Best of Blogs

I started blogging on January 1, 2006...five years ago! So I decided to celebrate 5 years of blogging by spending January doing a "Best of Blogs" month. Here's one originally posted on January 11, 2006, when I was visiting Group for a conference:

My Alternate Future

It feels kind of surreal being here in Colorado. I feel like I’m living in my alternate future. In college, before I started looking at places to work, I picked out what state I would most like to live in based on climate and scenery. Colorado was my pick. I said I wanted either ocean or mountains. (No complaints about Wisconsin, I love it there, but I do sometimes miss that kind of scenery.)

Then, knowing I wanted to develop curriculum, I started looking at various places that were out there. I was really impressed with Group and was going to contact them. But before I did, one of my professors told me that it would be a lot better experience for me to work at a church that develops its own curriculum, because I would have more autonomy and room for creativity. She recommended the church I’m at now, so I interned there and the rest is history. I love it so much and I know God has called me there, so it’s not like being here has made me regret the path God took me down. It’s just kind of surreal to look at what might have been.

And to be quite honest, it is something that’s on my radar screen again. It’s always kind of been there, since my former boss had told me she’d love for me to at some point in my life have experience at a curriculum publishing company to see how things run from this end. Being here has put it even more on my radar screen – not sooner but just more of a realistic possibility. I’d really hate to leave my current job – I love it so much and I love Milwaukee. But if God calls me here at some point in the future I’d be excited about coming. I don’t think it would be in the very near future, though, because I want to be committed to my church for a while.

Tonight in the hot tub of the hotel another man from the conference was asking everyone where they saw themselves in ten years, and I had to admit that this was a real possibility. It’s kind of crazy to think about, but at the same time maybe God has a reason for my involvement in hosting this conference besides the value of the conference. Who really knows what He’s up to besides Him?