Sipping lukewarm Biggby hazelnut coffee with the ever essential hazelnut creamer and sugar in it - I never drink coffee black - between calls. This is significant because on the rare occasion that I drink coffee, the coffee available to me is either straight from the work coffee pot or from the 60 cent cups in the vending machine next to the coffee pot (my favorite flavor is the chocolate mocha raspberry...)
It's lukewarm because Wednesdays are my "late shift" day. Work starts for me at 10:00 am, as opposed to 8:30 am. This morning, the Renewal Services team hosted an appreciation breakfast for everyone in Customer Care and Retention (the internal name for our department). I missed the initial warmth of the coffee because I was having breakfast with my friend Steve at Panera on North Campus.
Breakfast with Steve is significant also because I think the last time we saw each other was probably this time last year. We met through mutual friends as seniors in high school. Steve played in a jazz quartet with some friends of mine, and I was a regular at their gigs. At their last gig before we all left for college, I finally introduced myself to Steve because I found out through the grapevine that we would both be attending the University of Michigan that fall. Found out that he would be in the Engineering School, and that he'd be living on the Hill Campus. I was a liberal arts kid living on the Central Campus, so I figured we'd never see each other once we got to school - was I ever wrong!
My first Sunday as a student at Michigan, I slept in and woke up close to noon that day. I was horrified about the prospect of missing church - a part of my Sunday mornings since the day I was born. Fortunately, some people from New Life Church defied the solicitation policy in the dorms and put an invitation to attend their church service on my door. I threw some clothes on and rushed to the Modern Languages Building (MLB) to catch the service at 12:02 pm. After the service, I watched the lecture hall go from a sea of unfamiliar faces to just a few unfamiliar faces - except for one.
I knew the face behind the glasses under a mop of curly, dirty blonde hair. We ended up talking about church and played ultimate frisbee at a welcoming lunch after that. I didn't think I'd see him again, but when I walked into my Musicology 341 lecture the next day in the MLB, I saw Steve sitting in one of the rows towards the back of the auditorium. We decided to "church search" together that week, and spend the rest of the semester counting the "um's" and "uai's" uttered by our lecturer (who was a very learned man! But I think we counted about 125 in one lecture, which means at the very least that we were paying attention...)
One day, Steve said to me at class, "So, there's this church I think you would really like..." I asked him to describe it to me, and I realized that it sounded very similar to a church that some of my international student friends had told me about. "What's it called?" I asked him. "Harvest," he replied. Upon hearing about this particular church body initially, I recoiled at the thought of attending a church that was predominantly Asian demographically. But here was this this non-Asian friend of mine offering to check out the church with me on Sunday, and should he meet me in front of my dorm? Sure.
Ironically, I was the one who ended up staying with the church called "Harvest" and Steve ended up becoming very involved with the Campus Crusade for Christ ministry. After our class together, we barely saw each other due to studying different disciplines, boyfriend/girlfriend relationships, and our various scholastic and church-related commitments. Despite the never-seeing-each-other that I had anticipated prior to our college days, we managed to pick up where we left off each time we saw one another.
I mention all of that because I found out last week that Steve had remained in Ann Arbor after graduation, was working in a lab, and got engaged last July - so I made him have breakfast with me this morning before I went into work. We still couldn't be more different from one another, other than the fact that we are both living in Ann Arbor post-graduation. I'm not engaged, and I'm planning to move to Indonesia in July.
Steve mentioned this verse in his prayer over our breakfast: "Help us to 'Trust in the Lord with all of [our] heart[s], to not lean on our own understanding; in all of our ways, acknowledge [You] and [You] will make our paths straight.'" (Proverbs 3:5-6) After that, he said it was his prayer for this season in his life. I guess one other thing that we have in common is the fact that, though trials and difficulties come up (a lot of things are up in the air for this move to Jakarta; Steve is wedding planning with his fiance while job searching), I see how God has sovereignly directed our paths, however they differ from one another. And He still is.
When I dropped Steve off at his home after breakfast on my way to work, he said that sometimes when he drives down State Street (my route to work), he gets all green lights and the trip goes by really fast. That has never happened for me before, but today it did! I am not saying it's because Steve said it - and perhaps it is; regardless, I saw it as God knowing that I needed the time to get to work on time (which I did, with time to spare). It was a reminder to me that God really does care about the little details in my life - and if you're reading this, He cares about the details in your life, too.
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