Rooming with Amy Grace Martinez

Three weeks before I got to Wheaton, I received a little letter from the Student Life department, welcoming me to campus and informing me that I would be sharing Smith Hall Room 115 with some California girl named Amy Grace.

I am not exaggerating when I say that I am not sure it is possible to have a more positive freshman roommate experience than I did.

Ways rooming and friendship with Amy have been shaping for me:

• I had a lot of hard stuff going on at home coming into Wheaton. This could have been completely disastrous depending on who my roommate was. Amy was PERFECT. Perfect. She was compassionate, perceptive, prayerful, present, and nonjudgmental. I really could have had a very different Wheaton experience had I roomed with someone who had been less fantastic about the situation that year.

• On the same kind of note, I felt really weird at Wheaton sometimes freshman year... I had definitely grown up in a different culture than a lot of the other people, at least it felt that way. I felt pretty self-conscious a lot of the time. She was great about loving and accepting me as I was, never making me feel judged or awkward about not speaking Christianese... among um, other things... (cough). As well as about not being super academically successful that year.
  

• She is a truly compassionate and inclusive person. Freshman floors have a tendency to get cliquey and ours was no exception, and Amy really rose above that impressively. She continually made efforts to know, celebrate, and include all sorts of different people. I learned a lot from her about that.

• She is an incredibly solid and consistent person in friendships. She is super loyal, would do anything for anyone, plans on keeping her close friends forever. She doesn't speak words of affirmation superfluously, but when she does speak them they're really thoughtful and encouraging. She was one of the only people outside of my immediate family who bought Skype credit and called me on my cell phone while I was in Bolivia.
  

• She connects with God in some really different ways than I do. This was REALLY good for me. I came into college pretty much thinking (subconsciously, but still) that relating to God and praying needed to look a certain way (A morning quiet time with your Bible and your journal, basically). Amy does all those things but she also connects with God beautifully and real-ly through lots of other things, like serving others, like music, like going to church and worshiping communally uber-consistently. I learned so much from her just in terms of all of those things, but I also learned a lot in terms of the fact that connecting with God CAN look different for different people, and that's totally valid.

• On the God note, we have this thing which has been one of my totally weirdest spiritual experiences ever. Sometimes God just TELLS us when the other one needs us. I'm not joking and I think that sounds weird too. Several separate instances this has involved one of us waking up in the middle of the night and randomly CALLING the other one to find them (several states away usually) crying. One time, it involved me calling her to find her like seriously ill to the point of being unable to leave the room to get someone to help her. Our friendship seriously makes me believe in prophecy.

• Whenever I hug her, smelling her "scent" makes me feel like I'm back in freshman year. (I once said this in a psych class and everybody looked at me like I was awkward.)
  

• Over time, our roommate-ship deepened into one of my closest and best friendships. Amy is a loyal, encouraging, fun, easy-to-be-with, and inspiring friend. I enjoy her, I trust her completely, I learn from her, and I want to be her friend forever. And our initial experience of being each other's haven through that first crazy, homesick year, and building on all of those memories, has cemented our friendship into one I hope is lifelong.

Other fun things:

• She is quirky and hilarious: she owns a stuffed germ (seriously. Like a stuffed animal but... it's a plush, furry version of a bacteria); she makes hamster noises when she's excited; she owns very tall, very fancy leather boots which she refers to as her "Empowerment Boots" and wears when she's facing a stressful day; she taught me to use the word uber.
  
• She has great fashion sense and taught me how to accessorize (match your earrings to your scarf and wear a sweater in a complementary color!).
• She is impressively skilled at flirting. It's pretty funny. Unfortunately, I didn't pick this one up quite as well.
• Great musical taste (well, once you get over the Techno). Rosie Thomas and Rufus Wainwright, heck yes.
• She has a breathtakingly beautiful singing voice.
• She's obsessed with her nieces and nephews (rightly so, they're adorable).
• When she was an RA her floor theme was children's books.
• She paints poems on huge pieces of fabric and hangs them in her room.
• She graduated in December so wasn't here when I got back from HNGR, but she left me her entire bedroom set to use for the semester plus a bunch of food to eat until I could get to the grocery store and a wrapped and carded Christmas present (who does that? see what I mean about being an incredible friend?).
  
• She's academically brilliant but never brags about it.
  
• We talk about loving each other so much that random people comment on it (and our RA told us we were the cutest roommate pair on the floor).
  
• Too many memories to even write... here's a good one, and here... and this might be my favorite.
  

In our room freshman year- how we do.

Showing off our matching roommie pajamas!

I am so thankful Amy was my freshman roommate!

(PS so much for brief)