Off the Couch

I just got off the couch for the first time for what seems like days, but really it's been a few hours. I've been in the rhythm of life in KC and then I get to Oklahoma and everything stops. I get home and there's no friends here, it's a holiday so everyone's relatively disconnected from technology, and going to the mall in Lawton, OK is actually a dangerous endeavour so no shopping on Black Friday. I just feel like I'm in such a different space here. I revert back to the typical youngest child and all the family dynamics begin to play themselves out. I fight being the youngest and try not to fall into "prove yourself" mode but take some relief in the fact that my cousin isn't still asking me how many semesters of college I have left! It's so interesting the way things change but always stay the same.

This odd town of 130,000 people and the largest artillery base in the US (about 2 miles from my house)is a whole other story...They just invoked a curfew at the mall where everyone under 18 has to be with an adult after 6pm. The merchants had to take back the mall from the loiters because it was becoming so unsafe for people to shop or see a movie. I'm not kidding, it's a scary place to go. And that's not the Johnson County in me talking that would make me skittish of anyone in a starter jacket with their hands in their pockets. I grew up in that, I rode on the bus in middle school with pregnant girls,little boys taking care of their moms and siblings,I listened to drug deals go down at the locker next to me and gained such valid perspective into the world. I knew which boys in Jr.High and High School would "have my back" should Shaniqua really choose to beat me up for running against her for Student Body President and finally figured out that the smell of the guys on Student Council with me was not weird cologne, but the smell of illegal. I always just have an overwhelming sense of thankfulness for God's grace, and a different understanding of how much I will never fully understand about God after I've been here. Did I mention that gang experts from LA came here and said they couldn't help with the gang problem because the dynamics of it were so complex? There just seems to be so much provision and grace around my life that has nothing to do with any good or bad decision I've ever made...it just is. I used to fight trying to understand why my life is turning out the way it is and others have so much more to overcome. Somewhere along the way I realized that was a futile effort. It is such selfish wasted energy, and that my energy should be spent on not wasting my life and squeezing every ounce of goodness from what's been Good to me. Being home usually has a way of reminding me of that and something rises up in me that is both a sense of urgency and responsibility toward this life that is not my own. That rising up could be analyzed and called many different things, but the bottom line is that it is familiar to me. I realized now how many different ways that rising up has played out in me thus far and how many more ways it will continue.