Along the River

By Phillip Collier

This is the true story of how a young couple found one another on a Christian college campus in the early 1970's. He was painfully shy, she was grieving the death of her mother. Both were determined to seek and obey the will of God. As they grew in faith and understanding they found healing, were married, and entered the ministry. But as their life together unfolded the challenges continued. Sprinkled with frank observations and a little humor, this book takes an honest look at how challenge and hope grow side by side.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jan 29, 2009
• ISBN: 9781467051828

Book preview

Contents

Returning

Arriving

A New Day

And Another Day

The Weight Of Study

Taking A Chance

Seeking A Place

Making An Impression

There, But Unaware

Missed Opportunities

Moving Ahead

Learning From Others

Growing Pains

The Prelude

Along The River

Missed Opportunity

Finals

Dying To Live

Another Try

Getting Focused

Holding On

A Call To Care

Up The Slope

The Next Step

The Slippery Rock

Getting A Hold

For How Long?

Spring Quarter

Beyond The Chasm

Two Pines

The Wedding

Same Song, Second Verse

Stresses

Reflections

The Cost

Climbing Up

One Year And Several Weeks Later . . .

Going Up By Going Down

College Days Revisited

What you are about to read is based on the journals and recollections of the author, in collaboration with the woman he married. Certain events have been placed out of sequence for creative purposes, and some conversations have been recreated in the spirit in which they were held. The names of most of the characters have been changed to protect their privacy.

Returning 

The rumbling of the car was monotonous. Just ahead of Phil was an old Rambler with a Michigan license plate that read xx1977xx. A good year, thought he. One down and three more to suffer through.

The road’s surface became rough, and just over the top of the hill lay the campus, barely lit by the setting sun. It all looked hauntingly familiar. Narrow streets were surrounded by dingy dorms, each building housing some faded memory. Feelings of an unpleasant past hung in the air.

He parked the car between two of the three-story brick buildings and made his way up slick metal steps at the side of one of them. The dull ringing of his feet on the slick metal landing reminded him of a huge bell, clanging into empty space for nobody to hear.

Upon entering the building he pulled a crinkled envelop from the pocket of his windbreaker to confirm his room number. After receiving his room key from a head resident he didn’t recognize, he dragged his luggage and bass guitar to a chipped veneer door, and turned the key in the loose door knob.

When he opened the door he saw a familiar guitar case with psychedelic pink and green fuzzy feet pasted on it. That meant that Len had found where he was staying and intended to have the same room-mate for another year.

Phil turned to the left, knelt on the gray tile floor, pulled open the blond dresser drawer, and began stuffing it with T-shirts and socks.

He glanced up into the mirror on the dresser and saw a man quite young looking for his age.

A sophomore, he remembered saying at the factory that summer. No, not in high school, in college!

Perhaps it was his wiry frame that caused his youthful appearance, he thought, as he brushed black, curly locks from the forehead of his round face. He scratched at a pimple on his smooth, small chin and went back to unpacking.

After he had shoved all the items he had no room for elsewhere into the back of the closet, he sat on the edge of a bare mattress and looked at the bed across from him. Goods covered the bed and spilled over into his half of the room. That giant imitation leopard skin pillow was at the head. He recalled the first time he had seen it. It was his freshman year and he had just stepped into his new room. His roommate was nowhere to be found. Surely, he thought, the owner was a wild athlete, or maybe a native African. He was surprised to find later that the owner was a quiet guy from Ohio.

Below the pillow lay a thick pile of conservatively cut clothing, and at the foot of the bed was an old Boy Scout yucca pack atop boxes of cheap paperback novels. The desk was piled with everything from sports equipment to a box of food. Len had built shelves to sit on his desk top, and a book case at the foot of his bed.

Looking back to the head of the bed Phil saw an old door resting on its face, on the edges of his and his roommate’s bed frames. The door acted as another shelf that was covered with records, more clothes and a stereo. He shook his head in disbelief.

His eyes followed a crack in the greenish bare wall to a six foot tall window. There were no drapes. He could not tell whether it was the piles of goods filling the room or the fact that he was stuck there for another year, but something made him feel claustrophobic. It was dark outside, but he was so restless that he had to take a short walk.

He squeezed between his dresser and desk at the foot of his bed and stood in front of the mirror above the sink, fingering down some locks of out-of-place hair. He gave his reflection a dissatisfied frown and hurried out the door.

At the end of the long, dimly lit hallway he saw a student bent over with a pile of clothes on his back, heading up the stairs. The smell of musty books, stale food and deodorant hit his face, reminding him that he was back at school. The muffled shouts from upstairs, and the closed hallway doors ahead of him, only intensified his feelings of loneliness.

He plodded down a flight of chipped cement steps at the front of the dorm and looked out over campus. A colonial styled library stood at the center of several other similarly fashioned buildings on a gently sloping hillside. Amber light flowing from giant grid windows barely illumined a network of sidewalks. With vapor feathering up out of several manhole covers spotted across the way, the place took on a ghostly, yet romantic, appearance. Phil could imagine an eighteenth century gentleman, with which he tended to identify, emerging from the tall shrubbery surrounding many of the brick walls. Pale moonlight cut through the stately oaks and sycamores scattered about.

As he walked along there were few others around. The whole campus was relatively quiet. He tried to calm the uneasiness in his chest by appreciating his surroundings. He forced himself to accept what he saw, trying to view it as warm. It was a real nice place, he tried to convince himself, but the kind of place that should be shared with someone.

He walked down another flight of steps and heard the squeaky door he had just opened echo in the empty hall. The same stale smell was there. He felt butterflies in his stomach. He was in the CPO, the one place on campus that everybody went when they didn’t have any place else to go -- usually a busy place. Out of reflex he turned the pointer on a little bronze and glass door, pulled the knob, and groped in the dark for any piece of mail that might link him with home. Nothing, of course. The quarter had not yet begun.

After leaving the CPO he walked slowly down another dark, winding sidewalk to the girls’ dorm. He heard giggles and voices and wished he could recognize just one of them. As he glanced over his shoulder he saw the silhouette of a long haired young woman in a trench coat. He wondered who it might be that walked with such a spring in her step, swaying her head gently from side to side. Then, out of the darkness, near the bushes, came a deep voice. Hey, Trish!

She stopped and turned. Hey, Jack!

A stocky figure emerged, with outstretched arms. He threw his arms around her waist, hoisted her into the air, and turned her around in circles. She squealed with delight.

"It’s so good to see you back this quarter. How was your summer?" They rushed into the dorm lobby, talking the whole way.

Might have known, Phil nodded and mumbled. He kicked at the stones on the sidewalk and walked on up a hill at the side of the dorm. The cement walkway ended at the trunk of a huge swamp oak, which he bypassed, and he stepped into the wet grass.

He looked up into the sky as he walked away from the campus lights and saw stars shining brighter than he’d ever noticed them before. The moon was full and blue, and the air was cool, fresh and still. The setting calmed him. He hunched his shoulders and stuffed his hands into his pockets.

As the path before him leveled off he came to the crushed stone track that he’d practically worn ruts in the year before. It seemed that the rocky road had been waiting for him to return. There at the first bend in the track, high on a hill of the surrounding golf course, stood the familiar water tower with a lighted, pale green cross at the top.

Phil looked up at the cross and stopped. He felt at home. He had always had an attraction to that lighted cross, and felt as though it were a part of himself. It made him feel warm, no matter how cold the temperature was outside. He gazed at the cross for a long time, hoping deep inside to hear something from heaven.

I’m giving up my life for this, thought he. This cross, this is why I’m studying. This is why I’m miles from home, lonely. I only hope it’s worth it.

Something inside him told him to quit feeling sorry for himself, that it was more than worth the trouble. He dreamed for a moment about preaching to crowds who would come to Christ by listening to him, and about traveling from place to place every week. He saw a wife at his side, caring for others as he did, sharing his work. But where was she? He had so many dreams inside that he wanted to share with her. He prayed a short, silent prayer, half in thoughts and half in longings that he could not put into words, and all was very, very still. He walked on reverently.

He remembered the studies he had done the year before, and the long hours he had spent writing papers that only earned him C’s. He recalled the day he was in his room, alone, when a sudden wave of terror overcame him. He did not know what an anxiety attack was, and feared that he was going insane. And then he fell into that deep, deep depression, and was overwhelmed with loneliness as he isolated himself from others. He dared to tell no one of his inner struggles. He felt that God had deserted him, and he could no longer pray because of his disappointment with Him. Although the most intense emotions of the year before were gone, a heaviness lingered in his heart.

Sharp stones punched at his feet through his moccasins as he wished he had dated more in high school. He had had trouble just making conversation with girls. His mind wandered back to that date with Michelle when he kept apologizing for not kissing her over and over at the movie, which was expected behavior among his peers. He kept apologizing to her for not giving her a good time, even though she tried to reassure him that his style was quite refreshing. And that forty-five minute drive from Indianapolis back to her house without the car radio working . . . Not a word was said the whole way. He could almost look back on it all with amusement, but was saddened by the fact that he still felt nervous around the opposite sex.

He remembered the date that summer with Jenny, and how much he had cared for her for three years. But, fearing what might develop, and not knowing how to handle a deeper relationship, he never found strength to date her again. He began to think of her as more of a sister, but could not get over how attractive she was to him.

And then there was a classmate named Cheryl at college. Phil had strayed into the fine arts building one night the year before, and there she was, sitting cross-legged in faded bell bottomed jeans and a macramé vest, in the middle of the room on the floor, sketching on the pad on her lap. He wanted to start a conversation.

That’s good, he attempted, pointing to the sketch.

Oh, thanks. You an art major?

No, I just like art. That was my thing in high school.

Silence. He wanted to tell her all about the art award he had won in high school, and the five feet two inch statue he had sculpted, but she would not ask, and he did not want to brag.

Then entered two of her girlfriends. They exchanged a few words about who was cool and who was not. And then they talked about music.

Who do you like? she asked Phil.

Bread, Bee Gees, and Moody Blues.

Oh, you like the quieter stuff.

Anybody that likes the Moody Blues, said one of her friends, can’t be all bad.

That felt good. He had been accepted on at least a surface level. Yet, as the conversation progressed, he knew that they had been some place that he had not. They understood what he wished he could understand. His experiences in rural Indiana were so foreign to their way of talking and thinking. He could only listen, and soon was left out of the conversation altogether. He went away unnoticed. Where could he find the knowledge he longed for? This was college, but they didn’t offer a class that could teach him what he needed to know.

No, not Cheryl. She was not one that he would try to date. How could he come to know and care about someone so very different?

Phil’s reflecting time was over for the evening. He felt hungry. There was something about being at college that made him feel hungry all the time. He walked back toward the lights to his dorm to have some of the cookies his mother had sent with him. Pushing through the side door of the brick building he moved slowly down the hall toward his room. As he approached, the muffled tones of his roommate’s voice and guitar grew louder. Len was bellowing out a Hank Williams tear jerker. Phil grinned and walked into the room unannounced.

Len glanced up long enough to see who had entered the room, but didn’t miss a beat. The stocky, blue eyed blond was seated on the edge of his bed, strumming Gertrude Guitar soulfully, with a bottle of Dad’s root beer sitting on the shelf beside him. He finished his concert with a heart-felt Six More Miles to the Graveyard.

Greetings! grinned Phil with a half wave. I see Gertrude hasn’t left you yet.

Phillip! he returned. How was your summer? And he slurped a mouthful of root beer.

Long. I was janitor at a steel mill for minimum wage. Have a good trip from Canton? He took his bass guitar from its case and began to hook up the wires on the amp.

They talked and sang and played together until Len had finished his root beer. Later that evening they compared the quarter’s class schedules to see if they had any of the same professors, and did find one. Phil trimmed Len’s hair in the back and above the ears, just enough that it would meet college regulations, and Len trimmed and then shaved off his beard with great agony. They fell asleep talking about the past and old movies.

Arriving 

Valorie had arrived much earlier with Sorrel, a girlfriend from Raleigh, North Carolina, who had attended her church during her early teenage years. Valorie’s father, stepmother, and her little brother and her stepsister had come to the college in the Buick station wagon that had imitation wooden side panels. The trip had seemed almost endless. Her stepsister would not stop talking and singing. Her brother kept asking when they were going to get there.

As they approached the campus, Valorie noticed some newer buildings that had been built at the back. She felt relieved when they pulled in front of an older, dark brick dormitory with large white pillars on the front porch. There was something friendlier, something that felt safe, about old buildings.

From the back of the car the girls took as many bags and suitcases as they could manage in one load, and they walked down a long, dimly lit hallway, looking at the rusty metal room numbers on each door. Valorie liked the quaintness of the long halls, the heavy, dark oak molding around the door frames, and the musty smell of the place.

Her father brought in the rest of their things while her stepmother went on talking about her own time at college and making positive observations about the rooms and campus. The two children continued to argue and dance around, but were interrupted occasionally by their mother. Finally, she came close to Valorie for a tent hug and a pat on the back, and then her father offered a kiss on her cheek, and then Valorie reached for the children. Valorie was surprised that she was not crying as her family left the room to return to their car. The truth was, in some ways, she felt relieved.

The girls went to Sorrel’s room first and unpacked her things. Then they unpacked Valorie’s much smaller collection, both saying very little the entire time. And then, they walked slowly around the campus while Sorrel recalled some of the people she had met in each of the buildings they saw. Valorie tried to imagine college life, and wondered why she was there. But it felt right, and good.

A New Day 

Valorie’s alarm clock was buzzing. She reached over and began to grope through the air until she found the source that interrupted her sleep. A new day was dawning and she was trying to cope with the brightness of the sun. She lay still for a few moments, looking out one eye at Cleo, her fifteen feet long Wandering Jew. She managed to pull herself up to sit on the edge of the bed and pushed the comforter with vines painted on it away from her. As she stood up she saw the back side of Beth, her roommate. Beth had evidently been up studying all night, and was sleeping as late as possible.

Valorie reached for the