Dorm Fridge, Check.
This summer I became a first-time college mom, and I prepared like one. Dorm fridge, check. Heavy duty moving bags with straps, check. Twin XL sheets, check. I read ALL the blogs and scrolled through ALL the posts written for nervous, excited first-time college mamas like me. Somewhere in all that advice I found one more item for the list: a doorstop.
I ended up buying a two-pack. There was no grand intention behind it. It was simply a better deal online… and I love a good deal.
Move-in weekend flew by quickly in the busyness of unpacking, settling in, and preparing to say goodbye. We had packed efficiently so it took almost no time to get our son settled in. Every door that we needed propped open was already propped open for us. By the end of the weekend, I realized we had never once needed the doorstop.
Even so, I had another use for it in mind.
A Stone of Remembrance
Before we left, I handed my son the doorstop with a few simple instructions. Keep your door propped open, at least for the first week. Be the one on your floor who invites people in. I stocked his room with an abundance of snacks and protein drinks to share, and then we said our goodbyes and drove away, praying. The five-hour drive home was quiet, filled with tears and prayers as we began the journey of letting go. I prayed that my son would open his heart to all the ways God was going to work in his life, to new relationships and new opportunities, and that he would have the courage to walk through every door set in front of him.
Our house was eerily quiet when we returned home. Then I remembered the two-pack. One doorstop was in a dorm room. The other was in my bag.
I keep thinking about Joshua 4. After Israel crossed the Jordan River on dry ground, Joshua told twelve men to each lift a stone from the riverbed and carry it to the other side. The stones were a sign so that when their children asked, “What do these stones mean?” the people would have a story to tell about God’s faithfulness. They were to be “a memorial to the people of Israel forever” (Joshua 4:6-7).
My doorstop is not a monument. It is a very ordinary object that came in a discount two-pack. But it has somehow become my stone of remembrance. When I see it, I remember the day we left my son, and I remember to pray that he will keep finding the courage to walk through the doors of opportunity in this new season of his life.
The Other Side of the Door
I am also a professor. At Seattle Pacific University I teach a first-year seminar, and this is my third year with the course after piloting it for two. My colleagues and I redesigned the course to address the practical challenges of the first year of college while grounding students’ experiences in the university’s virtues curriculum: faith, hope, love, courage, justice, wisdom, and temperance.[1] The seminar serves two purposes. It teaches the virtues that ground a Christian education, and it teaches the basic skills to help them thrive in college. Students learn to study on their own, get to class on time, and talk to their professors. They discover the people and services that help them flourish in mind, body, and soul. They explore majors and imagine where those paths might lead them after graduation.
Taking my own son to college changed how I teach this course. I have always cared about my students. Now I know exactly what it feels like to entrust someone I love to people I have never met, and to desperately hope that someone will look after him.
That experience has sharpened a distinction at the heart of my own pedagogical approach: the difference between caring for students aesthetically and caring for them authentically.[2] To care aesthetically might look like a welcoming syllabus, posted office hours, or a well-meaning check-in email. Whereas authentic care might include following up when a student disappears, noticing whose voice is missing from a conversation, making time to listen when someone is struggling, and seeing a student as a whole person rather than just a name on a roster. First-year students can tell the difference. They are living on their own for the first time, managing time, money, laundry, and loneliness, often all at once. They need practical skills, but they also need people who truly see them. As their professor, I want to be one of those people.
What an Open Door Asks of Us
A doorstop is a humble thing, but it can remind us of something much greater. An open door signals an openness to new ideas, new opportunities, and new ways of thinking and knowing. It means saying hello to the roommate who is nothing like you, learning from people whose lives look different from yours, and getting used to a new place, a new city, and new food. It means sitting under professors who are experts in their fields and letting their passion for a subject catch you.
That kind of openness takes courage, which is one of the virtues we practice in seminar. Courage is a willingness to embrace discomfort. Walking through a door you did not choose, into a room full of strangers, is exactly that. So, I tell my students what I told my son: prop your door open. Introduce yourself. Go to office hours before you are in trouble. Ask the question you think everyone else already knows the answer to.
As a mother, I hope for more than that. My son is now an adult, but I hope he finds someone who cares for him and sees him. I hope he is valued beyond what he offers in the classroom, whether he is present or not and whether or not he is contributing in a positive way. I hope he is loved and cared for. I want that for every student who walks in my seminar, too, because each of them is someone’s child.
A Prayer for the Open Door
I carry the doorstop with me everywhere, tucked into my tote bag. It is a small, ordinary reminder of a day that changed me. Every time I remember it is there, I pray. Maybe you will pray with me, whether for your own child, your students, or yourself.
Lord, thank you for bringing us this far. For my son, and for every student starting something new, I ask for courage to walk through the doors in front of them. Give them open hearts and open minds. Put people in their path who will see them, value them, and love them well. Make them brave enough to ask for help, humble enough to learn from those unlike themselves, and wise enough to know when to rest. And when we, who love them, grow quiet in our empty houses, let us remember that you have been faithful here, and that you go before them through every door. Amen.
[1] B. M. Tausen, T. M. Erickson, D. R. Nienhuis, and K. Jalalian-Chursky, “Classrooms That Cultivate Character? Charting an Institution-Wide Approach to Christian Virtue Formation,” Christian Higher Education (2026): 1–28, https://doi.org/10.1080/15363759.2026.2686121.
[2] Angela Valenzuela, Subtractive Schooling: U.S.-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999).
