With Thanks

By the end of the month, I will have fully completed the season of transition from my life and work in the Chicago area to my new life and new work in Miami. If you missed my reflections on what led to this transition, see this essay. I spent a few days in Miami two weeks ago, including two full days in the office with my new colleagues, and am very happy to say I really like my new team already, received a very warm welcome, and am excited for the point when I can devote my full attention to my new assignment.

But in the midst of packing and finishing projects at my soon-to-be former jobs, I would like to offer several words of thanks, to Calvary Memorial Church, to Wheaton College, and to Chicago. I am sure I have forgotten many important aspects of my experiences with each but what follows it what comes to mind as I reflect at this juncture.

First, to Calvary Memorial Church, where I have served on staff for over six years and where I have attended, with brief pauses when I was in term in college, for twenty. I am thankful for the communities I found in my junior high and high school youth groups and then later in my young adult small groups and friend groups. I am thankful for the opportunity to apply my music degree right away as orchestra director and then acting head of worship ministries and then ministry associate of worship and music, and then the opportunity to learn essentially a whole new profession through service as church administrator and then director of finance and administration. I am thankful for the enduring support and encouragement I received from the leadership, especially Pastors Caleb, Gerald, Jonny, and Todd. I am grateful for the members of the orchestra who gave me the gift of being their director for six and a half years, which to date is the professional role I have held the longest.

Second, to Wheaton College, where I completed my undergraduate education, met the woman who is now my wife, and have served on staff for over five years. For the rest of my life I will carry special memories of my undergraduate years, and I am grateful for all the lessons I learned both formally and informally, and including the ones I had to learn the hard way. I am grateful for the lifelong friends I made there among my roommates and others. I am grateful for the opportunity to serve as a staff member in the Conservatory, the same department in which I studied. I am grateful I was part of the move to the Conservatory's new home, for the inauguration of President Phil Ryken, for the beginning of the CSO at Wheaton College series, and for endless unique and enjoyable concert productions. And I am grateful for my colleagues, my boss Tony Payne, my dean Michael Wilder, and for the many students I was able to formally and informally mentor and support.

And finally, to Chicago itself. I would not trade the experience of growing up and spending the first decade of adulthood in Chicago for anything. I am honored that I can call myself a native Chicagoan and Chicago will always and forever be my hometown. Chicago has institutions that are among the world's best, including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, where I was pleased to offer volunteer hours for several years, and given its annual visits to Florida, I know I can continue to be an active patron. And it has been a very special last few years to be a Cubs fan. I will be bringing my small collection of 2016 World Series Champion-branded swag with me to Miami, no question. Of course, Chicago is not perfect. No city is. But Chicago, you have incredible potential. You do not have to be defined by the heartbreak and frustration that has plagued you and that comprises most of your national and global reputation. There are so many people, seen and unseen, working hard every day to make Chicago a better place, and I am glad to have been part of that place for my first thirty years. I look forward to visiting as often as I can, and in between I will be ordering those frozen Lou Malnati's pizzas to be shipped to Miami!

So thank you.