To Be Truly Known: Saige’s Story

What does it look like to arrive at college one person and leave another — not because of a great class or experience, but because of friendships honest enough to tell you the truth about yourself?

When Saige walked into a stranger’s Chi Alpha small group, something happened that she hadn’t necessarily planned on. A new friend had invited her during the second half of her freshman year; her first semester at Virginia Commonwealth University had been lonelier than she’d expected. But when the conversation opened up that night she felt a nudge to share something: she had been in a relationship with someone from a different religion, but had begun to feel that God was leading her to end this relationship due to the compromises it required. 

“I just kind of confessed all the things I was going through,” she recalled. “I told them then and there, I was like, next time you see me, I will be single.” 

This would be the beginning of a kind of community she hadn’t experienced yet. And while Saige would describe herself as an open book, she would learn that true vulnerability in the way of Jesus is not just updating people on her life, but letting people in. 

Lonely in a Crowd

Saige grew up a “greater Richmond child” as she puts it, attending several different churches. As a teenager, she had her first experience with the Holy Spirit. 

“I had an IEP for reading comprehension, it just was not for me,” she said. “I hadn’t been able to pass a reading SOL, ever.”

Until one day, she closed her eyes and God gave her an image of a dark room with a computer with the words you’re not a failure. The very next week, she passed her reading SOL. 

So it wasn’t that she didn’t believe in God; in fact, it was the opposite. But she could sense she was missing something regarding community. 

An only child with a single mom, Saige was eager to find a group of friends to call family. She arrived on campus knowing how to make friends–that had never been the problem. The problem was the kind of friendships she was experiencing. It wasn’t that her previous friendships were bad exactly, but their interests and hers kept diverging. For example, having seen addiction up close in her family, she wanted to stay clear of substances. When she started to try to take her faith seriously, they were not interested in talking about God. And when she was wrong about something, nobody said so. They just took her side and told her what she wanted to hear. 

She didn’t yet have the language for what was missing. She just knew that by the middle of first semester she was spending too much time in her room, and that the friendships she was forming weren’t the ones she’d hoped college would bring. 

Community as a Mirror

True to her word, Saige ended the relationship and committed to the small group, which began to open her imagination to the kind of relationships God actually created us for. 

“Real community asks good questions about your life,” she reflected. “Relationships that are self-giving.” 

Slowly, uncomfortably, something began to happen that she hadn’t anticipated: She started to see herself clearly. When you’re in community with people who are actually trying to follow Jesus, actually walking the narrow path, you start to see yourself more clearly than you might like. 

“With my friendships that are in Christ, I felt like I was looking at a mirror,” she said. 

What Saige saw surprised her. She wasn’t as compassionate or empathetic as she’d thought. She was selfish in ways she hadn’t recognized as selfishness. But this is the kind of community Jesus modeled: a vulnerability where we are seen for who we really are; and loved into transformation. Where we can admit we’re wrong, but still belong. In a world of social media, image consciousness, and polarization, this is perhaps the most difficult but needed. 

What Became Possible

The change in her showed up in small ways. She started offering people food. She lent out clothes without thinking twice. She learned to say what she was struggling with quickly. She learned how to receive care.

And as she changed, her understanding of God changed with her.

“I think I see God more accurately now than before,” she said. The vulnerability, confession, correction, and forgiveness she experienced embodied in real life the things she had heard about God. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in Life Together, she “experiences the presence of God in the reality of the other person.”

But something else was changing too. She started to see her campus through God’s spiritual lens.

She saw the wide variety of opinions, religions, beliefs, and search for meaning on her campus. But she also saw the hopeful opportunity for the gospel to make a difference. She’d seen her life transformed, and also the lives of students in Chi Alpha. 

She thought about the Black men on campus who needed to see themselves discipled, leading, speaking — needed to see themselves represented enough to believe it was possible for them. She thought about the women wrestling with identity and sexuality and addiction who needed somewhere honest enough to bring all of it. She thought about what it had meant for her, that first night, to walk into a room that could hold her whole self.

“I’m learning that the Lord doesn’t necessarily want to use a certain personality or only specific gifts,” she said. “He just wants to work through you.”  

The Work Ahead

After graduating, Saige will be participating in the 1-year Campus Missionary in Training Program at VCU. She doesn’t know exactly where she’ll be in five or ten years; or how her Cinema degree will weave into her story. But she knows what she wants to be doing: asking the kinds of questions that make people feel known, discipling others, and doing for others what was done for her. If she ends up in film, her hope is that this program will equip her and launch her into the industry as a faithful disciple of Jesus. But her specific prayer during the program is that her presence as a Black female Chi Alpha missionary will invite others who look like her to see that  this kind of belonging, transformation, and joy is possible for them.

True transformation, it turns out, requires community. Not the kind that flatters you or keeps things comfortable, but the kind that loves you enough to tell you the truth – about yourself, about God, and about what you are made for. Saige walked into a room of strangers her freshman year not knowing what she was looking for; God gave her a community to truly know her and to help her become the person God wants her to be.