I HAVE POST-GRAD PLANS

Let me tell you a story.

I applied to Mont Lawn camp back in February after stalking them at the Camp Fair. I have a nonprofit crush on their parent organization, the Bowery Mission.
Then I didn't hear from them for 2 and a half months.
So I applied to bunches of other things, kept emailing them and calling, and never heard back.
All those other things kept falling through the cracks.
So I started prepping myself to move back home and work from home indefinitely. My parents needed help getting the house ready to sell, and they told me it would be good to have me home. I blogged about it, went to lunch with my friend Lauren, edited the piece, and clicked "post."
My phone immediately starting ringing.
It was Mont Lawn!
As I spoke with the rep, I took the post down off my blog. She offered me a job. Turns out they hired all returners, and I was the very first person she called from her stack of new applications.
I just got off the phone with her accepting the position officially.

GET THIS. I will be living in the woods with teen girls from inner-city New York, discipling them and pouring into their lives. We'll be roughing it -- I even get to take them on a 3-day overnight epic canoe trip! On the weeks I'm not doing that, I'll be chilling at the base camp and managing the rock wall or something.
The Delaware River = my favorite place in the entire world
Discipling women = what I want to do with my life
Camp counselor = the dream job I've never done before
This position = the best answer to the deepest prayers of my heart
FREAKING OUT RIGHT NOW.

What I love is that it took two months of fear and wrestling with the idea of God's goodness and chasing after glamorous jobs before they got back to me. It took a whole day of processing the fact that I could be jobless at graduation, praying about it and submitting myself to what God seemed to have for me before that phone call could be made. It took a semester of being out of control and being frustrated about that before I finally let God be in charge. And man, did he show up. Big time. Right at the perfect time.

So that's what I'm doing after I graduate. It's a little bittersweet, since I won't be home all summer, but I know this is where God is calling me. It's all the things I am most passionate about in one job. (It might also lead to other jobs doing similar things in NYC afterwards!) It is everything I could not have possibly imagined.

And after that, I'll probably live in Florida with my grandparents from Aug-Sept and help around the office at the Refuge. And after that, I'll go backpack through Europe in October and visit my friends in England, France, Germany and Italy. And after that, who knows. Or -- this would be crazy -- I could get the fellowship in New York that I applied for.

So guys...I have plans!!! What's different from these plans and all the ones I made before are that these are God's plans for me and I am stepping into them, instead of crafting my perfect comfortable cozy life and struggling to attain it through my own power.

I am finally done searching for now. I'm really excited. THE END!