Home at Last

Tomorrow morning...I will be home. I won't be on a break, I will be home with no plans scheduled for me next. I've been so excited about living out of a closet, having my own schedule, and spending more time with friends than flight attendants that I never thought about how I might feel sad....scared...unsure. I've had an amazing job, a consistent job (well, to some degree!), and a job that I love and feel I am good at. It is fulfilling to work with college women who are making a difference on their campuses, and feel at most times that I am making a difference in their collegiate experience.

Tomorrow morning...that influence will be over. I have no more visits scheduled, no more people to meet with, no more schedules to follow. What does God have in store for me? When will I find a job, and what will that job look like? How do I put my full trust in God when the world says it is easier to be anxious, search harder, find something, and be uneasy and dissatisfied until I do?

"When I am afraid, I will trust in you. In God, whose work I praise, in God I trust; I will not be afraid." (Psalm 56:3-4)

It is so hard to hear God's voice in moments of fear and uncertainty, but I am doing my best to listen. It's easier to say that I trust in the plans He has for my life, but hard to live that out day after day. I am working on it though. I will set my eyes on serving others and glorifying the Lord in my daily walk. I am so blessed and excited to see the glorious plans that God has in store for me.

Thanks for your listening, your support, and your love...it's been one heck of a year.

Love & miss you all...xoxo, C

God's Little Reminders

Today is my birthday...and I'm working...in Pennsylvania...states away from my family and friends. However, thanks to modern technology (and God's sense of humor) I've been pleasantly reminded ALL morning of just how loved I am. Perhaps this year, more than ever, I've been getting happy birthday messages through phone, text, email, Facebook, and flowers from people ALL over the country who care about me. This is my most people-filled birthday ever! How wonderful that God has given me so many smiling, beautiful, people in my life to replicate His love for me.

C.S. Lewis said, "Though our feelings come and go, God's love for us does not."

I went to bed thinking I should postpone my birthday a few days so that I would be with my family and friends. God had a different plan though, a plan in which He would smother me with little reminders of just how blessed I am!

Love & miss you all (for 3 more days)...xoxo, C

"All We Ever Do is Say Goodbye"

What signifies closure? How do we know when something is ending, and a new thing is beginning? If I think over my life, there are definitely certain events that mark conclusion:

- A final exam
- A graduation ceremony
- A celebration luncheon with thank you notes, a card, and maybe even a gift
- Packing up boxes and physically moving
- Turning in my key, selling back my books
- Signing yearbooks
- The dropping of a sparkling electronic ball in Times Square and a countdown
- The ding that means it's safe to unbuckle your seatbelt and retrieve your bags from the overhead bin

But how do we experience closure when something just ends? When there's no conclusion, no celebration, no clear ending...when things just simply stop, but everything else around me keeps moving? When I have no more flight itineraries in my inbox, and no more campuses awaiting my visit...what do I do?

For the past eight months, I have always had somewhere to go, something to work on, someone waiting for a response to an email or a voice mail. But now, as I sit in Lambert airport waiting to depart for my final two visits, I don't know what to feel. For the first time in my life, I don't know what's next professionally. I am staring into an uncertain future, with very little on my schedule, and absolutely no closure. I've had April 17 in my head all semester as the "graduation" day so to speak...but I realize that this graduation will have no "Pomp and Circumstance" and no diploma. Instead, I will arrive at the airport, wait for that ding one last time, walk out of the terminal, and be finished. Closure...how do we get it when it isn't given to us?

Love and miss you all, C