From Cross 'til Now

Sooooooooooo... I figure it takes at least that long of a "so" to express my utter shame at the fact that I have not written on this blog in what, at least 5 months? perhaps even longer? I'm sure my much loved friends will be more than willing to clarify that little detail ;).

So, I'm going to give my little recap and "take" on this semester and all its shenanigans, and perhaps this will remotely begin to make up for my past failures? Hey, a girl can hope... Anyways... as you've seen from said friend's past and recent posts, it has been a very, very interesting-jam-packed-eventful-off-your-rocker-betty-crocker-kinda semester. School itself kind of really sucked for all of us this semester... but that's okay because it rocked in other ways that more than made up for it! We made tons of new, aweseome friends, including Dillon and Austin from the tunnel adventure, Kathy, Alyssa and Megumi from our floor, Jason, Raquel, Gillian, Tiffany, Rachel, and the list goes on :). God blessed us so much with all of these people this semester, and thankfully, with their help and jojo and brenna's help, I somehow made it through this semester without losing my mind and everything else along with it.

I've been through a ton this semester, from awesome things like the cross and tunnel adventures to not so awesome things like my grandfather dying. But through it all God has been so gracious and SO good in teaching me what I can take from all of these starkly contrasted experiences. I am so thankful for my friends and even the simple little joys they bring to my life :). You have all heard about the tunnel adventure... so I will relate to you the cross adventure, the brilliant start of my semester!

Right off the running blocks my semester was admittedly pretty darn bomb... First weekend I got to go with a large group of friends to the John Williams concert in Hollywood! And if that didn't make the night epic, what four of my friends and I did afterward more than made up for that. Jason Leith, Christine Fuchs, Christopher Girard, Riley Gilmore and I piled into a jeep and went on an hour's search for the base of the hollywood hill that has the giant illuminated cross on top of it... for what reason you might ask? What else but to climb it and go to the cross! As Jason put on the song "lead me to the cross" by Hillsong, we drove the confusing one-way streets of Hollywood at 11 o'clock at night, searching for the infamous hill with the giant glowing cross. After failing one attempt and being warned by locals of the hill's danger, we finally found a sketch backroad that led us to a hill that we were sure was at least close to the one we wanted.

And then we climbed... in dresses and sandals and dress slacks we climbed the less than pleasant terrain (i.e. extremely steep hills covered in dirt that slid right out from under us, various cacti, prickles and pointy grasses) until we finally had to resign ourselves from shoes and just go barefoot. Let me tell you, that trip was friendship and character building... we had NO idea where exactly we were going, and we had to help each other the entire way up, else I'm pretty sure we never would have made it. As we climbed, we realized that the hills just kept going... pretty soon one hill turned into five or six, and after passing by a camp of sleeping homeless people and being scared out of our minds by a jack rabbit, we came out on top of what really ended up being more of a mountain than a hill (well... it would definitely be a mountain if we were back east... lol).

There we saw it... on the hill BELOW us... As the five of us descended down a rocky pathway, all of us were blown away by the scene before us: a 200 foot tall, illuminated cross in the foreground of the still entirely lit city of Los Angeles stretching as far as the eye could see! It was one of the coolest things I have ever seen. When we reached it we took a moment to observe our surroundings, and after a few minutes of recooperations from minor injuries, we decided we should do something worthwhile after all of that effort. For some stretch of time the five of us took turns praying over the city so conveniently laid out before us. Then we sang a few worship songs that we all knew and prayed for each other and the semester to come.

After we had remenisced about how crazy we were and how our recent journey and its difficulties perfectly mirrored the realities of a Christian's walk with God, we made our way down a different way so that we wouldn't die... and after walking down the same sketch road we drove in on, found the jeep. We high-tailed it out of there, hit up some Tommy's for 2:30 am chili burgers, went home, showered all of the caked dirt off, and nesteled into bed around 3, 3:30 in the morning.

It was freaky, it was daring, and I can't deny that there were times that we all got pretty freaked out of our minds... But all in all, what is an adventure without all of those things included :)? And now we can say, whenever we think about that night or see that cross, that we didn't just go back to Biola and hit up some Inn-N-Out after the concert... No, my friends... we went to the cross.

~Kendall