Chicago

Chicago is not merely a place. Places are simply locations through which you walk.

Chicago is my place. As I walk alongside the Chicago River to meet my best friend since the fifth grade, I recognize the many ways that Long Island shaped me as I grew up. It was my place and will always remain that.

But in 2002 I graduated high school and came to this place. This city. It has become mine, because it's deeply shaped me.

Chicago watched me turn from childhood to adulthood. Weighed down with tattered suitcases that carried all the things that were most important to me, I flew into Chicago Midway airport and hopped on my very first El train heading straight North. I got off at Chicago Avenue and somehow managed to make the two-block trek to my new home for the next 4 years: Moody Bible Institute.

I was in the heart of a big city, knowing no one, and reliant on the kindness of new friends, Residence Assistants and the Lord - not necessarily in that order. I worked jobs all over the city. I learned how to open my first bank account, and balance midterms and finals with work schedules at the Pottery Barn. And at local pizza places or catering companies or nannying jobs.

I learned how to talk to the homeless, and minister to women behind bars on the South Side. I traveled every summer but ultimately came back here, to this city, to this home, to my adulthood.

As God would have it, I graduated from college and met my husband that summer at a beautiful church that preached the Word and met in an office building Downtown. After church they hosted a picnic at Millennium Park, and this smart, awkward gentleman began talking to me. I smiled - in the heart of the city that had become my home - and started talking back. I may not have grown up here, but I grew to be the woman I am today in this city on the lake, that will always be home... even if I live 30 miles away from it.