We Heart Waco Farewell Tour - Baylor University

There are three Waco places that are going to be nearly impossible to say good-bye to. Three places whose meaning I cannot even begin to articulate. Three places that will forever feel like home to Keith and I both, places we'll always miss. Baylor is one of them. Knowing before I begin that words will fail me in this task, it's hard to even try. I considered just letting the pictures do the talking. But that's not nearly enough either.

Suffice it to say that I love Baylor. That it holds a deep, huge place in my heart. That I grew up loving it and looking forward to it. And then I came here and I really began to grow up, for the first time. It was here that I took my first steps into the adult world. It was here that I experienced my first real triumphs and my first real heart-breaks. It was here that I learned who I'd been and who I wanted to be. I formed so many of my most treasured friendships here. I met and fell in love with and married a Baylor boy and we share a love for this place, a pride in it, and I'm so thankful for that.

I remember walking around the campus my freshman year, wide-eyed and wondering as I gazed on this place. This place that had reached the status of legend in my mind, and that was suddenly coming alive and coming true and coming real all around me. This place that had belonged to my parents and then had belonged to my dreams and then grandly became my very own. And my heart would just fill and fill and fill with hope and joy and love. And I thought it might just burst. But instead it spilled over, splashed all around me, and then just kept filling again.

And my love for Baylor overflowed into a love for the community and it led me to make Waco my home. And it has been a home for me for almost twelve years now and I can hardly even believe that. Now, suddenly, I'm leaving. And I find that thought even more unbelievable and almost unbearable but surely in a really good way because wasn't this the purpose all along? All those years. All those experiences. All those lessons and loves. The purpose was to become this girl, this woman, that I've become and that I keep becoming, and part of that means moving on, to the next thing. To keep growing, to keep becoming, someplace new.