6 minute read
Back to You: A Second Chance at WWU
by Cassie Fristore '09
My brokenness began at a young age. The cracks started forming with comments that, even in a joking tone, told me I wasn’t enough for this world. I wasn’t strong enough. Smart enough. Pretty enough. All of my “not enoughs” made me fall short, and it seems as if someone was always there to remind me.
Middle school is awkward for everyone but add in an overactive metabolism that caused me to look anorexic, thick glasses, gapped and bucked teeth, and hip problems that caused a pronounced limp, middle school was unbearable. Coming from an atheist/agnostic home that struggled to make ends meet, it felt like nothing would ever change.
My high school years are where my downward spiral began. I began to drink, was promiscuous, and shortly after graduation fell into a cycle of addiction. It was my sophomore year before a teacher caught my dyslexia, and I barely met the GPA requirements to graduate. I saw no value in my life and treated it accordingly.
The night that everything changed for me was so ordinary that I was on autopilot. A friend and I went downtown to hang out at Coffee Perk until it was time to meet up with the guys for a little partying. We had to park up Main Street a little, then sat down to enjoy ourselves.
As we threw away our empty cups and walked out the door and towards my car, I heard loud music spilling out of one of the buildings. Instantly drawn to the beat, I persuaded my friend to join me in checking out what was going on. The music poured over my soul in a way no music had ever done. I don’t remember actually hearing a single word, but it somehow filled me.
When the music finished, a group of young people got up and began doing improvisational comedy, just like I had watched on “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” on TV. I settled in and laughed and shouted out suggestions when the players asked. I was swept away in the enjoyment of the program, having never seen live entertainment before then. Soon the comedy team was bowing and jaunting offstage, and the crowd fell silent.
I can still see him walking up on the stage. He had on khaki pants, a black sweater, and a shining bald head. I didn’t catch who he was, but as he began to speak, his words floated on the air and fell softly on my heart. He spoke of Someone who filled in the broken places and filled the cracks that were thought to be too deep to mend. He spoke of wholeness that comes from the one who created me. Of the One that gives worth and value to my pathetic existence.
I was out the door before he was finished, gasping for breath in the night air. Something had been in that building. Something that filled the space in the room and in my heart and in my lungs. My friend and I continued with what we had planned, but I couldn’t get the strange ideas out of my mind. Could there be anything or anyone who could not only heal my brokenness, but who could turn my brokenness into something of value?
I talked my friend into returning to hear “the bald guy” at Improv Church two more times before she didn’t want to go anymore. I carried his words in my heart for months before meeting a young man who came to WWU as an aviation major, being called to be a missionary pilot. During our second time meeting, bowling with friends, he asked if I was interested in going to church with him. I was.
WWU wasn’t just a school for me, it was a second chance for my life to become something that mattered.
This was the point Jesus knew I was ready to end my pill addiction. I heard His words speak softly one day as I opened the bottle at work to help me get through my day. His words of truth of where I was headed prompted me to dump the contents of the bottle into the toilet. Later, with my face on the cold bathroom floor, surrounded by my own mess, I felt His presence carrying me through hours of intense withdrawals.
A year later “the bald guy” (sorry Pastor Karl!) baptized me, and a year after that he officiated our wedding as the pilot, Todd, and I got married. One more year passed, and we said goodbye to Pastor Karl and headed off as student missionaries to the Philippines, which began our career as missionaries over 10 years in four countries.
WWU isn’t just a part of my testimony, it was the beginning of a life and the backdrop for so many of the major events of my Christian life. WWU wasn’t just a school for me, it was a second chance for my life to become something that mattered. Todd and I were married for 13 years, most of those years were spent either in college or abroad as missionaries in remote parts of the world. Thirteen years of adventure, love, and serving Jesus in a way that grew my faith enough to move a mountain, or in my case, move on.
In 2016, our children were 4 and 6. We had moved to Guyana in South America a few years before and were building relationships with our new community and friends as we prepared to build a new mission base. We returned to the States where Todd was almost done rebuilding his airplane and we were packing to go home to Guyana when we found the 16 cm tumor growing in his abdomen.
It’s been almost 9 years since we lost Todd to cancer. The kids are both almost in high school, and I’ve remarried. But what I learned at WWU stuck with me. I learned that God can take broken things and make new and lovely things from the shattered pieces. I know this is true, because I’m a principal of a growing and thriving church school in Huntsville, Alabama. I also teach middle school, and I have an incredibly special place in my heart for these awkward, gangly young people. Every year Jesus brings me young, broken hearts, and I get to tell them all about the God who heals and saves and grows us and meets us and who makes us worthy and makes all things new.
