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by Rebekah Farquhar

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Memoirs and Cat Help Her Through Tough Times

Butters, Kelly Bryant's cat, has the job of approving guys Ms. Bryant might date. Butters supported her following her divorce. --Rebekah Farquhar, photo

Kelly Bryant wanted a creative way to invite a special friend to Multnomah Bible College's 2006 junior-senior banquet. So she and her friends hatched a scheme.

During the night, they ran down the street to Tré Wilbanks' lawn and forked, "You + me = JSB," rang the doorbell, and raced back up the street to the Inklings House where they live.

The next morning, Ms. Bryant woke up to discover strewn toilet paper all over her lawn. In the center, outlined in forks and decorated with soggy toilet paper, was Mr. Wilbanks' response: "Yes."

As visit coordinator in MBC's recruitment department for prospective students, Ms. Bryant greets everyone with a smile. Behind the smile is a genuine sense of humor and love for people.

Ian Durias, the director of recruitment, said, "The fact that she has such a warm presence on the front end just makes a lot of things easier for us, whether it's meeting with [prospective students] or taking them on a tour because they're warmed up already."

According to coworkers, Ms. Bryant laughs, jokes and cares for those around her. "One time I was running out of food," said Becca Sue Treloar, another coworker in recruitment and a fellow resident at the Inklings House.

"Kelly came upstairs with breakfast, and we all ate on the bed together. She really is very thoughtful like that. Sometimes she seems scatterbrained," she said, laughing, "but it isn't because she doesn't care.

" She is always going and doing. She is so full of life and super active, but she gets stuff done. Kelly finished all her Christmas shopping in early November."

Life at the Inklings House, owned by Dr. Garry Friesen and home to six women, keeps Ms. Bryant moving. "Right after I moved in, I went dancing with friends," she said. "We stayed out until about 2 a.m., and I forgot my key."

No one answered when Ms. Bryant knocked on the back door. She saw a light on in Lisa Hezmalhalch's upstairs room and decided to throw something small at the window to try to get her attention. "I had a small apple, and so I tossed it up there," Ms. Bryant said.

The single-pane window shattered. Embarrassed, Ms. Bryant hid. "I came back a few minutes later and knocked on the door like nothing happened," she said. Lisa slept through the whole incident.

Ms. Bryant still finds time to pursue her passion of writing. After completing her double major in Bible and speech communication at MBC, she enrolled at Washington State University and received a bachelor's degree in English. "I think I took 18 credits of English per semester there," she said, still smiling. "I was starved for English."

Ms. Bryant also took a memoir writing class at Portland State University, and she has taught a memoir writing class at Imago Dei Community, a church in Portland.

"I'm not an expert in the field," she said, laughing. "I'm just a student willing to lead other students." The class was so popular that she will teach it again in the spring.

As part of her PSU writing class, Ms. Bryant wrote memoirs about her divorce and its fallout. "It was about 30 pages for my class," she said. She has expanded it to 60 pages and plans to develop it further.

Married in June of 2002 to an MBC student, Ms. Bryant learned firsthand that life is not always happily ever after. "When I went up to the altar and said 'I do,' divorce wasn't even on the radar. I had a strong belief in marriage," she said.

She found out her husband was unfaithful; he divorced her in January of 2005 under Washington's no-fault divorce laws.

Ms. Bryant does not pretend that the divorce was easy. "There were times that I would be walking into church, and it would just hit me, 'He's probably in bed with her right now.' I would have to shake it off and walk into church."

Will she publish the memoirs? She nodded thoughtfully to the question. "I've been thinking a lot about what makes my memoirs different than the Joe Schmoe down the street," she said.

Ms. Bryant said that many people experience adultery. She said one person in her PSU class suggested that the religious element was unusual to her memoirs, but Ms. Bryant said she wasn't sure about that.

No matter the end result of her memoirs, she said she benefited from writing them. "It has given me a connection with my story. In one of my classes, Byron Kehler said that if we don't know our story, our story will live us. If we don't know it, we will repeat it," Ms. Bryant said.

"It gave me the distance to step out of patterns and understand the decisions that were made. It has also given me a deep connection with students in my writing class and other people who have gone through hard times. [My class] is a community of writers."

Her 15-pound cat, Butters, has been with her through the last three years. "He's my little angel. We've been through it all," she said, hugging the fluffy, 3-year-old cat.

"He walks at my heel without a leash. Sometimes people will ask, 'Are you walking your cat?'" she said, shrugging. "I taught him to sit for food, and I tried to teach him to use the toilet." She smiled at the cat as she rubbed his paws. "He is very tolerant," Ms. Bryant said.

She and Mr. Wilbanks have been dating since March of 2006, and she said Butters approves. "It took him three weeks to warm up to Tré," she said, rubbing the cat's stomach.

"Now he just sprawls on my lap or Tré's lap." The cat also chaperones them on walks around the neighborhood. "He's my guy-o-meter," Ms. Bryant said.

The cat vomited on her ex-hus-band's shirt. "Butters didn't like him," she said.

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