Broken by New York

        They say New York is a city that will either break you or make you. Well, it has definitely broken me. I came here full of dreams of what my life would be like having finally finished graduate school. I would come and find a nice place to live within my first two weeks and then spend the month after that looking for a job. A month was all it would take to find a job because, after all, I had a degree. If you live or have ever lived in New York, you’re laughing at this point. In retrospect, I am too.

       I have been here a year (give or take a few days) and nothing has gone as planned. I do not have a job where I work in a corner office of a tall, impressive building. I don’t even have my own apartment much less my own room. I have gone to sleep some nights not knowing where I would lay my head down the next night and moved more times in one year than some people move their whole lives. All of this has broken me, but in the best way possible. When I came here, my goal was to rock at life, but in my magnanimousness, I would not forget the little people on my rise to the top. Now my heart is moved by the things that break His heart and driven by a desire to live a life where I help others rise. When I came here, I envisioned myself moving in my own strength as I made my dreams come true. Now, I live in the reality that it is not by might, or by power, but by God’s spirit or will that we accomplish anything, whether we bow to His will or not. Having teetered on the precipice of ruin and being blessed, saved, by the intervention of friends and family, the issues of the homeless are closer to my heart than ever before. I see the world differently and understand that no man or woman is an island; No matter how capable we are, we are relational beings and our lives flourish when we live, give, and receive in that knowledge. I seem to have had a heart attack, figuratively speaking, followed by an Ezekiel 36:26 heart transplant. [I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you a heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.] I am beyond glad that the last year in New York has not gone as planned; Life is boring when it goes as planned. God’s plans for us are always better, grander, more challenging, and more fulfilling than our plans.

                                Much Love