MyMontreat: Who Makes the College Conference T-Shirt Anyways?

Well, this year that would be me. When I heard that this was one of my tasks as the Promotions/Tech member of the planning team I was to say the least, afraid. The College Conference t-shirts have always been so rad and this year I had to live up to that “cool factor.” I don’t usually tend to think of myself as the creative type. So this shirt was a challenge for me but I took it on and I think I did a pretty good job at meeting it.

When I was less than 2 years old one of my grandfathers died, and from that time till I was around ten I thought that sending my grandfather things up in heaven was a way to make him smile down on me. But what can you send up to heaven, you ask? Well as a two year old I decided that balloons were the things I was going to give him. So, whenever I got a balloon from a birthday party or the grocery store or wherever, I would then go outside and release it into the air and say something like “Here you go Grandpa! Hope you like it.” As a little kid I was positive that it was going to make it all the way to heaven. Sure, now I know that those balloons never made it to heaven and at some height the balloon would pop and fall to the ground. Don’t judge me, I was little and didn’t know I was littering and maybe killing small animals… But thinking back I remember the faith of a child I had. I was sure that my grandpa would get the balloon all the way up in heaven. No borders (atmospheric pressure or heat or whatever) to break it.

So when I was trying to get my creative juices flowing to come up with the design of the shirt I wanted something simple. While using the trusty Google image search I came across a chalk drawing, by the British artist Banksy, with the little girl reaching for a balloon and the saying “There is always hope.” After several stages of the shirt and straying away from the simplicity I was looking for in the beginning I went back to just a balloon and it made sense. That was all it needed. It took me back to that time when I was a kid, letting my balloons go, believing that they were headed to my grandpa in heaven.

Maybe that’s the simplest way to put it. We need that child like faith, that hope; if we believe God has no borders that we can begin to do something. No matter where we start, big or small, we can start to let our balloons go and break the borders in our lives that shouldn’t be there. So go ahead and let your balloons fly and see where they go.