I sit in Starbucks this New Years Day, enjoying free wifi thanks to my roomie and free hot beverages thanks to Christmas gifts from family. I am sitting and reflecting, like many of you have been I am sure, on the last year. Ironically enough, exactly this time on this day last year, I was surrounded by Starbucks, being the newbie at the job I had and having to open at 5:30 in the morning alone on New Year’s Day. I remember stumbling around, brewing coffee and wondering what genuis thought people would be up at 6am NYD getting lattes instead of sleeping in. Judging by the relevant quietness as I sit at this ‘bucks in the late morning, a year later, the same still seems to bode true.
As I reflect on how I have spent my 2008, it looks like a fragmented series of patchworks, sewn haphazerdly together. God has spoken to me about doors this past year and looking back, I know each new encounter has been just an entrance to add another piece to this tapestry of my life. It doesn’t always make sense at the time, but we can be confident that God is fashioning something beautiful. At that time, I was living with my sister in her apartment in Athens, GA. I had been a GA resident once again for a couple of months now, after leaving 2.5 years of life in Cairo, IL. I was working to pay the bills, trying to be with my family once again, and wondering where the heck my life was going. I knew that God had brought me back to GA specifically to reconnect with my family, especially Jodi. January 2nd, my sister got an unexpected call into her supervisors office. Her job was ending in Athens, and if she wanted to stay with the company, she had to move. Within two weeks her apt was packed up and she was moved to Orlando, FL and I back to my parents, quitting my job in the process. I was bewildered, looking at the door back into my sisters life slammed unexpectedly in my face.
Having nothing really going on, a couple of friends convinced me to join them on a road trip out west, which began a month and a half of non stop traveling. The day after I quit my job, I boarded a plane bound for San Fransisco. I was excited. I had never been out west before. The last few months of life had left me a little war weary, and it was my door of escape. Sunny CA seemed the perfect destination. I encountered the cold, roaring Pacific, lovely vineyards, and fun sunsets. I drove into Hollywood, praying with my travelmates for a place to sleep for 
the night, and God answered through the hospitality of His body. I prayed and worshipped with some of the craziest Jesus lovers I have ever met in Redding, CA. Sometimes I felt like I was in the middle of an SNL skit, but they have the joy of the Lord down better than any group I have yet to encounter. Old struggles and lies came to the surface and a battle for my thoughts began once again. I met the C squad of the World Race randomly in Long Beach, having no idea I would be booking flights for them 2 months later. I visited old friends in MN who were starting a community living house in N. Minneapolis, a group who would later become one of my most faithful financial supporters. I enjoyed being in their presence, sharing in their similar heartbeat of doing life together and outreach to the community.I went back to Cairo for a couple of weeks. A place of great struggle, and of great growth and victory. The me I was trying to get away from was waiting to greet me again in my old stomping grounds and I had to face her head on. Once again, God’s grace and mercy abounded as He pushed me further down a path of healing. A lesson of choosing life or death was learned over again.
I made it back home just in time to repack and leave again to help lead my old college on their annual spring break mission trip to Juarez, Mexico. It was a week of reflection back to my time as a student on these trips, a place where the foundation was laid for my call to missions. I reconnected with old spiritual mentors and friends. I laughed about the fact that I was now part of the grown up crowd, something I am still trying to get used to. I was able to exhort and encourage some young hungry Jesus chasers. I was grateful for the opportunity to serve. Doors were re-opened into old relationships, and into new ones, which I wouldn’t realize the extent of til later.A week after my return to “normalcy”, I have lunch with an old friend, and was given the opportunity to join AIM staff. With the World Race, a ministry I had no experience with, doing set-up, something I never would have thought of. An unexpected curve ball from the Lord. All I heard as I prayed, was something that sounded oddly familiar:
“I am opening a door, you need to walk through it”.
So, I took a deep breath and stepped over the threshold. The journey was only beginning…
