As a rising senior at Rutgers University in New Jersey, I believe everything that’s happened during college, good and bad, has happened for a reason. God has never made a mistake. 

“Can my faith survive college?”

Whether or not you’ve said this out loud, it’s a question a lot of future college freshmen are asking this month as they think about leaving home for the first time and stepping onto campus in a few short weeks. 

So, you’re engaged, or perhaps newlywed? Congratulations! By convincing somebody to tie the knot, you have achieved the most prestigious status in all of Christian life—spousehood. Remember all those sermons that you used to tune out because they were about husbands and wives?

Since I graduated from college three years ago, I’ve been a bridesmaid four times, kept two wedding guest books, and read Scripture in seven different ceremonies, and that’s just the list of weddings I’ve participated in.

I left college in the summer of 2012 with a sense that God wanted something great for my life. I just didn’t know what that looked like.

It was a simple enough question. “Would you like me to buy you one?” The thing in question was an official Urbana 12 T-shirt. It would be a keepsake for me from what had so far been an amazing experience in a foreign land at a great conference. 

I look like a pretty typical Christian girl. I grew up in a Christian family like most of my friends involved in campus ministries. My parents were missionaries when I was younger. I’m pretty sure I held the Sunday school record for flipping to the correct book of the Bible the fastest. And by the time I began college I had already been on two mission trips.