Senior Day at school.

Fast-forward 39 years when a woman who sat next to me in one of my seminary classes treated five women to lunch at the Zodiac Room. After being gone from Dallas for 34 years, this invitation felt like lightning striking in the same place twice.

Two different new-found friends, decades apart, could have invited anyone. Included, the coincidence of being asked to a luncheon at the same restaurant in Dallas bowled me over. Circles inside circles.

Years later, I realized that without the family who let me live with them my senior year, I might not have been able to finish high school at all.

These two graduation celebrations telescoped, accentuating a few momentous events and enormous privileges I have known because of ways that other people have helped me and the ways God has guided my path.

“Pay attention to your life.”

Frederick Buechner

Snapshot: Education is a privilege

When I went back to school in my mid-50’s, one of my sons said to me, “Education is a gift you give yourself, Mom.” That statement sustained me through days of doubt, dread and continuous questions about why even attempt something this hard.

Yet graduation felt exhilarating, as if I had climbed a mountain carrying a 30-pound pack and could now set it down. I was bona fide.

But why seminary? I could have just as easily gone back to North Texas (UNT) and finished both undergrad and then a graduate degree in less time (and fewer hours) than it took me to go through Dallas Theological Seminary. Both campuses were the same distance from my house. Both institutions required an entrance exam (GRE or MAT) “to show that you can do graduate-level study,” the Registrar said. An obstacle course ahead to be admitted, but that’s another story.

While maps only hint at the miles of any journey, people I trusted pointed me toward a soul-shaping experience, telling me to write a Bible study when I graduated. Hmm.

During lunch at the Zodiac Room, I asked each person graduating from DTS, “What are you preparing for?” Seated to my left was a woman I had seen on campus but never met. When I asked her, someone else answered.

“Oh, she has a ministry. She has written a book and has a speaking ministry.”

This stranger offered to give me a copy of her book, His Word in My Heart, a book about memorizing scripture. “I’ll give you a copy. What’s your box number?”

The book was in my box the next day. This impressed me because she did what she said she would do. It had become rare to meet someone like her, and so had the spirit of gratitude that I expected to find prevalent in the seminary environment.

Through this unexpected encounter, God reminded me of what I had been missing. After years of teaching in Bible Study Fellowship, and years of memorizing scripture when I had focused on His Word, the very words in this woman’s book title revived my heart.

And because she did what she said she would do, I wanted to read her book. In it, she described what God had used to set her on the course to seminary. And this story about pain.

Janet tells about her son who was born with a foot pointing in the wrong direction because of the way he had been situated in her womb. The doctor put this tiny baby in a brace that held his legs in shoes to be worn continuously except for bathing until he was 1-year-old. She tells her story to emphasize “We are all born defective,” and God, like the doctor, has a plan to fix us. When her baby kicked and screamed, and rubbed a blister on his foot, he looked at his parents, beseeching them to stop causing his pain. She begged the doctor to remove the shoes. “Absolutely not,” he said. “If it hurts him enough, he’ll quit kicking.”

His Word in My heart, by Janet Pope

Janet said that her grown son doesn’t even remember which foot! Captivated by this vivacious young woman, I had met someone for the first and only time just in time to go our separate ways.

Precise timing, I applied her story to the pain I felt throughout the process without knowing God’s purposes.

[I was] “kept by the power of God through faith . . .”

1 Peter 1:5, KJV

Snapshot: Amid the forest, why can’t I see the trees?

In seminary, my devotional life suffered. Plunged into academic studies, the Bible became sterile. Something to be dissected, like a cadaver. By the time I finished, I had nearly flat-lined myself.

I could diagnose the problem, but the cause could be traced to letting my studies crowd out the LORD I came to study. I focused on goals I could achieve on my own because I sought the credentials that an institution could bestow instead of the approval that comes only from God.

More than anything, I am grateful that this educational opportunity came to me later in life, when my children were grown and while my husband often worked in Germany and France.

As a young person, I would have lacked the foundation to build upon. The ability to assimilate as well as discriminate the vast information coming “through the firehose” would have drowned me. The requirements for graduation, including a year’s internship at Insight for Living, meant many long day’s journey into nights.

But while I was a student, I used to think about that line from the movie Silverado where Paden asks a pioneering woman, “What makes a journey this hard worth taking?”

I wish I had spent more time knowing people. People like Janet, who reminded me about scripture memory. Sometimes, I would walk into the dining hall, wishing I had the courage to ask other students Paden’s question.

Even when I served as editor of the student newspaper, I demurred. I deflected. I cared more about grades and pages in books and books in the library and never missing a class than realizing life as I lived it, every, every minute. [2]

Today, I have enormous gratitude for those 4 years. People and countless opportunities would never have happened apart from mine and my husband’s move back to Dallas, including another unforgettable lunch at the Zodiac Room.

[1] https://flashbackdallas.com/2019/05/05/the-zodiac-room/

[2] Emily, in Thornton Wilder’s play, Our Town.