I could post and post and post about the awesome time I had in NYC. I probably will post more about it but this is going to be my definitive post about the whole experience.

My last post really just hit on how much I love my US-2s which is completely and totally true. I spent the week laughing with them, feeling their pain, learning for them and just enjoying being around people that have the same values as I do. We talked about starting our own non-profit just because of how much we love each other. It is funny because for a group of people I have only spent 3 weeks or so of my time with, I feel like they are people that I could completely trust with anything and could depend on if I needed anything.

Among the things we did (besides eat because we did a lot of that), we shared our experiences with each other, we spent a day in devotion and prayer surrounding the verses from Mark 7 that were shared from the lectionary that moment. Hopefully I'll get a post out about that.

Monday we spent a day thinking about vocational discernment. It was probably my favorite and hardest day that we had. It was September 11th, and in our opening devotion, Tiffany led us through a time of grieving. We were able to experience the grief of our fellow classmates, we felt the grief of New York City, we felt the grief of the world around us. Through our time of grief, we really opened up with one another, and we were feeling heavy, but our session that day was about the future, about hope, about living now but having a vision of what is in our future. Discernment is less about knowing what is next (which is always my big hangup), but discernment to me is more about listening.

At some point, I shared a story of my beginning here. Of when I wanted to turn back and run home. It seems trivial, but I had a really rough start to life in the burque... but my main story, the first time I broke down here, happened when I was getting my apartment set up. I plugged a light in, and darkness. My circuit breakers wouldn't do anything. It was miserable. I called my landlord and got no answer and had no emergency number. I freaked out, and logically, I called someone in Illinois. Ha. Like she could help me. In the end, the landlord called back, they must have caller id or something, and it worked out ok. But what stuck out to me in this time of telling the story was Linda's response to it as she went around the circle. To me, she said, sometimes life is like turning on a light and getting darkness. As I'm exploring my vocation and discerning my call, that is exactly what it feels like. Every time I turn on a light and feel closer to what my path is, I feel covered in darkness. God is teaching me through this time and I should be grateful for the occasional feeling of darkness.

Through the day of vocational discernment, I learned a lot about my reservations, my fears, the things holding me back from where God is calling me, but most of all, the thing that resonated with me most is that I really need to be in prayer about all of this. I also made the realization that not only do I need to be, but it is a privilege to even be able to bring things to God in prayer. The line from "What a Friend We Have in Jesus" resonated through me all day. I had never really listened to the lyrics of the song, and they really just spoke to me that day.

"What a friend we have in Jesus
All our sins and grifs to bear
What a privilege to carry
Everything to God in prayer
O what peace we often forfeit
O what needless pain we bear
All because we do not carry
Everything to God in prayer"

Well I have more that I want to share, more about vocation, more about the weekend, but this is already really long. So expect some posts, about Mark 7, a poem by Howard Thurman, quotes and insight by Linda, good times & art therapy at gbgm (including meeting the General Secretary), and my crazy trip back.

Check out pictures from the weekend by clicking the link in my sidebar to my pictures. Some have captions, some don't. But overall it was a great time with my US-2s!

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 17, 2006 at 8:35 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.