Coffee and Career

Working with kids who come from ridiculously awful backgrounds and who currently live in a detention center because they've made mistakes, well, it can make you think if you let it.

I'm thankful for my life 99.9% of the time, because its awesome, for real.  My current life situation, though accompanied with a little bit of stress and a LOT of debt (or as I like to refer to it, future stress), is a pretty fabulous reminder of just how incredibly privileged I am - and not just because I took a class last semester on privilege.

I get to go to grad school in an AMAZING city full of incredible opportunity. I currently have a field placement that's so fitting I could not write the job description more perfectly myself. The two weekdays I'm not interning I work for the same company I've been working for since I moved to New York - and it allows me to see different schools in different random corners of the city, full of kids from opposite socioeconomic backgrounds (we work with both charter schools and high-end ridiculously expensive private schools attended by Vanderbilts and celebrity children). I feel like I'm drinking in unique experience day in and day out.

Today I was offered a summer internship. My program does not require us to take a summer internship, but I had been looking for something to do here in the city and came across it, and after a few emails, a phone interview, and an in-person interview today, this amazing opportunity was extended to me. This opportunity is INCREDIBLE, if I take it (which I'm almost positive I'll do - just working on the not-having-a-paying-job aspect), I'll be working for the Kings County District Attorney's Office Victims Unit. I'd spend my summer being trained in domestic violence from the legal end and how to navigate that as a social worker.  I'd get to counsel victims of domestic violence while connecting them to services that can help them as they make decisions about their next steps. I'll also be mediating between victims and lawyers, trying to form common goals. Cool huh (plus, ya'll think there might be any adorable single boy interns on the legal side?)

This opportunity is HUGE, and it reminded me that I am SO thankful for the education I've been allowed, solely by grace, to receive  - and I'm thankful God has allowed me to use those skills to help others. I cannot believe the amazing ways he lets me be a part of his plan, and I hope I never lose sight of that. In the end, it's all for him, and without him, I would not be able to have these chances in the first place.

I am also thankful for free coffee. This morning I got an email from Starbucks for a free macchiatto - hazelnut or caramel - to promote their new hazelnut macchiatos.  I stopped to enjoy on my way out of my interview, and it was yummy :) My stomach problems have made me limit my coffee lately, so it had been a while since I'd had some good sweet coffee. Worth the wait.

And they spelled my name right!!! 

Pumkin Spice Lattes The Good Word

In the madness of starting a new job, I've also had to create for myself a new routine. In said new routine, it's especially important to pray through how my time with the Lord can be best spent. He's provided me with the time to spend, and I need to steward my time in a way that I can both keep my job, and more importantly, grow daily in my relationship with him.

This balance is crucial, in that I am on a trial period with my job, and it's not just a trial period for them to test me out, but also for me to see if this is truly where God wants me for at least the next ten months of my life. but more on that later.

What I wanted to share most, is the ABSOLUTELY RADICAL AMAZINGNESS I read while enjoying a pumpkin spice latte last night (ahhhh, fall!). I took myself to starbucks so I'd be removed from the distractions of work and my apartment. It's a routine I plan to work into my routine, even if it doesn't include starbucks (considering the only time of the year starbucks is my preference is during the fall when the pumpkin spice is in full force)

Have you ever had one of those moments where you were diggin through the word and you just wanted to stand up where you were and do a little dance because you were so pumped up and charged by the passages before you. That was me, last night. These moments rock my world.

I marinated in the words of Titus 2:11-14:

"For the grace of God has appeared bringing salvation to all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in this present age, waiting for our blessed hope, then the appearing of the glory of our Great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for his own possession a people who are ZEALOUS for good works."

Retyping that, just blew my mind again. Dude, GAVE HIMSELF FOR US so we will be ZEALOUS for good works. What?! He wants us to live upright, self-controlled, and godly lives while we WAIT for him and his glory. really

take

that

in

don't read this lightly. In digging deeper last night, I came to know that the Greek word for waiting connotes eagerness. It's not like when I'm waiting on the train for work, its like, when I'm waiting from the time of the superbowl/BCS national championship games to the time when the first ball of the season is kicked off in the late summer/early fall times infinite numbers of awesomeness.

SOOOOOOOOO MUCH BETTER.

we are waiting on the GOD OF THE UNIVERSE. This big dude, who knows more than we will ever ever every understand, comprehend, or pretend to know. Things we could never wrap our mind around. He's coming to bring us into his fellowship. Like, for real. Take that in. and in the meantime, he wants us to be CHANGED by his promise.

Like, what is salvation if we don't let it soak us up. Why on Earth would we want the things of this Earth when we can be friends and live in community with the most infinite, unimaginable, greatest person who ever walked this earth. Like, think about this. Really think about it. I read this stuff every day, and sometimes I get complacent, but when I truly sit in amazement. WOW.

you'll prolly want to dance around a starbucks too.

Cooper Union and Starbucks

I am imagining that there cannot be much better in the world than sitting in Starbucks, looking out the window, listening to the Elizabethtown soundtrack, drinking a signature hot chocolate, and thinking of all the blessings in my life.

Day after day two summers ago I walked by the Cooper Union, and thought how funny it is that you can be sitting in one Starbucks, looking at the other one block away, and how, at one time, there was also a Barnes and Noble in view, which contained a cafe serving Starbucks coffee.  I guarantee you if you pump the blood of most New Yorkers, it contains 10% espresso.  

I've had a lot of time to think these past few days.  I've spent most of my time walking around aimlessly (literally, with no aim or direction), thinking and praying, and being thankful for the blessing this city has been on my life.  

It was here that I fell in love with Jesus all over again my freshman year, and discovered just how much I love serving him.  It's where I met many of my best friends, both from LSU and from NY.  It's where I found the joy that comes from teenagers, and where I learned that I thrive on lights and sounds.  New York City has had an unbelievable influence on my college years.  I, in fact, cannot imagine what my life would be like had I not come on that trip freshman year.  I'm not really sure I want to. 

Joy is truly the only word I can think of to use in describing how I feel when I am here.  I cannot wait to be here all the time.  Really.  

I love New Orleans, and I don't think there could possibly be a more unique and interesting place in all of America, but New York has gotten under my skin, and I don't see it leaving any time soon.