So I have wanted to visit NYC for as long as I can remember. I’m a designer, love big cities, am enchanted with good public transportation, enjoy a good cuisine or hole in the wall, could live on live music, follow runway fashion, and don’t get claustrophobic in a crowd… so obviously I’d love New York, right? There’s even murmurings (in my head, of course) of me moving there next year. So obviously I have to go scout it out and to visit a couple of my best friends from college that have moved there.
So T-8 days before I leave, I have a breakdown. It dawns on me that I have stayed moving since my mom died- interning at some 80 hours a week getting treated (and treating myself) like I’m not a real person with emotions, then moving to the other side of the world and touring. Ministry was an easy way to run away, but travel is even better. Ministry is listening to other peoples emotions and issues 110% of every day and taking them on without fully feeling them. Travel is starting over where no one expects to talk about parents, beginning friendships too new for subjects like death and cancer, and even going to a religious culture where I don’t have to expect God to have the answers… now that’s an emotional vacation. But suddenly I find myself back in Atlanta, surrounded by actual friends, and suddenly I’m sitting still. And that’s where I was when it all hit me.
T-1 day to NYC, we’re broken up for prayer at a small group at a house in my neighborhood. Five girls on the couch sharing whatever they are feeling like talking about. After every pressing issue, we pray. It’s a strange tradition, even for someone who has grown up with it. I decide I will tell my friends that I am thinking about moving, and that I have a meeting with someone while I’m visiting about a potential job in May. But as we start praying for the girl before me, about family, I just begin to cry. Am I trying to run away again by moving?
I get on the plane, wondering how I will ever see God in the overpowering grid of man-made beauty. Will the city be fast enough to hold my attention on everything else? If I really believe that the stories are true, how should that affect the way I live my life? Will I be able to live my life with the right focus if I have to work 12 hour days just to pay rent?
Not to mention all the things that makes New York great are things that I could easily see myself turning into my life purpose. I love fashion. If you know me, I love sleeping in. I used to wake up every weekday to watch fashion file at 6am. The obsession with beauty and expensive clothing is an obsession that is never far enough away. Neither is my enchantment with new experiences, trying new things. Neither is my idolization of people in the arts… authors, musicians, artists, actors. And when I am working, I am working. I have let go of a lot of the ’obsessed with being the best’ I used to carry, but in a city like New York, it promises to come back. All of these things plus the next big party or night out… would there be room for what I am trying to consider most important? Or room to drink the cup of grief until it is gone?
I loved the city. I don’t know how specific I believe ‘God’s Plan’ is for my life- like if he cares where I live or what I do. But maybe I’ll start praying about whether or not to move anyway. I have hesitations, but I can see myself living there- starting a life and career there. And one of my favorite things about NY was that even though the buildings were spectacular and the lights were enchanting, the most beautiful and breathtaking parts were the parks.
Maybe you can clothe a person in J. Mendel, but the intricacies of the person beneath are always more spectacular than the furs and sparkles. Maybe you can build up stories and stories of one of the most powerful cities in the world around a patch of original beauty and still not trump the impact of the green space. Here’s to hoping no matter where life takes me, I pay attention to the person in the clothes and the God in the city. …And that’s just a cheesy side note, I guess.
