Holy Crap... 6 months!

When did December happen? When did I move to LA? When did I graduate college for that matter?

I can't believe that it has been 6 months since I've moved to Los Angeles. We're working on the first week of December and I can't even begin to think about how I made it through this year. The list is too long.

There have been a lot of changes this year. Change in '08 wasn't just a successful political slogan. There have been a lot of trials and hurdles and there have been a lot of blessings. I have worked harder and harder on trusting God to carry me through the good and the bad and the ugly. Everything from graduating college, moving across the country, loosing loved ones: the more I think about it all - the more unbelievable it seems. The things that the human spirit can endure! I look, not at myself in amazement, but I look at my friends - losing parents, trying to have children, moving on into our adult lives. 2008 will really be the year I remembered becoming an adult.

So how do things change? That's the point of this blog, I guess. Superficially, I think this is meant to chronicle my adjusting to professional life in LA; but, deeper than that it's about the dynamic and pangs of adulthood.

More important than the physical changes are the emotional changes in the nuances of relationships with friends and family that have proven to be the most detrimental to my growth here. After my best friend's father died earlier this year, I had to rush back from Boston to Philadelphia having just returned from Spring Break. This hiccup in the final stretch of my college life became one of the most trying, yet defining moments of my life. For the first time in a very long time, my 3 best friends from childhood and I all got to really spend time with one another. In the wake of this loss, we offered each other our fears and hopes and theories about life. We all acknowledge that this was the catalyst of change... suddenly, we're adults, dealing with adult issues and our adult lives.

Suddenly, we have to balance many more things than a social calender. College doesn't do adulthood justice. There is little appropriate preparation for the "real world." I think that term should be stricken from our Generation MTV vernacular. The real world has nothing to do with high school, college or some other traditional checkpoint in the road of life. It's not a physical diploma, but an emotional graduation. You realize that friendship and love aren't things of convenience. You work hard for the people that mean a lot to you - even if they are 3000 miles away.

I feel like I've graduated onto this part of my life. It took one very hard year, but it happened. I thank God every day for the things I've been given. I even thank (or try to remember to) Him for the hard things; because, without the dark, I'd never see the light.

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Here's a few excerpts from the Book of James. I've been reading the Bible more in this effort to reconnect with my faith. This is another factor in 2008 that's made all of the difference in my life. I found these versus to be the most helpful.

"Consider it pure joy, my brothers, when you face trials of many kinds, because you know the testing of faith develops perservearance" 1:2-3

"Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow... If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that." 4:14

"Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed" 5:16