Do you ever stop to think how intricately life’s worked out?
Like, you meet people who are just perfect and do you realize how much had to happen just right in order for you to meet them?
My dad is from the West Indies, my mom from New Jersey. Both somehow ended up in Maryland during the same time. My dad was offered jobs in various places, but decided to move to Greensboro, NC. After five years, we move to the next town over - Jamestown, which puts me in a different school district.
I go to a private school, though. The same private school that a girl named Beth already attends and that a girl named Carmen eventually attends. Beth goes to public school in 6th grade. Carmen and I stay, have every class together in 7th grade, and become great friends. I get into some trouble that year and decide to transfer schools.
Beth and I happen to be in the same school district. But in 8th grade, we hardly see each other. Not like we were really friends at the point, anyway. Friendly acquaintances at this point, after spending most of 6th grade as “frenemies.” Half of 9th grade goes by, we hardly see each other. Second semester of 9th grade, we have the same lunch and one class together. By the end of the year, I’m grafted into her clique. By the end of high school, we’re best friends.
Every single other one of my friends from my private school, I eventually lose contact with. Except Carmen. By senior year, she’s my best friend, too. We hardly ever get to see each other, only spent one real year as friends at the same school, yet managed to survive.
When I’m fifteen, my mom decides to take a trip to New York City. Never having been, I convince her to take her with me, because I have a long weekend when she wants to go. She agrees and I fall in love at first sight with the city. I had no real interest in it before I visited, but after that, I know I have to live there some day. I just have to.
The first time I take my SATs, I send my score to schools based on the choice to major in Biology, go the pre-med track, eventually become a psychiatrist. By the end of my junior year, I decide I’m going to follow my heart and make movies. I have a list of schools that will let me play D-1 basketball whilst getting a film education.
Basketball screws me over. Badly. Had I been born any other year, my story surely would have been different, but timing and team dynamics and the pool of girls in the class of 2007 just don’t work out my way. So I abandon D-1 aspirations when it came to choosing a school.
I applied to seven colleges. I got into all of them. I choose New York University.
Can’t say much about their back story, but my current roommates - Emily and Nina - they also chose New York University.
Once at NYU, I want to get involved with the Christian community on campus. I go to an event called “Protestant Praise Night”, where I am promptly grabbed up my Intervarsity. Another girl and I grab dinner at a dining hall with a few Intervarsity upperclassmen and one of their staff workers, and I figure I’d check out their fellowship. I liked them, and I definitely wanted other Christians to hang out with.
I also left Protestant Praise Night with a piece of paper advertising a visit to the Museum of Modern Art for free that Friday with a club for Christian artists. For my school’s orientation, I had to go to the MoMa and write a paper on one of the exhibits. It was something I was worried about, so I was thanking God for this opportunity to go with people.
I almost left that Friday because I couldn’t find the group I was supposed to be meeting. Right as I was turning around, I recognized a girl I had seen at the Protestant Praise Night. That turns out to be the group. They’re really with Campus Crusade for Christ (that artists’ group was a subset of them). I go to the MoMa with them, go to dinner afterwards with them, and am invited to hang out a senior’s dorm for a movie even after that. There’s also a picnic in Central Park the next day that they want me to come to - a gratefully oblige.
From there I’m invited to their large group meeting, and the rest is history. Intervarsity is forgotten - I am a member of Cru.
Those roommates I mentioned before - they somehow found their way to Cru, too. At least eight Christian fellowships on New York University’s campus, and we all end up at Cru.
So much has happened to lead me up to this very point in my life - to be sitting in a New York City apartment as a senior at New York University, two of my closest friends sleeping in the next room, and two more best friends down in North Carolina. And you don’t really think about it, but when you look into the details, it really has all been meticulously planned.
And it’s amazing, because these people in my life - they are perfect for me. In love with Christ in a world that largely chooses to ignore Him, for starters.
Thousands of people I’ve come across in my life, and the two funniest people I’ve ever experienced are my closest friends. The only ones I’ve ever met that match my crazy, will behave uninhibited in public without a care, love to bring laughs and entertainment to others so naturally, with my same bizarre and random sense of humor. What are the odds that people that fit together with me so perfectly would find their way into my life? 6 billion people out there. And I get along well with plenty of others, but not quite like them. And I’ve seen other people around and afar and all over the place, and even in those glimpses, I know that people like us are a rarity indeed.
Yet I’ve found them. And one misstep, and I wouldn’t have. If my dad had taken a job in Maryland instead of North Carolina, or if we’d never moved from Greensboro to Jamestown or if I just would’ve stayed at my private school like I originally was going to. I wouldn’t have my best friends - all the memories and the laughs and the support and all else in between. Perhaps you could say I’d just would have different best friends, but I have a feeling that they wouldn’t have been as perfect.
if I continued to choose to major in Biology (because in that case, NYU wouldn’t have been on my list) or basketball had worked out just a little better for me or if I would have just gone to Intervarsity like I’d originally been inclined to. There’d be no Girl Conception. The existence of the Nick Jonas rap is completely contingent on the fact that I had an assignment at the MoMa and was too much of a socially awkward person to have anyone else to go with before that point. And a million other small choices that added up. Two of my closest friendships because I went to Campus Crusade for Christ instead of Intervarsity. I wouldn’t have even heard of Cru had it not been for that moment. I had to miss Club Fair - my life would have been totally different.
It’s crazy to me - the stakes on which this very moment of my life rest on. But it’s not so crazy, because these weren’t random occurrences that just happened to work out in my favor. I don’t believe in chance. God had his hand on every little detail of my life, guiding everything to lead up to what was meant to be. And it’s amazing to think that He knew exactly what would lead to what. And that it’s still happening. A decision made tomorrow could lead me to another amazing thing years in the future. It’s all so intricately woven together, and I must say, God is the most amazing screenwriter.
Looking back on how well everything has worked out - it just strengthens my faith. It reminds me of how much God is in control. I love that. I love Him. Good night.
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