Finally after 16 years....

Well, its over.  I have finally completed my B.B.A in Accounting from Trevecca Nazarene University .    Well, unofficially.  I still need to have my transcripts sent to TNU from Park U.  I feel weird.  I am excited but it really doesn't change anything.  I have the same job, make the same amount of money but there is a huge burden that is lifted.  The day I found out I completed my classes, my mom sent me a text saying she was proud of me.  I don't think she expected my degree would take me 16 years to complete...  By finishing my degree, I can now move forward with my education.  I am currently deciding where I am going to take my masters or if I want to take my masters.  If I want to stay in the UMC and become a pastor, then I need to be ordained and in order to be ordained I have to have my Masters of Divinity.  I am still praying and thinking about it.  Fuller Theological Seminary offers a Master in Youth, Family and Culture.  I think this might be better but that will come out later.


As I think about the time since I started college till now, SO MUCH HAS CHANGED.  I started college as a fresh off the farm (if you can call Miami a farm) 18 year old.  I had no idea what a college credit was much less how I was going to pay for any of it, but God provided a way for me to go.  My first day of registering for classes, Hurricane Andrew had just floored Miami and the home I lived in for many years, was gone.  Kind of a weird way to start college, but that first day I meet Jamie, who soon became my best friend.  The next year, I met Beth, my future wife.  The next year, I was married.  Looking at the last 16 years, I have...

• changed my major
  
• got married
  
• had 3 wonderful kids, now 10, 9 and 3
  
• moved at least 7 times
  
• lived in two different states
  
• worked at 6 different churches
  
• had 4 fulltime jobs
  
• gone from being a youth pastor, being an accountant, being a programmer back to a youth pastor
• I have gone to 5 different colleges
• worked at one company for 9 1/2 years
• met hundreds of great people
• made about 30+ trips from Nashville to Ft. Lauderdale and back
• traveled up and down the eastern seaboard from Nashville to Delaware to Miami
• had a house fire that destroyed everything we owned
• lost my father to a stroke
• plus much much more...

It is amazing to think that it has been 16 years since I have been out of high school.  Facebook has allowed me to connect with several of my classmates.  It has been good to catch up and see how everyone has changed.

Over the 16 years, my relationship with God has changed for the good and the bad and the good again.  I have deepened in my wife.  I have wavered in my faith.  So much has changed that I can't imagine what the next 16 years will hold for me.  Hopefully, it won't take me that long to finish my masters...  God is up to something.