It’s a Friday afternoon, and I’m standing in Transportation Security Administration at the Minneapolis airport. The woman looking at my license has gloves on. I touch the gray bins: my laptop goes in, then my liquids and my jacket.

When I student taught at Minnetonka High School, I recognized myself in my 10th graders. I pretended like I didn’t; I had to reinforce that my new red oxford shoes made me an adult who knew nothing about TikTok.

I never cried at the love scenes in The Titanic. I never cared about Jack and Rose—they are both overly curated characters, somehow missing the nuance that make real humans love and accept and think twice before having sex in somebody else’s car.

Paul Eddy, the professor of the Covenant Relationships course at Bethel, says the goal of a covenant is to “take people who are not family and make them family.” When I think about the Bethel Covenant, I wonder who my family really is.

I rise every morning at 5:30 before the sun has its coffee. I drive down 694 to student teach at Minnetonka High School. I brake and turn and merge in unison with every other nameless car on the road, yet I am encapsulated in my own space.

In an effort to snapshot my time overseas last fall, and preserve the lingering memories, here is my perspective; if I could relive 12 moments in 12 blinks, this is what I’d hope it’d look like.

I walked into church on Sunday morning, and it didn’t matter which church. It was a Market Pantry version of every other suburban, evangelical, contemporary, predominantly-white church in the Twin Cities. I had never been here, and yet I had been here many times before.