full circle

It's hard to believe, but today makes nine years since the day I boarded a Greyhound bus at age 17 and went 3,000 miles west to Portland, Or, not knowing a soul there, or even what I would do when I got there.

The older I get the more this act shocks me as having been incredibly life-threatening and dangerous. At the time though, even though I was afraid and worried in other ways, I simultaneously knew that there was nothing left for me in Michigan. I was suicidal and I knew that something had to change or else I had to just get out of there. So I did.

Looking back I really believe God protected me and I am able to see God very vividly in that part of my life. Sometimes when I have been inclined to not have any faith I am reminded of certain events in my life such as those that happened in Portland.

For example, ending up randomly in front of a youth drop-in center during the one day per week and one hour per week they did intake for new youth.

Or getting a job at the first place I walked into. Or having so many people around me encouraging me at the alternative school I went to while I worked to get my GED. In the beginning I would sleep at a shelter they had for teenagers, then go to the alternative school for a couple of hours and then walk to the other side of downtown to work the counter at a dry cleaners.

One of the reasons I find my job so rewarding is because our main office reminds me so much of the alternative school I went to in Portland. It serves a totally different demographic of course (we don't serve teenagers), but when the GED students come, and when students working on basic skills need a tutor, when anyone needs a tutor really, I get to match them with one.... and it is like coming around full circle, and it is a very beautiful, deeply moving thing for me to experience. It's the same thing sometimes with the homeless group I work with. Maybe I'll write about that another time.

I'm just so thankful.