Life as I know it is not what I anticipated as a child. I'm not sure what I anticipated as a child, but this, I'm positive, was not it.
For as long as I can remember I dreamed of being a pediatric oncologist, a medical doctor that spent her life helping children fight for their own young lives. I anticipated working in a hospital, wearing a white robe with a stethoscope strewn around my neck, making enough money to have the necessities of life and a few luxuries on the side. I loved medicine, and still do. I was an average, B-Honor Roll student until my senior year in high school. I don't think I really knew what a PhD was until I went to college. And traveling to foreign lands for longer than a few weeks never crossed my mind.
Ten years ago this fall (2011) I started my undergraduate studies at Crown College in St. Bonifacious, MN. Initially, I had planned on spending two semesters doing general studies while also learning about the Bible, before heading off to an institution more medically focused. And then everything changed... then I studied Galatians. In one semester the world of Biblical scholarship was opened up to me and I could feel the draw toward academia and away from medicine. By the end of my second year of undergrad, my major was no longer liberal arts, but biblical studies, and I was on the course I yet find myself on today.
Now, ten years later, I have completed my undergraduate program, lived in Kyrgyzstan for one year, studied in Lithuania for one semester, seen at least a piece of 20+ countries, received two masters degrees from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, lived and worked in Yellowstone National Park, pastored an isolated church and town in the Montana mountains, and currently find myself as a PhD student at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, under the supervision of one of the greatest New Testament scholars of our day, N.T. Wright. I wouldn't exchange the last ten years for anything, and have finally realized that I have no idea what awaits me in my future. This blog is about life as I have known it in years past and life as I know it today.