Some of my best memories of college are from the semester I spent in London. Dr. Douglas spent a good deal of time talking me into going. It wasn't that I didn't want to go. It wasn't even really about the money, although that was a small part of the reason. The main reason that I was hesitant was because it would force me to interact with people from the college I went to.
Don't think I'm not a social butterfly, I am. I had become sort of a hermit by this point because of circumstances. Getting raped your first semester at a Christian college never helps you become popular. (Especially if it's how you lose your virginity.) I lost many friends after that because they didn't feel it was a good idea to associate with me. I was told that if that was the kind of person I was, then they didn't want to be around me. This was when I started drinking...very heavily. It's also when I got into an abusive relationship and became sexually active. That led to more people dropping off the friendship bandwagon.
So spending an entire semester with these people was not sounding like my idea of a good time, even if it was in London.
Dr. Douglas probably didn't know how badly I needed that semester away, but God did. It took some convincing on her part, but I finally agreed to sign up for it. (She wasn't accepting the money excuse, and kept telling me that there were scholarships, etc.)
She arranged it for me to have a private room when we got to the bed and breakfast where we would begin our journey, This was pretty lucky since only two of us got private rooms, and some people were in rooms for three. Looking back, this was God's way of easing me into being around these people for an entire semester. When we were moved to home stay families, I was placed with the only person from our group on the trip who had not attended our college. (Her mom worked at the school, and she had just graduated college and was sent on this trip to become one of my best friends. OR she was figuring out her next life move, but I'm going with the best friend part.)
What most people didn't know was that the guy I was in this abusive relationship with got a work visa and was in London when we were. Some of them met him over the course of the semester because he came to visit me, but nobody really knew what our relationship was.
Knowing he was there, it was difficult for me to begin to let these people in, but over the course of the semester I began to do so. Most of that was God, but a small part of it was God through Dr. Douglas. Dr. Douglas and I went to see a play, just the two of us, and she later told my parents that I was one of the few, if not the only person she would have gone to see it with in the group because I was the most open-minded and didn't take the tongue in cheek nature of it too seriously. (It was the Abbreviated Shakespeare Company doing an abbreviated version of The Bible...religious school....wouldn't have gone over so well with some people.) But what Dr. Douglas gave me in that experience was something that I hadn't had since my first semester of college - spending time with a Christian where I didn't feel judged.
While there are many amazing experiences that I had while spending those months in Europe, that was what I needed most. I needed someone to remind me that I was more than my situations. That I deserved the same peace that everyone else had. While everything I saw was amazing, the work that God did in my life through Dr. Douglas and the angel that I saw (yes, I'm still convinced that I interacted with an angel on the streets of London, more on that another time) is something that I will be eternally grateful for.
I've had this desire to re-read Murder in the Cathedral, one of the plays that we studied during that semester. (And one that has always been a personal favorite.) Dr. Douglas too us to see it performed at an actual Cathedral. (GOOSEBUMPS!) I kept putting it off, but finally picked it up to read it again on Monday night. I don't think it's a coincidence that I felt most compelled to read it the night she passed away. I like to think that she knew it, and it made her proud.
RIP Dr. Douglas.
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