I Love New York

New York.
It really is unlike any other city in the U.S. I've gotten to know the city much better over the past few years. Its a real city where people come to live and work and be around other people. Don't get me wrong; I don't want to live here, but its nice to be a part of the cultural capital of our Country, even if just for a little while.

I'd seen New York several times before, but in February 2002 I had the opportunity to spend some time feeling the city. I'd just been hired to start the career I'd dreamed of since I was six, and I wanted to make my pilgrimage to New York before I made the jarring change between college and the "real world." My grandfather had just died, and taking a trip with my family to the city he loved to visit seemed to put a symbolic end to the old, and a prelude to my new life and career to come. Over the next few months, I visited New York several times to perfect the plans I had to bring my fiance` and propose to her there. Only a month later, I could barely make out the blurry image of "the lady" through my tears as my future wife and I sailed by her with me on one knee.

On countless beautiful winter mornings, I would fly down the East River on my approach to Laguardia Airport, and on countless winter evenings I would sit in my New York hotel room thanking God for the ability to safely bring the plane to a stop in what New Yorkers always seemed to call "the worst winter storm of the year." I've spent time in parts of the city I never expected to step foot in, and not only learned the ways of the culture there, but learned to to live and fit in with the culture.

New York has, in a weird way, become the benchmark for my life. It seems that during every major change in my life over the past five years, I found myself in New York. The city itself is irrelevant, of course, but my connection with it and the bone-jarring changes in my life has made it a place of spiritual clarity where I can most easily separate myself from my life and look at if from a distance. Now, as much as ever, I feel the change. The uncertainty of a career change, and leaving the house where my wife and I started our lives together is intimidating. More than anything, I'm afraid I'm going to regret my decision. I know its all relative, and I try to deal in absolutes as much as possible, but nothing scares me more than knowing I made a decision that made our lives worse.

But then I come to New York. I feel the gravity of every other important event that's happened in my life; I feel the uncertainty I had while sitting in the same city; and I feel God talking through my experience. It really is like being able to separate myself from time, and look across all of it at once: the past, and the future, and everything is OK. And while sitting on that spiritual plateau, I feel God lean over and whisper, "See?"

And I do see.

I see Him sitting right next to me. I see my life as uncompleted, but free of regret as long as I keep myself sitting right next to Him on that plateau. I see joy, and I see pain, but I see all of that while sitting next to Him.

And so my decision has been made. I may explain it in other posts, but it is quite obvious that this change was brought about by God. It is also quite obvious that it will not necessarily be a good change, but I'm excited to do what God has asked me to do, even if it means hardship.

New York is a dirty city. It has horrible traffic, is ridiculously expensive, has some of the rudest people, and is not the safest place to be.
New York is where I visit God.

I Love New York.