Blessings

I began pondering a question last week. What do you do when you’re not yet 22 and you’ve already achieved a major career goal?

My dream before I graduated was this: Someday I wanted to have a job I loved, in a little town I enjoyed, and to have my own place. I wanted it to be full time and pay enough for me to live on and have a few adventures. I wanted to be challenged and never to be bored.

Guess what my first job after graduation has been? At the risk of repeating what I’ve said in earlier posts, allow me to summarize for you the position I started in the day before graduation.

First, it’s taken care of the tangible requirements—it’s full time and I earn enough to rent an apartment on my own that’s “practically perfect in every way.” I have enough funds that I can save some, contribute to my church, and still take road trips to Boston every now and then.

Then there are the intangibles—what some would say are the more important pieces to job satisfaction. I have a fantastic boss, a Christian, that knows how to let me work in my own way as long as I do the job well. Plus I can set my own hours so I don’t have to wake up before seven o’clock except for, say, twice a month.

I do something different every day, no exaggeration there, and just about everything I cover is interesting. (The only exception would have to be some school board meetings, but that’s beside the point.) Some of the stories I cover are hard—giving me that challenge I need—but I’m not overwhelmed (most of the time). I learn something new about the city or about government, about my job, about life, every day.

This great job landed me in a town replete with sidewalks. That sounds like an insignificant characteristic, but to me it’s like stepping into a suburb of Heaven. There are also several city parks, with a small river running through one of them, plus a nature center just five miles away and another nature preserve a little farther from my residence. A 32-mile bikeway runs two blocks from my front door. My neighbors are wonderful (and happen to be my pastor and his wife and son). And perhaps most wonderful of all, my family lives just 20 minutes away.

How much more blessed can a person get?!

So I wonder… what’s next? Moving to Costa Rica, or to Boston? I’m beginning to wonder how much better that could possibly be, as blessed as I already am. Or maybe I just have no idea of what bigger blessings are in store!