Acknowledgements
As my dedication indicates, the observations and questions that eventually led to my Ph.D. research began when I was a middle/high school Bible and Choir teacher at Logos International School in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. I learned so much with and through my students in my five years of teaching there and was profoundly shaped and changed by those years. Cambodia was also where friends and coworkers saw my gift for teaching and encouraged me to pursue a Ph.D. Without the specific and repeated encouragement of Suzanne Johnson, Dr. Roseann Sachs, Angela (Harris) Ibsen, and Dr. Myrto Theocharous, I never would have pursued doctoral work. My deepest thanks to them for seeing gifts in me that I could not see myself.
My many family members and friends in Colorado also deserve my thanks as they welcomed me home each summer and Christmas, encouraging and praying for me on the long journey. In particular, my thanks go to my mom, Judy Roberts, for providing me with housing and a home base each summer, and to my sister and brother-in-law, Emily and Mark Maeda, for providing me with a steady summer job that enabled me to pay my way through each academic year.
No one completes a Ph.D. in their own strength and capacity, and that is most certainly true for me. In addition to the academic challenge, my Ph.D. years also included significant trauma. Without my community of friends who walked with me, I would not have made it to the end: Jen Jones, Alex Stewart, Dan Cooper, Josh Gardner, Esther Cen, Cynthia Chau, Darlene Seal, Sid Sudiacal, Ji Hoe and Sion Kim, Joel and Sara Klink, Bonnie Brittain, May Marr, Kevin and Esther Foth, Erin Heiser, Owen Pikkert, Christine Vaughn, Amy Allan, Brittany Kim, Becky and Rob Noftle, and the community at St. John United Church. My secondary advisor, Dr. Paul Evans, provided valuable feedback for my research process. Particular thanks are due to my Doktorvater, Mark Boda, who is one of the most remarkable people I am privileged to know and whose guidance through the Ph.D. and the upheaval that consumed me for a time made it possible for me to finish.
I am grateful to Prairie College for granting me a course release so that I could make the necessary publication revisions to my dissertation. My community of friends and co-workers in Three Hills, AB, have likewise been a significant source of encouragement, prayer, and support for the completion of this project. I am deeply thankful.
Finally, it seems much too small a thing to say that I am thankful to God for his faithful presence and transforming work in my life. In the hardest seasons, I was certainly confused and angry at him for what was, and was not, happening in my life. In his wisdom, he knew how I needed to grow and change in order to understand my own research on memory frameworks, trauma, and suffering. And so, beyond any shadow of a doubt, his faithful presence with me is the only reason I completed the Ph.D. and then the necessary publication revisions. God has been, and always will be, more than enough.
Megan C. Roberts
Prairie College, Three Hills, AB