Ebenezer #1: A roommate

I could start the story in a number of places. I could tell you how I first visited New York when I was 12 years old and immediately told my parents that I was going to live here. I could tell you about how I interned here the summer after my junior year and got bit with the bug. I could tell you about how, the year I lived in Atlanta, I visited Cal once a month trying to decide if I wanted to move.

However, I would prefer to start the story on January 10, 2006.

I was living with Erin and Jessica. We had all gotten involved with Fusion at Buckhead Church, and Erin was coordinating a morning of volunteering at St. Francis' Table, a soup kitchen in Atlanta. So, at 7am on January 10, we met at Buckhead Church and ventured downtown to serve the homeless.

I could have not gone. I'm sure when I woke up that morning, it was really cold, and I probably considered bailing. I think it was raining. Nevertheless, for whatever reason (noble or not) I did go.

While there, I struck up a conversation with another volunteer, Christina. We had never met before, but we hit it off from the beginning. Somehow, in the midst of serving lunch, we determined that we both had a heart for New York City and had always thought about moving there. I remember thinking how amazing it was to meet someone who was in the exact same place as me... loving Atlanta, living a good life, but noticing an itch deep inside for an adventure in New York.

Christina and I started getting together almost every week, most of the time at the Starbucks on West Paces Ferry. We talked about the trips we were taking up to New York, the friends we had there, the churches we'd visited, the boys we both had on the radar at the time. And eventually, over numerous Vanilla Skim Lattes, we talked each other in to a move in June. It was all settled. We were going to move up at the same time, and we were going to live together. I could not believe how blessed I was that God had provided me with this friend and roommate.

However, on May 7, at Fusion, Christina shared with me an update: she had had a dream job opportunity come up in Atlanta, and she would not be moving after all. For someone who had been making a lot of choices based on what I thought were signs from God, this was a huge blow to my plan. I remember getting in the car with Erin and having a mini-freak-out, mostly panicking, "Does this mean I'm not supposed to move?! Is it a sign?"

If anyone had motivation to talk me out of the move, it was Erin. We were roommates, and I was moving out of the apartment. We did almost everything together in Atlanta. But Erin, who is one of the wisest friends I have, did not try to talk me out of it. She could have, and I wouldn't have blamed her. But she did the opposite. She affirmed me. She encouraged me. She told me to not let this setback stop me, but to trust that God had something and someone else in store.

So I stayed the course. That Thursday, Christina emailed me the contact information of a friend of a friend of hers, a girl named Leslie who was looking for a new roommate. Leslie and I emailed back and forth, talked on the phone, met once and decided to live together. We lived together in a shoebox on the Upper East Side for two years. She was an amazing roommate, and she is to this day a dear friend. She helped make my move to New York so easy, and we had a blast sharing little 1FW. (We even went to Mexico together in March.)

And that's how God turned a trip to an Atlanta soup kitchen into my first New York roommate.

Leslie, me and Christina (who ended up moving to New York 6 months after I did :))