Below is the speech of Class of 2014 valedictorian Caroline Holliday, prefaced by her introduction by Jason Van Bemmel, Upper School principal.
Caroline graduated from Whitefield with a perfect 4.0 GPA and a nearly perfect 99.0% GPA. She is a 4-year varsity cheerleader on both our football cheer team and our competition cheer squad. She is a Girl Talk mentor and a member of the Honor Council and the National Honor Society. She is also an outstanding tennis player, a vital part of our State Champion tennis team, one-half of our undefeated #1 doubles team.
Yet the thing that impresses me about Caroline is her heart. One of her favorite quotes is from Augustine, one of my favorite writers and thinkers from church history, who said, “If there is a God who created you, then the deepest chambers of your soul simply cannot be filled with anything less.” And Caroline is simply not a young lady who ever settles for anything less in every area of her life.
Willingness To See
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720 is the number of days we have spent at Whitefield Academy, just in high school. For those of you who have been at Whitefield since 1st grade, the very first 1st grade class at this school, you have spent 2,160 days on this campus. I believe we can all say that from our infamous field trip around Atlanta to having three out of Whitefield's five state championships in our four years here, it has been quite a long journey - but a good and fruitful one. I know that, at some point, we will all look back on this place with thankfulness because the people here cared more about our character than our grades and test scores.
Although there have been many highs in our time here, there have also been many lows. Personally, as most of you know, I wanted to go to Dartmouth more than anything, and God very clearly told me no. I was crushed; I felt as though all of my hard work was completely futile. I even looked at my life: the four papers due, the endless hours of sports practices, the five college applications that needed to be turned in and the list goes on. I asked God: Where are you? Where are you in the midst of my disappointment? Where are you in the overwhelming number of assignments and activities I have vying for my attention? Where are you in the midst of this never-ending routine? I wanted to live fully, to radically experience the presence of God but, honestly, I just wasn't looking in the right places.
One day, I was scrolling through Instagram, and one of my friends posted something about a book, which I soon realized my mom had on her bookshelf. The book was called One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp. Almost as if in direct connection with my questions, this is what the front cover said: "How do we find joy in the midst of deadlines, debt, drama, and daily duties? What does a life of gratitude look like when your days are gritty, long, and sometimes dark? What is God providing here and now?" I wanted to know the answer, and so I started to read.
Voskamp discovers that her life of mundane motherhood is filled with the presence of God, and so she begins a list of gifts, divine gifts. The list begins: "Book pages turning, boys humming hymns, click of a seatbelt, fender rattling with stones of gravel roads, wind rushing through the open truck window, laundry flapping, squeak of an old swing swaying, laughter." All of these gifts seemed so trivial, so easily passed over. Yet Voskamp explains, "If I can give thanks for the good things, the hard things, the absolute things, I can enter the gates of glory. Living in His presence is fullness of joy - and seeing shows the ways in." I realized that having eyes that see is the key to it all. If we can notice God in the ordinary: the smell of an old book, the sunrise, chocolate chip cookies baking in the oven, a cup of coffee in the morning, then how much more are we filled with the presence of God? We can gain a keen awareness of who God is just by having eyes that catch glimpses of the divine. The chaos of this life fades away when our perspective continually shifts to recognize what God is providing here and now.
I clearly remember a moment earlier this year when I was at the Passion Conference here in Atlanta. I remember looking around at the 20,000 people worshipping Jesus in that room, and I thought to myself, this is glimpse of heaven. This joy, so pure and intangible, is just a small taste of the divine. In the words of Marilynne Robison, "It is the eternal breaking in on the temporal." In that moment that could have been so easily passed over, Christ's glory and His grace shone through.
In her book Gilead, Marilynne Robinson captures this idea perfectly when she says: "It has seemed to me sometimes as though the Lord breathes on this poor gray ember of Creation and it turns to radiance - for a moment or a year or the span of a life. And then it sinks back into itself again...Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don't have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see." Our world is filled with evidence of the Creator and all it takes to have fullness of joy is, simply this: a little willingness to see.
I promise you classmates that as you go forth into college and the rest of your lives, in the midst of chaos, in the midst of papers, in the midst of struggle, and in the midst of disappointment, if you seek God in the seemingly insignificant moments of your lives, if you embrace lives of radical thankfulness for the ordinary, you will find much more than temporary happiness, you will find eternal joy. Congratulations Whitefield Academy class of 2014, we made it!
Caroline graduated from Whitefield with a perfect 4.0 GPA and a nearly perfect 99.0% GPA. She is a 4-year varsity cheerleader on both our football cheer team and our competition cheer squad. She is a Girl Talk mentor and a member of the Honor Council and the National Honor Society. She is also an outstanding tennis player, a vital part of our State Champion tennis team, one-half of our undefeated #1 doubles team.
Yet the thing that impresses me about Caroline is her heart. One of her favorite quotes is from Augustine, one of my favorite writers and thinkers from church history, who said, “If there is a God who created you, then the deepest chambers of your soul simply cannot be filled with anything less.” And Caroline is simply not a young lady who ever settles for anything less in every area of her life.
Willingness To See
720 is the number of days we have spent at Whitefield Academy, just in high school. For those of you who have been at Whitefield since 1st grade, the very first 1st grade class at this school, you have spent 2,160 days on this campus. I believe we can all say that from our infamous field trip around Atlanta to having three out of Whitefield's five state championships in our four years here, it has been quite a long journey - but a good and fruitful one. I know that, at some point, we will all look back on this place with thankfulness because the people here cared more about our character than our grades and test scores.
Although there have been many highs in our time here, there have also been many lows. Personally, as most of you know, I wanted to go to Dartmouth more than anything, and God very clearly told me no. I was crushed; I felt as though all of my hard work was completely futile. I even looked at my life: the four papers due, the endless hours of sports practices, the five college applications that needed to be turned in and the list goes on. I asked God: Where are you? Where are you in the midst of my disappointment? Where are you in the overwhelming number of assignments and activities I have vying for my attention? Where are you in the midst of this never-ending routine? I wanted to live fully, to radically experience the presence of God but, honestly, I just wasn't looking in the right places.
One day, I was scrolling through Instagram, and one of my friends posted something about a book, which I soon realized my mom had on her bookshelf. The book was called One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp. Almost as if in direct connection with my questions, this is what the front cover said: "How do we find joy in the midst of deadlines, debt, drama, and daily duties? What does a life of gratitude look like when your days are gritty, long, and sometimes dark? What is God providing here and now?" I wanted to know the answer, and so I started to read.
Voskamp discovers that her life of mundane motherhood is filled with the presence of God, and so she begins a list of gifts, divine gifts. The list begins: "Book pages turning, boys humming hymns, click of a seatbelt, fender rattling with stones of gravel roads, wind rushing through the open truck window, laundry flapping, squeak of an old swing swaying, laughter." All of these gifts seemed so trivial, so easily passed over. Yet Voskamp explains, "If I can give thanks for the good things, the hard things, the absolute things, I can enter the gates of glory. Living in His presence is fullness of joy - and seeing shows the ways in." I realized that having eyes that see is the key to it all. If we can notice God in the ordinary: the smell of an old book, the sunrise, chocolate chip cookies baking in the oven, a cup of coffee in the morning, then how much more are we filled with the presence of God? We can gain a keen awareness of who God is just by having eyes that catch glimpses of the divine. The chaos of this life fades away when our perspective continually shifts to recognize what God is providing here and now.
I clearly remember a moment earlier this year when I was at the Passion Conference here in Atlanta. I remember looking around at the 20,000 people worshipping Jesus in that room, and I thought to myself, this is glimpse of heaven. This joy, so pure and intangible, is just a small taste of the divine. In the words of Marilynne Robison, "It is the eternal breaking in on the temporal." In that moment that could have been so easily passed over, Christ's glory and His grace shone through.
In her book Gilead, Marilynne Robinson captures this idea perfectly when she says: "It has seemed to me sometimes as though the Lord breathes on this poor gray ember of Creation and it turns to radiance - for a moment or a year or the span of a life. And then it sinks back into itself again...Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don't have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see." Our world is filled with evidence of the Creator and all it takes to have fullness of joy is, simply this: a little willingness to see.
I promise you classmates that as you go forth into college and the rest of your lives, in the midst of chaos, in the midst of papers, in the midst of struggle, and in the midst of disappointment, if you seek God in the seemingly insignificant moments of your lives, if you embrace lives of radical thankfulness for the ordinary, you will find much more than temporary happiness, you will find eternal joy. Congratulations Whitefield Academy class of 2014, we made it!