Quick Post-Awakening Update

This is a quick update since I’m low on sleep, a little stressed and trying to catch up on a lot …

This weekend was ‘amazening’ (Brittney’s new word). As many of you know, I’ve been involved with the ecumenical Awakening retreats for the past 2 years sponsored by Catholic Community. Each Awakening is different and I’d have it no other way; who wants a repeat? This was a great way to transition myself out of my college mindset. Granted, I haven’t been fully in it for a while, but this was especially important for releasing the last things I was holding onto. Now it’s time for grad school …

The retreat was also perfect for reminding me why the effort to make it to every meeting on the weekends was worth it. The friends and community I basked in are the reason why TCU has been the best possible fit.

Something bizarre happened after the retreat when some of the leaders were eating lunch. We were enjoying meals at Potbelly’s (a sandwich place next to campus) and as I was standing in line I recognized someone I hadn’t seen in 5 years. Nathan Soyer, a HS student at Norwalk who was a year ahead of me, was sitting there with his brother and his sister-in-law. In Ft. Worth, TX?!? I knew he’d gone to college in Indiana, but why was he in Ft. Worth? It turns out that he and Travis were both working in California and Travis got a job in Ft. Worth and so Nathan was helping him move out here. We only have a few short minutes to say hi and catch up, but it was another reminder of how much my life is in transition. I’ll be heading to Norwalk on Tuesday (fingers crossed) and will be working from there for the rest of the semester.

Moving up there, though, will require me to leave a huge group of friends behind. A nice anecdote from the night captures a little bit of the current stress. I was driving Libby back from dinner while Jon and Richard drove in Jon’s car. At one point, after going over a speed bump, we heard a little metallic sound. After stopping and then going we heard it again and stopped, looked, and saw that my muffler had disconnected from the tailpipe. While I was talking to my parents on my cell, Libby called Jon and he and Richard came and looked at it with me. Richard had bun-gee cords in his car, so they got them, returned, and we attached it again (in my opinion more solidly — save for the disconnect — than it was before). I’m going to take it to a muffler shop tomorrow morning, but it was the bond I have with them all that made it only a 15-20 minute fiasco (for tonight) instead of the 1-1.5 hour one it could have been.

Now I’m going to continue working on putting in a good word for a friend …