By Frances George

Homesick, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is defined as experiencing a longing for home after a period of absence from it.

First, there was spring break.

Then an additional week of spring break.

Today, we are completing the third week of online classes.

One month at home for my Baylor senior…

I can’t remember the last time Catherine was at home for this length of time since the summer prior to entering Baylor as a freshman back in 2016.

My daughter is a complete delight, and I consider her, as a young adult, a close friend.

But “home”…

They say “home is where your heart is,” and so home right now for our daughter is not our address in Raleigh, North Carolina. Rather her address just off campus in Waco, Texas, with her porch swing and Texas flag displayed, a spring wreath hanging by the door, and lights strung all around the door frame and up the bannister to the second floor — THIS is Catherine’s home.

Baylor.

And she is homesick.

I remember my mother telling me that when the children go to college, it will be a watershed moment. And when they return to their old bedrooms for holidays and a few weeks in the summer, yes, they will sleep in their old bedroom, but they will have now returned mostly, as guests. They come with their suitcase, but they never really unpack it. They talk to you and share, but their heartiest laughs and best late night conversations are mostly with friends on Snap Chap or FaceTime or Zoom, hundreds of miles away. And that is as it should be. (Even as I write this, my daughter is on the porch “zooming” her Bible study on her laptop with friends scattered across the country.)

They come to Baylor and learn who they are apart from Mom and Dad, learn and experience new things, explore things they never dreamed possible as a child.

Many travel the world to study more in depth, and all along the way, the path is filled with not only new experiences and epiphanies regarding life, but also new and golden, treasured friends. They walk the same paths across campus to class, by the beautiful Draper building, through the gardens in front of Pat Neff, as the melodies of the carillon bells playing the old hymns drift across campus on the breeze. They see that same old friend they met at Line Camp and exchange a smile, they grab a cup of coffee at Common Grounds (thankfully, now also in the SUB!), they practice for Christmas on 5th with their choir and anticipate the lighting of the Christmas Tree (thank you, KOT men!) and realize that Christmas on 5th at Baylor rivals whatever anyone else in the country might consider the best of the season!

They attend basketball games (go Lady Bears and Men! We love you!) and watch for the first signs of spring to sit by the pool at their apartment and study, take that first walk across campus late in the afternoon with someone special. They look forward to Monday night and Vertical and Sunday morning at church where you now have “your” seat next to your friends and hear JD Waco open the Word and challenge you and your friends to look a little more like Jesus this week. And then you hear those same beliefs echoed in the classroom from your professors and over the dinner table with roommates.

The list goes on and on.

We have a photograph on our counter of our first Baylor daughter (Class of ’16 and ’18) with our current Baylor daughter (Class of ’20 and headed to graduate school at Baylor!) during her freshman year in downtown Waco. It’s been framed for almost four years. Today, I decided, as the time away from Baylor has now been extended (possibly through the summer months), that every Friday is going to be “Baylor Day” at our home, not only as a way to help make each day away from campus a little less painful by reminding her of the joy of Baylor but to remind Catherine that I know where her home is now: It’s Baylor, and that’s okay.

I remember vividly, as a child being so homesick that my parents would come take me home even in the middle of the night! And it wasn’t because my friend’s home was awful, not one bit, but rather, it was because I loved my own home and my own family and my own room and my own things and my own life there. And so my feelings aren’t hurt that Catherine prefers Baylor to our house.

In fact, it makes me smile to think my daughter has found such success on every level at this place called Baylor. My daughter has family members that encourage her to be a better person and cheer for her along the way at Baylor — friends and professors who are now mentors. The photograph says, “Waco feels like home.” In reality, Baylor IS home. And our daughter misses it. As does every son and daughter across the country who is away from all the things that are familiar, the people who have grown up with them… not from childhood but grown into adulthood with them.

Catherine is now making a new bucket list for the day when she gets back, and it is comprised of the little things: have coffee with this one, go to Cameron Park with that one, jump in the fountain with another and sit on Fountain Mall and just watch family walk by.

Family.

Baylor.

And if you are considering if you should send your son or daughter to a school where they may not know anyone, my elder daughter didn’t know a soul when she walked on campus the fall of 2012, but the friends she met, they are her sisters now. They now stand with each other at their weddings and have stood by the grave when they’ve buried a mother gone too soon. They’ve traveled the world together and shared an extraordinarily happy life in Waco together. These girls are family. They are family because they grew up at Baylor into beautiful women of God together.

And our younger daughter is now mourning the loss of her last spring at Baylor because she, too, has a family on Baylor’s campus and in the classrooms and memories of bold and brave accomplishments from study abroad and spring break and late night conversations with best friends and first love and first heartbreak. It’s all here with the beautiful golden thread of Christ permeating it all. Right now, it all resides in her heart. She longs for the day when it is her reality again.

Catherine is homesick. Along with about 15,000 of her friends. That’s okay. In fact, it’s a high complement to Baylor, its faculty and staff and students. When you are homesick, it is because you long to be with the people who are good and who love you in the place that is most familiar and tender to your heart. Homesick means the place you long to be is a good, good place.

Baylor is that place.

And so we do mourn for the loss of the Class of 2020’s senior “lasts,” but we know that family is always family. And at Baylor, it’s a family unlike any other, and over time the happy memories of their Baylor lifetime (3.5 years) with sisters and brothers at Baylor will come to the fore and the sad lasts that never were, will fade away.

Because, you see, Waco feels like home…
…Because Baylor is home.

Come home to Baylor, Class of 2024, and find out for yourself. You won’t regret a single minute. Just ask our daughter. She’d give anything for just one more minute with her family.

It is, as I always say, The Baylor Difference.