Just Another Fish in the Sea

The weirdest thing about moving away to college is going home and seeing that things have changed. I know this is going to sound so crazy, but here it goes. When I went home in October for fall break, my family had gotten a new microwave. I know you’re thinking its just a stupid appliance, but it felt so weird. I had been saying for months that we needed a new microwave, but my parents never did anything about it until I left. Also, my mom runs.  My mom doesn’t run! She has always hated running and said she could never be a runner. But she’s running! She bought new running shoes and is running on the treadmill to train for some kind of marathon or something. It’s so weird. She is also into cars now. This has been going on for a few months, but she is in love with muscle cars now. She even rode in a 2011 Challenger a few weeks ago and sent me a message telling me all the specs of the car. I don’t care! And why does she? She’s like a new woman. She cant move on without me…can she?! And my grandma makes jewelry now. It’s cool, but really? I never, in my 18 years of life, thought that my grandma would be interested in jewelry making. Can the world really keep changing while I’m not there? I never thought about it before, but I guess it’s possible. Well, it has to be possible since it is in fact changing. It’s just so weird to go home and things to be different and to know that I wasn’t there for the gradual change; just there to see the change after it has occurred.

I love Thanksgiving even more now that I’m in college because I get to go home! It’s always nice to see friends and family, but what I crave the most is a nice, warm home-cooked meal—it is such a nice change from the gross caf food. Another great thing is all the shopping. I went to my grandma’s house on Wednesday after lunch and the first thing she asked me was if I was hungry. I told her I wasn’t because I had just eaten, so she asked me if I wanted to go shopping. DUH!!! Of course I want to go shopping. She bought we several things, but I didn’t get to keep them all since Christmas is coming an all… but that’s ok, I got a few things. One of the biggest perks of being home though is the fact that Houston doesn’t have a Purina factory (or at least it’s not where I can smell it). With everything else in life, there are positives and negatives of going home. I missed my friends so much. When I’m at school, I miss my friends from home and when I’m home, I miss my friends from school. Another negative is when you go home you have to come back. Coming back to school isn’t necessarily the negative, because I am loving college, it’s the physical traveling back. I drove home and it was a 9-hour trip, which means that I had to be in the car for 9 hours. Going wasn’t so bad because I wanted to get home and see my family so badly, but driving back to school was brutal. I had a great time though and can’t wait to go back in 3 weeks.

Who knew registering for classes would be so stressful? I sure didn’t. You have to make sure you get all the classes you need, you have to make them all fit into one cohesive schedule, and then you have to sign up for them. All the freshman need about the same classes because most try to get all the basics out of the way, so there are a limited amount of spaces open in each class. You don’t really know for sure if you are going to get the classes you want/need until you hit the submit button. And every freshman is hitting that same submit button at the same time. Its crazy! I was fortunate to get all but one of my classes, but I knew going in that I probably wouldn’t get it anyway. Well, now I am registered for second semester freshman year and I don’t have to stress over it any longer!

While I have had to get use to the change of high school to college and living at home to being on my own, I have also had to get use to the change in climate. I thought Houston’s weather was weird and sporadic, but there’s nothing like the weather here. It’s crazy! I know this may be news to some of you that are reading this from Houston, but there really is a season called fall. And Edmond has it! I love walking outside and seeing the beautiful colors of the leaves that have changed from green to shades of yellow, orange, and red. Also, it just feels like fall. I don’t think I have ever been able to say that in Houston. I have never quite felt the weather like this before… it’s so great and it makes me happy.

On another note…there is something funky with the air of Edmond. There apparently is a Purina factory somewhere close by, and some days you can smell it. I thought there was nothing as bad as walking to class and feeling like you are eating dog food because the smell is so strong, but I was proven wrong today. Today, on my way back from class it smelled like a fish market. It was awful! There is nothing like the smell of a dead fish lingering around you and making its way into your mouth so that you can now taste it also. Gross! What is with you Edmond air? And your water? The tap water here is weird also. It’s cloudy and all bubbly. That is not normal, but I haven’t died yet, so I guess it’s not contaminated…or at least lets hope not.

It has been really interesting to see the differences in the way things are done at different churches. I have been to more churches in the last few months than I have been to my whole life I think. I have been going to the same church, Sugar Grove Church of Christ, since I was born and so there was never a need or desire to visit other churches in the area. When I moved to college though, I had to find a new church. I visited several churches, mostly Churches of Christ, but a few others. At home, we have a praise team, which none of the Churches of Christ that I have been to here have one—they have a single song leader up front. I kind of like the change though… It seems like more people sing when there isn’t a praise team that is overpowering. Also, I like that without a praise team, there isn’t one person that gets to have their mic turned up and sing a solo. Another difference is the order of worship. I know this is a silly thing, but some people do leave the church because the order of worship is different. It doesn’t bother me that the order is different, it’s that my church here doesn’t have an order of worship posted in the bulletin. I am so use to being able to pick up the bulletin and see what songs we are singing…now its just a big surprise. Oh well, I will get use to it! At home, we have children’s worship during the big worship time. It’s nice because it takes out most of the young kids who just can’t sit still and be quiet for that long. At the church that I go to here, they don’t have children’s worship. The church is so big and there are so many kids, which means that during the sermon and closing, it is so loud with the cries and chatter of small children. This really bugs me and quite frankly, it’s distracting. My favorite difference is the college class. At my home church, we don’t have a college program, but here they have a huge one. I realize that the church is right by campus, but I love that they have such a great program. It is so encouraging to go to class on Sundays and Wednesdays and be surrounded by so many other people your age that have chosen to be there to learn about and worship God. It’s nice to have differences though, I like to see how other people do things.

One thing that I have enjoyed about being out on my own is getting to find my faith. Yes, I had faith when I lived at home, but it is a faith that has been molded by my parents, grandparents, and people I look up to at church. It is time for me to step out and mold the faith that I have to be my own. It definitely hasn’t been the easiest thing, but I am enjoying the journey. Through the small part of the journey that I have traveled so far, I have found out that I am very open minded. I just wanna have fun…I don’t think God meant for our lives to be so serious and I don’t think that He meant for Christianity to be some super serious thing that is all about following rules. He knows that we aren’t perfect and that we will make mistakes, but He hopes that we can use those times as learning experiences. I believe that God wants us to be joyful in worshipping Him. It is such an awesome thing that God sent His one and only son to die on the cross for us so that we may live with Him in Heaven one day. I am so excited for that day when I will be able to stand before my creator and it makes me happy every time I time I think about it. Because of this, I think we should be joyful when worshipping God. I don’t know about you, but for me this means smiling, having fun, and woa!, yes, maybe even dancing. I just can’t help but to move my body around a bit when worshipping the God who made me, and who made it where I can be in a place where I wont be persecuted for showing Him how happy I am. I am finding out though, that a few of my friends are the complete opposite. They don’t think you should dance, or have fun, or clap your hands, or be able to confess and be broken in front of a crowd of people. It is so weird to me, because I feel like I know a completely different God. One of my friends refused to watch a funny video about Jesus (it wasn’t making fun of Jesus by any means, it was just making fun of the fact that we have such skewed views of what Christianity is all about) because she said that Jesus wouldn’t like it, that He was all about business and His sole purpose of coming to earth was doing God’s work and there wasn’t anytime for fun along the way. This is just so crazy to me because I grew up learning about a God that was so loving and a Jesus that played with children. Yes, He did have a very important purpose, but I don’t believe that He was completely serious all the time and had no time for fun. This is just another piece to my journey though. I am able to further mold my faith and beliefs by realizing what exactly my image of God is. It has been great so far, and I will continue the search.

Tonight (Monday, November 8, 2011) was one of the best nights I have had since being in college. It all started out when I took my College Algebra final and made a 95 on it. Then some friends and I went to BJs for dinner. BJ has THE BEST deep-dish pepperoni pizza. We split a pizza and then all ordered a pizookie. For those of you who have never had one, you are missing out! It is a cookie baked in a deep-dish pizza pan topped with ice cream right when it comes out of the oven. It was so delicious. We then came back to the dorm, where there was another, smaller, earthquake. We went to View 63 at 10. This was my first time, but definitely wont be my last. It was amazing. I love singing in the dark for some reason…it just makes it so much more real to me because no one is worried about people looking at them and judging them for the way they worship. I love being at a school where there are so many people that choose to worship God. It was 10 at night and people could have been doing so many other things, but there were some that chose to come together and worship God. I just think its so amazing. 

I experienced my first earthquake about 11pm Saturday night. I am from Houston, Texas and we don’t have earthquakes. It was the weirdest feeling. I was just lying in bed watching a movie when my bed began to shake and I heard things rattling. I was just going to continue to lay there, but the girls next door began screaming and yelled get under the door frames. So I got out of bed to see if anyone else was in the hallway and to laugh at them for screaming. Well, it turns out that it was a 5.6 (whatever that means) and was the strongest recorded earthquake in Oklahoma. Well, in case you couldn’t figure it out on your own…I survived. AND… we had another small one this evening. Maybe the world is coming to an end…who knows?!

Usually when I think of homecoming, I think of football. But OC’s homecoming sport is basketball since they don’t have football. Last week was homecoming and the games were Saturday night (before the earthquake). I went to the boys’ game, which reminded me a lot of the basketball games in high school. The basketball teams at my high school were really good and sometimes their games were boring because they were so much better than the competition. I don’t know if it was just this one game or if they will all be like this, but they dominated with a score of 78-48. It’s not so intense when you have no doubt who will win. The best part was the flash mob at the end. It wasn’t the greatest, but it was fun to watch. GO EAGLES!