A Not-So-Minor Detail

Now, when I told you that big story yesterday, I left out a very important detail – I thought it needed a whole post of its own.

I remember going to Chicago for the first time during the summer after my first year of college. Two high-school friends and I made a mad dash over there just for one day. Everything was new to me – I’m pretty sure I never closed my eyes once the whole day. That night, as we waited outside to be seated at Giordano’s, I looked up at all the enormous buildings and I could feel something stirring; I knew I wanted to live there some day.

Fast forward to the end of college, a.k.a. the big bad freak-out where Robin has NO clue what she should do with her life, doesn’t want to leave her friends and doesn’t have any plans post-graduation besides moving back in with her parents in Ohio. Cue the crying myself to sleep in the dorm room, pleading with my parents to let me stay at IWU one more year, wasting money by taking the GRE without a plan or even studying.

But move back to Ohio I did. And after applying for jobs in Indy or anywhere close to my friends back at school, and then applying for jobs all over the country when that didn’t work out, I eventually found myself employed in Downtown Chicago with an apartment in one of the best neighborhoods, and, after about a year of agonizing loneliness, a church to call home and some friends who became my family.

All that happened without any help from me. It’s so obvious that God was at work, pulling me in a direction I always wanted to go without my even noticing it. He blessed me abundantly and so completely accurately that every one of my needs was met, more perfectly than I could have imagined. During all the agonizing and desperate praying that things would work out, God was at work – even when it felt like nothing was happening and like I would stay in this quagmire of uncertainly forever.

And once again, I can see how God blessed me with this new opportunity at just the right moment. This transition has really been ridiculously easy (aside from inevitably missing Chicago, my “family,” and my church). My lease was up at the end of August so I didn’t need to find a sub-letter, my brother was able to come help me move, my parents lent me some money to offset the moving costs, my grandpa lent me his pick-up truck so I could just rent a trailer from U-haul instead of paying big bucks for a moving truck, some of my best friends had a spare room in their house in Cincinnati that I could live in as long as I needed and had time to take me to and pick me up from work….I could continue, actually, but you’d probably lose interest.

But I’m so, so thankful. So thankful that these crazy-generous people allowed God to use them. So thankful that while I was wallowing in my “I hate my job” woes, He was building a plan so wonderful and so right for me, that it would surpass anything earthly-me could have ever hoped for. So thankful that I serve a loving, kind, generous, omniscient, sovereign Lord who is patient with me when I despair and whine that I can’t see what lies ahead and who delights in my joy when it’s revealed. Love Him.