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The night before Pref, I found myself wrestling with the Lord in my quiet time. Every inch of my being wanted to pray for an invitation and eventually a bid from Saxophone, but a nagging little voice in the back of my head told me not to be so selfish. I was inspired by the Agony in the Garden that night and against everything my heart told me I wanted, I prayed Jesus's words: "Not what I will, but what You will."
The morning of Preference Day, our Pi Chis were to text us our schedules. The parties in this round were significantly longer, so they didn't want anyone walking/driving all the way out to Greek Row if they wouldn't be attending a party in the first time slot of the day. Kat got up to go to the bathroom around 6 am and proceeded to trip and fall flat on her face, making a racket that woke me up. Once we both knew she was okay, we couldn't stop laughing - I guess we both realized that now that we were awake, there was no way we'd EVER be going back to sleep with our nerves.
We killed time until about 8:00, when Kat's phone finally buzzed. She'd be going back to Violin (slot #1) and Piano (slot #3). She was thrilled that she'd not been cut and that she'd kept her current favorite, Piano. She excitedly started getting ready as I waited for what felt like forever.....until finally, my phone buzzed. I took a deep breath and read my Pi Chi's message:
Good morning! You'll be going to Piano (slot #2) and Violin (slot #3)! (:
....WHAT?!?!
NO.
Saxophone was gone?!?! But why?!?! I'd been a model PNM. I'd wanted them more than anything....
Suddenly realizing that I had the same 2 houses as Kat and knowing that my tears wouldn't exactly make her feel good about her schedule, I quickly got up and left the room. I sat in my dorm's stairwell to call my mom.
Sobbing into the phone, I told her Saxophone was gone and that as soon as we hung up I was calling my Pi Chi to withdraw from recruitment. My mom begged me not to withdraw. She was convinced, she said, that God wanted me as a Piano. She read to me off of her cell phone the texts I'd sent her after leaving Piano each day....
"OMG, so glad today is over. I think my rusher at Piano was too, lol. This will probably make you palm your face, but we talked HP almost the whole time. Ha!"
"MY RUSHER AT PIANO played _____ and used to be in _____!!! New best friend? I think yes."
"Piano's skit was presh! Laughed my face off. The house was decorated so cute and I reunited with the tour guide from our campus visit."
I'd seemed so comfortable at Piano all week, she said. Her "mother's intuition" was telling her that this would be my new home. She even admitted that she'd spent an hour last night perusing the chapter's web site admiring how cute and fun all the girls seemed to be. She begged me to let go of my bad preconceived notion of this house and go for the bid here. God's place for me, she was confident, was smiling next to those other beautiful girls in the pictures she'd so loved on the web site. I tearfully agreed to give today's pref parties a chance, though I was far from convinced that Piano was where I was meant to be. Nevertheless, I hung up, went back to my room, and started getting ready...
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