a response to mike’s question about mentors on www.mike-skinner.blogspot.com.
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Mentor is such a stiff, weird word. A mentor is someone who witnesses your life and pulls you through it, but the word “mentor” sounds like someone who sits across the desk from you and answers your questions – clinical. Funny thing is, my high school mentor did both of these things, and it wasn’t clinical at all.
I started hearing about Chris when I was in 8th grade, usually from my awestruck 9th grade friends who told stories about his hard Bible class in which they had to write out a book of the Bible by hand with no mistakes. I was intrigued. When I heard he was my Bible teacher in 9th grade for OT/NT survey, I was thrilled – I’ve always loved the mean teachers.
Of course, once I walked into the classroom, I was totally intimidated. I was an awkward fourteen-year-old with braces, puffy hair, bangs, and glasses. I was painfully quiet, blushing at a word from anyone. I literally, physically shrank back in my chair in an effort to be invisible in the classroom. This didn’t mean I was disengaged; contrarily I loved to listen, to soak up the lesson uninhibited.
I started emailing Chris in a small effort to gain his respect. One memory I have is of jealousy that Lukas Chaloupka could carry on fun sciency conversations with him and I couldn’t. I felt like this man was ten feet taller than I was in every respect. Finally, I decided; I would grab his attention in one sentence: “So, free will or predestination?” It worked.
Conveniently, rehearsals for theater began at 3:30, and since I was car-less, I had a good excuse to make him get to know me by bothering him in those twenty minutes. I don’t remember all the things we talked about, but I know that I began to trust him implicitly. I borrowed books, asked his advice, and generally acted like an insecure fourteen-year-old. This relationship continued throughout high school and helped sustain me through many things – my insecurities about my identity as a Christian woman, problems with Christian doctrine, and other things. He never hesitated to tell me his opinions about things, and we began to butt heads almost constantly. I enjoyed it.
My senior year of high school I began to go to Bible study at Chris’s house and then to his church at FC3. This community quickly became one of the most important things in my life. The Henderson house became a place of safety, an extension of that temporary-trailer-classroom where I could go to be quiet and listen. When I moved to Georgetown, this community was the thing I missed the most. I remembered them all day on Sundays, praying at 11:11am and at 6pm.
My world had a pretty major falldown halfway through my first year. He called me the next night to check up on me. When I transgressed boundaries in angry speech or reactive ideas, he told me straight-up that it was BS and in the next breath assured me of his and Janelle’s love for me. I still ran to the brown couches at the Henderson house for safety.
As time has gone on, Chris’s actual presence in my life has decreased, but his influences are tangible in any of my thoughts or ideas. When I sat in on a grad school class on Tillich, I realized I’d heard it before; when you mention Chris to any of my college friends, they know who he is.
Mentor is not a big enough word.
