Tessa Wiseman personified sunshine. It was truly impossible to be around her without becoming a warmer, kinder, and better person. She treated every single person she came into contact with with such dignity and respect and love. It was amazing to watch! I met Tessa in one of the strangest ways possible.. I had started dating my now husband Nate in 2018, and he lived in DC & was in the same friend group as Tessa. I was living in Texas at the time, and was planning a weekend trip to surprise Nate. It just so happened that the weekend I was coming up, Nate had been planning a murder mystery for their friend group. Our friend Andy Pitts told Nate that his “friend from out of town” was coming up last minute and needed a role in the murder mystery plot. Thinking that Andy’s friend was male, my part in the murder mystery was Tessa’s character’s lover. Despite my western-themed fake mustache and forced pick up lines, we became fast friends that night! Tessa always made you feel like you were the most important person in her world when she was with you. She remembered so many little details of all the various updates she always asked for, she never hurried conversation, she celebrated the victories and sat with you in difficult situations, and she prayed diligently for the people in her life. During our many walk/run or Sweetgreen dates, she shared her love and compassion for the refugee, the discriminated against, the blind, the sick, and everyone in between. I’m convinced that her heart was simply bigger than everyone else’s. She was so excited for her law school journey, and I am sure that she left her mark in Charlottesville the way she did in DC. One memory in particular sums up Tessa. At her going away party in DC, I was truly in awe of the group of people that gathered in the Westminster house to send her off. When I say the group was diverse, that word doesn’t do it justice. Every age, race, background, occupation, walk of life.. Tessa loved so big that she simply pulled anyone and everyone into her orbit. She was sunshine on earth and lived out her faith as the hands, feet, and eyes of Jesus. It makes me smile thinking about her sitting with Him now. She fought the good fight. I’m honored to have known her and to have been her friend.