Today, I said goodbye to a person that didn't even know how much I looked up and respected him. Dr. (Pastor, Reverend, Awesome Guy) Kimlyn Bender preached his last sermon today at Oak Hills Baptist. I couldn't help but tear up during his last benediction. I feel like if someone from that church would have seen that, they wouldn't have understood how someone who didn't attend that church regularly would be that emotional over Kimlyn's departure. Likewise, any USF Theology or Philosophy major that doesn't already know me (which is all of them except for one) would have thought that I was just a "sympathetic crier" at best. That is about as far from the truth as possible.
I took Intro to Christian Thought with Dr. Bender back in my sophomore year. I was very nervous coming in to the class because I remembered someone saying how hard classes with him were. By the end of the first class, I distinctly remember being excited to learn from someone with the same sense of humor that I have. As that semester went on, I learned new things about Scripture and doctrines that I never even dreamed could be true. Kimlyn's teachings helped me to realize many things about the religion I supposedly believed in. That class challenged me as a learner as well as a Christian.
As I walked out of Oak Hills today, I passed Dr. Bender and shook his hand as I left. We exchanged a hand-shake-man-hug and I simply told him "thank you". If only he knew what I was thanking him for. And as I sit here with tears in my eyes, having just finished an e-mail to this amazing man, I am thankful for the one seemingly insignificant class I had with him. My regrets however are that I never got to take more classes with him and that I took so long to tell him the things I had learned and grew from because of his teachings.
Moral of this odd story: tell those around you that you care about them; that you are thankful for what they do in your life. No matter how small a part, let someone know that you appreciate them.
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