Once again, I'm making a commitment to keep this thing going... for real this time. I have to find something to keep my journalism minor relevant, I guess...
If you've missed the memo, I started a new job about a month and a half ago -- I'm the new Catholic Campus Minister at Kean University in Union, NJ. Yup, back to my original home, the lovely Garden State! It's good to be back - although I've apparently started talking a little too much like someone from NW Pennsylvania, and I've gotten used to driving around crazy PA in the snow, so I have some adjustments to make. I guess it kind of paid off that I never got around to getting a PA driver's license, getting new plates/registration on my car, or any of that logistical nightmare of paperwork that goes along with moving between states.
It's weird being home though (to avoid losing my mind over simultaneously starting a new job AND apartment hunting/moving for the third time in 3 months, I've temporarily moved back in with my parents... and it's free). While I haven't really kept in touch with most of my friends from high school, a LOT of them are still around Mount Olive. It's a little weird coming home and seeing the girl that was in your 9th grade home ec class be your waitress at the Budd Lake Diner, or running into a guy at the gym that you were friends with in 11th grade, but now couldn't remember his real name if he paid you (his nickname is a little strange, maybe that's why it's the only thing I remember about him)...
It definitely has its up-sides though. It's great living about 7 hours closer to family members though (for my birthday dinner last week, we had 3 generations of the family together for the first time in too long), and it's cool seeing where people from home end up -- like one of my high school friends also just started working at Kean, and another friend works about 10 minutes from here too -- it's much better than starting over from scratch.
Coming back has also been a huge reminder of how much I've changed and grown over the past 6 years... and has provided some very interesting perspective on how much of a hand God has had in where I'm at in my life. To think that just 6-7 years ago, I was planning on going to St. Joe's in Philly for their food marketing college, and if I had done that I probably would be working for Campbell's in some major city with some marketing job that wouldn't be nearly as fulfilling as were I'm at now. Who would have thought that instead I would have taken a crazy adventure to Erie, PA, gone to Gannon University, decided I wanted to work for non-profits, used the GU Director of Campus Ministry as a reference while applying for non-profit/religious jobs in grad school, gotten recommended for the Campus Minister job at Penn State Behrend, decided to leave for a full-time job, and ended up back in New Jersey, working for the Archdiocese of Newark?
God definitely laughs when we make plans. And although I will be a stubborn Irish-German woman for the rest of my life, I'm glad that I've learned a little bit about trying to listen to Him over the past few years. And I've got a lot more learning, and listening to do, too.
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