Thanksgiving weekend

Well I'm currently on the second of two flights, this one from Charlotte to Chicago. I'm playing a Christopher Reeve audio book on my phone. I'm off from work for the next five days and I must say it feels good to finally have a break, my first since Labor Day weekend.

As I'm flying back to a town called home for 18 of the last 20 years, I can't help but feel a little ponderous. I sit in this first class seat feeling thankful and even a little bit proud on this Thanksgiving. I'm proud that I took the chance I took to leave Chicago and a secure job and familiarity. But I'm also thankful for all those years. I met great people and some unsavory ones, became a real Christian, ate wonderful food, worked some good jobs and some bad ones, ran my first races, walked through many forest preserves, had my heart broken, attended so many games, shows, festivals, and concerts, dealt with loneliness, lost two dogs, cleaned up my flooded basement maybe a dozen times, and wore out that space heater in that Arctic basement.

As I'm about to land, it feels a little bit like it did during Christmas 2002. I was visiting my now dead ex stepfather, who had an apartment in Wheaton. At that time, I had moved to Raleigh and thought my time in Chicago was over. I was content, thankful for five very good years, and ready to move on. Little did I know that four months later, I'd get the news that I would be moving back after I graduated college in June.

The difference is now I know it's permanent. And I really feel no sadness about it. None. I was ready to go then and I know that if I was still there, commuting three hours a day every weekday along with working nine hours in downtown Chicago and living with my mother, I'd feel even more restless now.

There's so much changing that I don't need to be part of. Bill Hybels won't be pastor at Willow Creek Church much longer. And the man replacing him is someone who gave a Chicago Cubs jersey to Pope Benedict. Safe to say I don't care for the man.

Certainly by no means is my life exactly where I want it. I don't know if that will ever happen. And even if it did, circumstances change so frequently, and I'm learning so many of them are out of my control. What I'm learning more and more now is real success isn't having my circumstances arranged exactly how I want them. Rather, it's having the inner strength to handle those circumstances with character and mental strength as they come my way. That's a battle I'm still trying to win. And I pray for God's grace and support through each struggle and each victory of each day.