I met Colin Reiss after transferring to Providence Christian College in January 2023. At the time my roommate, Karissa (Lee) Franklin, was engaged to Colin’s roommate, Luke

Franklin. Most of our interactions involved Colin and his roommates crashing in my apartment’s living room after classes, and sprawling across the carpet and playing loud card games while my books, art supplies, headphones, and notebooks suffered silently in the corner of the room, and me in bed at 7pm pretending to sleep and ignore Luke Franklin stoking my already antisocial tendencies by yelling “goodnight grandma” through our thin walls and slapping the table over and over (ostensibly playing Egyptian Ratslap but more likely just trying to interrupt my sleep).

Needless to say, our first impressions were not wonderful. Still, Colin Reiss, always polite and always able to sympathize with my reclusiveness, kept, I think, relatively quiet: earning my respect and appreciation.

Our mutual sympathies and a certain kind of intrigue developed over the years, as Colin mysteriously transformed into the respectable, curious, and suitably strange man you may or may not already know.

At first it was Colin’s hatred of modern art and my growing obsession with Kandinsky. It was my hyperbolic personas and Colin’s hyperbolic literalism. It was a mutual obsession with coffee and sushi and psychological thrillers and studio Ghibli, and the few waking hours we shared with each other, resulting in accidental run-ins in a small school building with an eerie atmosphere that singlehandedly fostered a fearful bond. There was tea, (our pathetic effort foisted against chronic dehydration), and hours and hours of conversation in which our fundamental incompatibility screamed over the silence between each exchange. (I blame Colin who expected my personal intelligence and curiosity to translate into an intuitive understanding of Francis Turretin, or my similar expectation for Colin to have read David Foster Wallace and/or Wittgenstein.)

If I have learned anything from our strange and wonderful relationship, it is that “incompatibility” between persons is just like the “incompatibility” of me and calculus. It is just a matter of curiosity and effort, an ongoing death-to-self and the constant thrilling discovery that translating an unfamiliar language is not so different from an elegant conversation between strangers. I like learning that there is beauty everywhere, more than anything in differences, and most of all in differences in personality reconciled by a deep love for Christ.

We have both grown in every way and especially in a swelling awareness of the need for constant forgiveness. Failures in love, like failures in calculus, teach the most unexplainably powerful lessons. Success in love, like success in calculus, gives the most intimate kind of satisfaction. Colin and I have long since agreed that our strong connection is a gift from God that is only possible with his help, with his blessing, with his presence. Well enough sermon…(sorry dad).

Some of my favorite memories with him are backpacking through California wilderness, cold-plunging on the Oregon coast, fixing cars, laboriously washing dishes in my bathtub, long, delirious road-trips, one four-hour Hebrew exam, unpreparedly watching Requiem for a Dream (if you don’t know, don’t try it), strangely peaceful brain-death, sickness, and natural disaster, bad sermons, good concerts, good espresso martinis, more often bad espresso martinis, unexpected Moroccan food, sunset on the Eiffel Tower, uncontrollable joyful weeping in European cathedrals, dates in a Missouri Walgreens, hours and hours of LA traffic, debating over Marx and Engels, stir-crazy fights over bandanas, haircuts, and hats, and ubiquitous Janis Joplin.

Who knows the future. It may involve Indonesia, or PhD programs, financial difficulties and career growth. Continue to pray for us. We love each of you more than you know.

Much love and gratitude,

Hope & Colin

C&H

Wedding Day

Reception