When Life Takes a Funny Turn

Loren Cunningham. That is the name of the CPA who performed our audit at camp this week. All I could think when I heard his name is of course you're a CPA. With a name like that, he had to be destined for accounting or law, right? Then there's me...a musician turned accounts manager. I'm not sure anyone could have guessed that I would be in finance when I grew up. 

Life can be so unpredictable. I grew up in and around the arts. Much of my early childhood was spent in green rooms, playing with my sisters while my parents rehearsed their next play. I started piano lessons at the age of 9, and began playing the flute in 5th grade, both of which led me to major in music performance and pedagogy.

(Sorry for the terrible pictures of pictures in this post, but it's what I have today. This is me at one of my recitals in college.)

I was all about music. I worked in the gift shop at the Woodruff Arts Center in Atlanta during college, slipping into the back of symphony hall to listen to shows while the shop was slow. I played with the Atlanta Flute Choir and worked on pieces in school that were used for auditions at the Paris Conservatory of Music. 

People who know me now, who didn't know me then, would never know it. 

After college I joined Traveling Mercies, a traveling sketch comedy group with Chris and 3 of our friends. We lived in an RV and travelled all over America performing and writing and sight-seeing. I was still in the arts, but let's face it...no one wants you practicing the flute in a tiny RV, where it's hard to find a quiet place to begin with. 

(The front of our scrapbook from Traveling Mercies. We were babies then!)

During the audit, Mr. Cunningham, CPA asks me what I studied in college. And then, upon hearing that I did not study accounting, asked me how I learned my current profession. 

Well...it started at a rickety merch booth, handling our meager cash box for our very small comedy group. Really, because I was the last person to join the group, I got the job nobody wanted. It didn't bother me, I'm good at math and counting money, so why not?

As we grew, the 'money person' job became the 'figure out how to become a nonprofit organization/bookkeeper' job. Where did I learn my current trade? On a small fold-down table behind the passenger seat of an RV, cruising down the interstate...

Who knew that from there I would go on to be a banker, and now an accounts manager at a much larger nonprofit, handling several accounts all on my own? 

Can you think of weird turning points in your own life? Choices that seem so simple and insignificant at the time that turned out to be pivotal? 

I think it's cool. So many surprises and twists to keep things interesting. Like leaving the RV and moving to Africa...I can guarantee you I never saw that one coming! Not knowing the day we met Flaps Van der Merwe, that we would later live in his South African home while trying to find a place to live in Pretoria. 

I'm grateful. Life is hard, but it's also fun and surprising and anything but boring. I miss music, but I also love what I'm doing now. (Accounting definitely feeds my inner nerd, let me tell you...) And in the next few months, I'll get to use my music degree to teach my sweet Harper how to play piano. So many layers to each of us, so many experiences that take us to new places in life, keeping things interesting...