I hear mowers chomping at the grass and cars honking their protests. I walk to the window and sweep my hand across the generic plastic blinds to look out on...buildings. Many, many buildings. Brick buildings, parking garages, twisting one-ways streets, and looming glass towers. As i look out on this paved world around me I realize, He got me!
You see, long ago there was a mousy little freshman preparing herself for the adventures of suburban life in the dorms. After miscellaneous trips through the nearby Twin Cities and the random vacations through New York City I made a not so mousy comment that bordered on a promise to God; I will never be a city girl. Throughout the rest of my college years and first time big-girl jobs I was true to my word. I lived in dorms, houses, and people's basements, but never in the city. Even whilst in Japan I avoided the inner-city apartment options and chose a small, secluded loft apartment comfortably situated next to a rice patty.
Now, here I am looking and, I'll admit it, admiring the life that is the inner-city. Confident suits bustle to their jobs, their faces shining with the knowledge of their importance and plans. Adventurous people don their spandex shorts, hop on their bikes, and maneuver their way through cars whose drivers sometimes forget there is a bike lane and it is not for their use. There's also the people you want to forget or ignore, like the oglers and cardboard toters.
It was the cardboard toters that blessed me though. I passed a trumpet player with an inviting hat ready to except anything someone might have to offer. A few feet from him is a woman sitting on a walker not speaking a word, but hoping her demeanor and sign will say it all. The more active and desperate mingle with the crowd; some with stories of hardship, others with ploys and tricks. But they all are looking for the same thing.
Whether their plight was real or manipulative, it still convicted me that while my stress meter seems to have discovered a new high during my many transitions, I am still blessed. I have food, I have a bed, I have friends and church family that watch out for me, and I can do without a lot of the how-will-I-ever-do-without items in my life.
Yup...God got me good. There's a double meaning in that.
