Rachel Toone: MJ, welcome to the stage. Now you’ve had time to think about it, so what is your favorite Christmas movie?
MJ: I’ve thought about this long and hard. I remember it from former years! I have a very niche favorite Christmas movie. Andy Griffith made a rhyming children’s version of the story of the three wise men going to visit Jesus. It’s sometimes called The Very First Noel and sometimes called The Three Wise Men. It doesn’t even have a consistent name! But I’ve watched it every year since I was two. My brothers and I, even though we’re adults and it’s fully for children, still watch it every single year together. It’s a very sweet memory, even though it’s kind of corny.
Rachel Toone: I respect the originality. Is this on YouTube? Where do you even find this?
MJ: To be perfectly honest?. My parents just have it on DVD now.
Rachel Toone: DVD, Vintage! Go to your local library and check out a DVD; you might be able to watch this movie if you take nothing else from this conversation this morning. All right, MJ, what are you studying and what’s coming next after December 12th-ish?
MJ: I’m currently an Environmental Science student. It’s the best! I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to do next right now. I am going to be working at Starbucks still, so you can all come see me there. While I’m waiting for my awesome husband to graduate—put a move on it, John, let’s go—I’m also planning on applying to jobs with the Forest Service and other environmental companies in the area next semester.
Rachel Toone: So cool. And where are you from, MJ? How did you end up at Montreat?
MJ: Landon and I actually have something in common: I also went to nine schools, which I feel is a lot! I’m originally from Bentonville, Arkansas, which is where Walmart was founded—you can see that on a lot of products. But my folks now live in Texas.
During my freshman and sophomore years of high school, I had a very difficult science teacher. She was very adamantly against all Christian students in her classroom. If I talked about my faith, she would just say, “Well, you’ll come around to atheism eventually.” It was a rough circumstance, and I knew I wanted to study Environmental Science in college. That really pushed me toward wanting to study somewhere where I would be able to be open about my faith and not constantly have to argue with my professors on things that aren’t worth arguing about when you’re trying to learn science.
I knew I wanted to come to a Christian college that had Environmental Science, so I Googled that and there are like five in the country. That really narrowed it down for me! Then I came and toured Montreat and, like Landon said, it’s gorgeous outside. I don’t know how you can not want to study here if you’re going to study the environment. It’s also the salamander capital of the world, which is great for me. God provided a lot of scholarships in really cool ways that I wasn’t expecting and I ended up here. A lot of my friends thought I was moving to Canada because they thought I said I was going to Montreal, but it worked out in the end.
Rachel Toone: Salamander capital of the world, folks! Biodiversity capital right here. Since being here, a lot has happened in your life. You married John—condolences—and you’ve learned and grown a lot. What’s something that God has taught you in your time here?
MJ: I think something God has particularly been pressing on my heart over the last year—and the word He gave me at the beginning of the year—was the word “obey.” There’s a hymn from 1886 called Trust and Obey that has a line: “Trust and obey, for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.”
Over the last year and throughout all of college, God has really been pulling me further into trusting Him and making me understand what it looks like to actually do that. As a person, I have struggled for a really long time with pretty bad anxiety. It’s really easy to fall into wanting to find your own solutions, always focusing on the future, and thinking about what the next step is going to be. For me, it was easy to say, “Well, I trust God to help me do the plans that I figure out for myself.”
Coming to Montreat and my time here has been Him really pushing me to realize that trusting Him doesn’t look like knowing exactly what the next step is going to be. It looks like taking that step in faith and then obeying the words He’s given to you. Through that, I’ve found so much peace and relief from a lot of the anxiety I felt, because it’s a lot easier to trust in Him than it is to trust in yourself to be perfect.
Rachel Toone: Amen. That is a good word, my friend. For the folks coming back in the spring, what’s your word of wisdom for them?
MJ: Mine is very similar to Landon’s: don’t spend so much of your time here trying to figure out what is right that you forget to focus on what is good. It’s really easy to look forward to your future and think, “I need to have this five-year plan or ten-year plan.” It’s good to have plans, goals, and ambitions. But what God has called you to do ultimately is to love Him and love your neighbor as yourself. It can be so easy to get so focused on the future that you take your eyes away from the neighbor in front of you and you forget to do what is good with that. As Christians, that can really catch us up and put us in a place that isn’t healthy. We need to be serving Him and loving Him. There’s a lot more peace and freedom in that.
Rachel Toone: Come on, girl. That’s good. That’ll preach, too. MJ, we are excited for you and we’re very proud of you. Congrats on graduating!