Storytime: Coffeehouse

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February 25, 2022

Let’s be honest y’all, the last two years have been hard. Like really hard. The number of changes that the world has experienced over the last two years has honestly been extremely overwhelming, at least for me. My freshman year at Liberty was 2019-2020, so I experienced “normal” college life before COVID entered the scene in the spring of 2020, which means that I was able to experience Christmas Coffeehouse before the world completely changed.

Christmas Coffeehouse 2019 was one of my favorite nights of my freshman year of college. I remember having tickets for at least a month beforehand because all the upper classmen I knew told me that I HAD to go to Coffeehouse! I remember the night of Coffeehouse, I was sitting in my room with a couple of my friends, when my friend Hailey (shoutout to my favorite bean) called me screaming. Hailey told me that she had just won the Student Activities giveaway for Coffeehouse!! She told me that she won seating at a table, and she asked me if I wanted to go with her and our other friends! I remember screaming at the top of my lungs and going out into the hall to find her (we both lived on THE Emerson Hall) to ask her if she was being serious! This was a HUGE deal to us! Being freshmen and being able to sit on the floor at Coffeehouse made us feel like celebrities. We thought we were the coolest people literally ever which is NOT embarrassing because that night was incredible!! Seeing the talent of the acts performing and just being able to experience the student body coming together in such a fun and joyful way was so enjoyable. That was the end to my first semester at Liberty and I am SO grateful! After that night, when tickets went on sale for Coffeehouse for the next semester, we bought our tickets as soon as we could to make sure that we would be able to go. Then, the world shifted.

After leaving campus for what I thought would just be a fun spring break in Florida, being told that we would have to go home for the rest of the semester in March 2020 was devastating. All of the plans that me and so many other students had made for the rest of the semester seemed to crumble, including going to spring Coffeehouse. So, we went home. We went home to a lot of change, and I don’t know about y’all, but I didn’t like that change. Being away from the community that I had been a part of while I was at Liberty was hard for me. I missed it. I missed my friends, my hall, and honestly just being a part of the student body. You can imagine how ecstatic I was when I found out we would be able to come back in person the next semester!

I don’t think I’ve ever been more excited than I was the day I moved back into Liberty in the Fall of 2020. I was one of the first people back on Emerson Hall before starting CGL training and I remember seeing my RA and SCREAMING! I don’t think I’ve ever hugged a person so tightly. As happy and grateful as I was to be back on campus, to be able to be on the same hall with so many of my friends, and to just be able to attend class in person again, I was sad about how different campus life was. Everything was so different because of COVID. Understand me clearly, I am so thankful for the measures that Liberty University leadership took to keep or campus safe and open, but it was hard for me to experience a year where we were all together, but still at a distance from one another. There seemed to always be some level of separation from each other everywhere you went. Like I said though, I was just so grateful to be back with the student body again and to just experience our incredible community, even if we were six feet apart.

Throughout last year, I watched as Student Activities took our safety seriously and took adequate measures to protect all students while still hosting events and Coffeehouse was no exception! During the fall semester of 2020, Coffeehouse looked VERY different. It looked like no live performances and recordings of the acts being released to the student body to stream together in small groups. Seeing the way that SA adjusted to the challenges of continuing a Liberty tradition like Coffeehouse with so much creativity was so cool for me to see, and it inspired me. It inspired me to see what we had been given through the pandemic rather than to only see the things that were taken from us. It challenged me to be more creative with what the Lord had given me and to not just see other things as what the Lord was withholding from me, but what He was giving to others for them to steward instead.

With the fall semester looking so different than my first year at Liberty, I was super nervous for how the next semester would look, but I felt like I had settled into a rhythm for the rest of my year at Liberty. Student Activities had done the same, with events I attended with my friends running like well-oiled machines. SA had done an incredible job of adapting to the restrictions that they were under in order to keep all of us safe. By the time March came around, restrictions had started becoming more relaxed around the country which meant that Coffeehouse would be IN PERSON! The day that my friends and I found out that Coffeehouse would be in person, we jumped on the opportunity to buy a table! We were ready to relive our first Coffeehouse together! Even though there was a limited capacity at the spring Coffeehouse in 2021, the Student Activities staff did a phenomenal job of creating an incredible show for all of us to enjoy together!

I think the best thing about change is that change is constant. The Lord has taught me so much about that over the last three years. Something that I can always count on is change and change is NOT a bad thing! Change can be helpful and not hurtful. Change can look like growth. So at the end of spring semester 2021 we saw change, yet again, but this time the change looked like restrictions beginning to be lifted as it became safe to start living life in a way that was similar to how we used to live before the pandemic.

After the Coffeehouse in spring 2021 I did the one thing that made sense to me, I applied to work for Student Activities. Seeing the way that this campus organization had faced the challenges of the pandemic head on and had flawlessly provided a space to breed community throughout the 2020-2021 school year made it an easy decision to decide to apply for an event staff position at SA. After applying and getting the job (which still blows my mind!), I came into last semester with a lot of excitement and hope, specifically to work, you guessed it, COFFEEHOUSE! After a long semester of working countless hours with the rest of the absolutely incredible SA staff (shoutout to all of the awesome supervisors, event staff, and the marketing team!) creating sets and holding auditions for acts, it was finally time, it was time for Christmas Coffeehouse.

I can honestly say that I was nervous about Coffeehouse. What if people didn’t show up? What if the freshmen and sophomores who had never experienced a true Coffeehouse didn’t want to partake in this tradition? I overthought what would happen that night in December a lot more than I care to admit, but all I can say about that night was it was pure magic. As I stood at the top of the concourse of Vines and watch students pour in and find their seats, I was just so amazed. It felt like the fullest circle moment for me. I stood watching students, many of which had never experienced Coffeehouse in its fullest form, take their seats in excitement. I watched as students walked through the sets that our staff had worked so hard to create for the enjoyment of the students and I watched them enjoy them side by side, not six feet apart. I saw a room, full to the brim with students from our student body, and I watched as the opening act came to the stage. The moment our openers played the first note I remember being overwhelmed with just awe and thankfulness! I couldn’t believe that this was what we had created! I stood there honestly in shock, but then another one of our event staff ran over to me, grabbed my hand and we started dancing! We were jumping everywhere and dancing to the music in celebration! We celebrated hours of hard work, we celebrated the endurance of our school, we celebrated SA and what it stands for, but most importantly we celebrated the continuation of a school tradition in its fullest form. We celebrated students supporting their fellow classmates on stage and we celebrated the joy that had filled the room. To me, it felt like everyone in the Vines had taken a deep breath and said “We made it. We survived the changes and the hardships of the last year and a half. We made it.”

So, there you have it! If you can glean anything from this blog, take these two things with you, I am sentimentally attached to Coffeehouse and there is always a life lesson in change that God is trying to teach you. ALWAYS! With that being said, I am so excited for this semester’s Coffeehouse: The Great Beyond on March 26! If you haven’t gotten your tickets yet GO NOW! You can find tickets on our website and you’re already on our website if you’re reading this! There’s no better time like the present! Our staff has been working so hard to create a show that no one will forget, and we are so excited to show y’all what we have created! I am so excited for every one of you to experience this semester’s spring Coffeehouse! See you there!

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