Three weeks ago, I picked up the key to my first house. Weird. I moved in, carried multiple boxes up preposterously steep stairs. The last three hours of the next day were spent unpacking boxes, cleaning counters, and hanging dresses. At the point of complete exhaustion, I stepped into the air conditioned, caffeine comma inducing, Wi-Fi providing coffee shop that has provided me shelter for the past twelve months. After ordering text books, looking through my recent bank transactions, and texting a few friends that I’m finally back, I sat for a moment, reflecting on why this coffee shop, this town, and these people provide me so much comfort. The conclusion I have come to is that I am content. And I don’t say this with the connotation that I am just satisfied, wanting and striving for more, but instead I am proud of who I have become in the last year, filled with joy at the thought of my friends, and so overwhelmed with the goodness of God’s provision. Never have I been able to sit in in one place for more than three hours, no matter how good my book is, or how much work I must get done. But I guess that’s why God sent me to Bowling Green. I’ve known that I wanted to attend BGSU since I was about five years old, and even though I looked at other schools, I somehow knew deep down that this is where I would end up. Now here I sit, in the same coffee shop, looking out the window on my favorite town, bogged down with absurd amounts of reading and writing, and never happier. Bowling Green is my home. BGSU is my community and my ministry. The classrooms are where I learn, and Flatlands is where I study. I am constantly surrounded by friends who I consider family, content in the season of singleness that God has me in, even if I don’t exactly know what He’s doing yet. I’ve always been the kind of person to go out on a limb. A really long and really thin limb. I like to jump, full of faith, not really knowing where I’ll land. That’s exactly how I go here, and I’m so grateful for the fall. I like to live in God’s promises, because that’s what He told us to do. His promises are real, that He will fight for us (Exodus 20:12), that we have no need to fear (Isaiah 41:13), and that if the Son sets us free, we are free indeed (John 8:36). So with these promises in hand I take on a new job, working an average of 24 hours a week, I start in on a 19 credit hour course load for the semester, I lean in on my wish to tutor, gaining more experience in my field, I lead a bible study with a new friend, and I’m going to attempt to learn guitar. For the next few weeks, if you ask me how I am doing, I will tell you I am exhausted, but I am great. I am content. I have never been more filled with the joy of the Lord, and that is what I rest in when I know I have a twenty-hour day ahead of me, or that I have to work during a community event. I am content. I am here. I am exhausted, and I am great.
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