First Time With My Homes

    First Time With My Homes    

        I had a layout and a plan for how I wanted by first blog entry to look and sound. It was going to be lighthearted and funny. How can a blog about my life with no paid job, a new internship, and my silly quirks not be funny? Writing my first entry has been on my “To-Do List” for two weeks and I am just now getting into the mood, or rather, feel like I should write my first post.

        I am a Volunteer Intern for the Center for Active Citizenship (CAC) at Queens University of Charlotte…try telling that to everyone you meet! I am working with social media and blogging for the CAC’s Summer In Service (S.I.S.) program. I have opportunities to work at different non-profit organizations in Charlotte and to help organize different programs for the S.I.S. internship. My internship is unpaid, so I am living with a family in Charlotte and helping them out as rent payment (they are extremely kind to allow me to live with them). I have a babysitting gig lined up so I can make a little cash, but it seems that I only get a babysitting gig once a month! Alas, I am enjoying my 20 minute commute to my internship and scrounging for gas money.

        During my internship, I get the opportunity to go on-site with the S.I.S. team when I do not have office work to do. Last week,  I took part in the orientation for the S.I.S. interns (I was in charge of telling the interns about our blog and running the PowerPoint presentation). I also got to go to a Habitat for Humanity build with the interns and spent eight hours making final touches on a house for a family that moves in at the end of the month. I spent the entire day caulking and making jokes about that (if anyone needs caulking done, I’m your girl!)

        The first two weeks of being an active intern, a less-than part-time babysitter, and a daughter to my Charlotte family were filled with adventure. I learned how to be gas-savvy, how to have self-control and put down the shoes I desperately wanted at Marshalls (the cashier had already rung them up when I asked her to take them off my bill), how to just sit and enjoy the evenings when I had nothing to do except jump with the boys on the trampoline, and how to create a new home in a place I never knew I would be. I am living with my “Charlotte family,” a mom, dad, seven-year-old boy, and five-year- old boy.

        I feel loved and appreciated every time I walk into their house and am a part of their family. I feel loved and appreciated every time I walk into my internship office in a suite in the Student Life department at Queens. I feel loved and appreciated every time I talk to my family at my first home in Troy. The first couple of weeks at my internship taught me that I have many different homes. My homes are not just where my family is or where I am at that moment. My homes are where I know I am loved, where I love the people there, and where I long to be at different moments in my life. I am lucky to feel loved and appreciated in all of my homes, no matter where in the world I am.

        As I think about my different homes, I am also thinking about the tragedy that struck my hometown of Troy last weekend. A longtime family-friend, a boy I graduated high school with and did Destination Imagination with for many years, a guy loved by all, went missing on the Ohio River. Cameron had a mischievous smile and was always up for a good laugh. Cameron’s body was found yesterday. My family in Troy is devastated; my parents, his parents, his siblings, our classmates, our church family…the list goes on and on…we are all in shock and praying that God wraps love around each of us. My grandmother reminded me that God’s love is all-encompassing and that God will be with Cameron’s family and friends and will give them the strength and love that they need. While Cameron’s death was traumatic and unexpected, I know that he left a world full of love and homes behind. Cameron was at his home on the Ohio River. He had a home in Troy with his family. He had a home with all of his friends. He had a church home who loved and cared for him. He had a home in Florida and in Cincinnati with his grandparents. Cameron left an impact at every home he ever had and that impact will stay with us forever.

        Being away from my Troy home is difficult at this point in time. Grieving and trying to figure things out in a place where people do not know Cameron or do not know his family is hard. I want to be with my Troy family. But, having the privilege to be with my Charlotte and Queens’ family is more than most people in this world have. My internship and first two weeks of living off-campus and in Charlotte taught me about the importance of my homes and about how it is important for me to experience grieving and struggles in different places because life is about how I react to situations and how I take my grief and turn it into something different (such as taking out my sadness on a caulk gun and caulking every inch of a Habitat house for someone in need).

        I wanted my first blog entry to be lighthearted and funny. I wanted my personality to shine through the computer screen. But, this week called for something different. And I think that is what I have shared with you today. Please pray for Cameron’s family and friends.