Life is Good

Here I sit, 4 A.M. I am working on my forty page paper, as per usual. Adderall, Monster, and cigarettes are involved. During a particularly refreshing cigarette break, I took a minute to meditate on my life...

Today, (or rather yesterday) I attended a networking dinner for my Social Work major, and we were discussing the specifics of which part of social work we are interested in, and why. I personally am interested in the prison/inmate population, because of my ex boyfriend. During my senior year of high school, I was overwhelmed with AP Calculus, AP Chemistry, and AP Statistics - not to mention that math and science are not my strong points. At the same time, my long standing relationship of nearly two years was suffering as my boyfriend began to get more possessive and I began to have less time to spend with him. Things blew up in a bad way when in an act of lunacy he decided to shoot at me with a rifle. I called the cops on him, and he was taken to prison. I had no desire to reunite with him on the same level we had been on, however I wanted to be there as a friend, and spent many weekends in the Correctional Facility he was in. This inspired me to pursue a career working with inmates. From bad, came good. I discovered my calling.

Throughout my childhood, I attended Catholic schools and a very close-minded view was drilled into my brain. As I got older, I questioned many of the points that my religion made, and hated this judgmental Lord. I moved away from Christianity, and formed my own moral views. This year, I was thrown in a class called "Jesus and Moral Life" to account for my humanities core requirement. In this class, I met Dr. Michael Long and he reintroduced me to Christianity. Through him I realized that my moral views corresponded greatly with the views of an emerging paradigm of Jesus Christ (although that's a story for another day). Through this I was returned to the faith and realized my calling to Religious Studies. I also gained a job from this, working for Dr. Long on his new book. My newfound love for religion and ethics also determined my course selections in "Philosophy of Religion," "Peace, War and Nonviolence," and the "Social Ethics of Martin Luther King, Jr."

Overall, the nasty things in my life, I have noticed, are being reborn into beautiful things. This gives me much confidence and overall, I am feeling beyond happy with my life. I just felt the need to take a break from my studies to reiterate this in text, so whenever I'm feeling down, I can revisit my faith in the Lord, in my self, and in the world.