Warning: Long blog ahead with no cute Brianna sayings at all!!! Proceed at your own risk.
When my job was first relocated at the end of September, I received many interesting comments since --for the second time--we had just moved to be near the place where I had been told I would be working for the next few years. I went from being dropped off at my office door by Paul on his way to work to being dropped off at a bus stop while Brianna was still asleep and going from the bus to a train to a twenty-minute-wait to another bus to a long walk to my office. I have not written that much here about this partly because I haven't wanted to write anything as ugly as most of my thoughts were, but mostly because --at moments when I could have pulled off a good Kristen-style rant--I didn't have access to a computer (another aspect of the work relocation)!
One of the things that someone said to me when we got the news about the relocation was something like, "Hmm. God must have really been missing His quality time with you during your commute, so now you'll have more of that again." Well, I completely disregarded this notion largely because I could not see past my own irritation with the inconvenience and energy-consumption that this particular mode of commute involved. This morning I'm thinking, Hmmm. And this is why.
Fortunately, my morning commute has just been greatly improved. Because I now need to start work a bit later, I can actually just go downtown with Paul and Brianna as they go to work and school and then catch a train and a bus (and a walk) to my office. This is so much better because I am now on one particular vehicle for a long enough period of time to feel I can accomplish something! And I don't spend as much time standing outside waiting!
But yesterday afternoon was a really rough commute home. If anybody had called me during the course of that commute (okay, not anybody--probably just anybody from my church!), I probably would have answered the phone with, "Have I mentioned lately how much Dallas sucks?" I was unprepared for the weather and stuck standing waiting for a bus for over 45 minutes in the cold wind with no shelter. (I finally ended up taking a different bus to a train station that was way out of my way and eventually getting Paul to pick me up on his way home because I couldn't face the long walk home in the cold.) Even in my disgruntled state, I had to feel a bit of pity for Dallas. It just doesn't stand a chance with me. Usually, I hate it for being so hot and humid, but yesterday I was cursing it for being cold and windy. The poor city cannot win. The main constant in my loathing tends to be the public transportation system, which I think actually just translates into Dallas not being New York City. I could write a rant almost daily on Dallas's public transportation system, but for today I will refrain because that is not conducive to my main point. If such a rant were on my student's paper, I would X the whole section out and write "off-topic!" Of course, I would do the same thing to these sentences, which is why they hopefully do not read this blog for examples of academic writing!!! Anyway, since we are leaving right after work today for a rapid road trip to Amarillo and I am doing the teaching at my church on Saturday night, this morning I was grabbing all kinds of books I thought might prove useful for prep and throwing them into a backpack for the car. Then I transferred the three that weighed the least into my briefcase for commute-study.
On the bus, I thumbed through one, "Glimpses of Christ" by Karla Worley. I was looking for some stories that I vaguely remember the book being rich in. And suddenly, these words so leaped off the page at me that I had to go back to them: "'Bloom where you are planted,' I've always heard. That doesn't mean 'Do the best you can where you've been stuck.'" Ouch, Karla. But I kept reading: "It means put down roots, estabish friendships, connect with your community. Live, as Julie said, in a state of 'heightened awareness.' I am right here, right now, for a purpose. Recognize needs. Thrive, don't just take up space. Spread out your leaves, lend beauty and shade, bear fruit. Bloom and release the fragrance. . . . Plant your life."
Good stuff. But the thing that really pierced my heart is that this is one of Karla's conversational-style responses to her interview with ME six years ago. (The "as Julie said," made me look at the context!) Many, many hmmmms. And a fruitful commute that I am grateful for, even in the rain.