Bloom where you're planted

I left Vancouver early Saturday morning feeling buoyant. Who knew what this adventure held in store for me?
The airports all went smoothly; only one delay, but I made all my connections and was only mildly sick on one flight. I got to Chicago when it was dark and found the metro station and dragged all my luggage on and sat in the corner and leaned against the railing and listened to music on my dying ipod. I counted the 22 stops down for an hour and then finally got off and the train pulled away and I found myself in a dingy underground station. I’ve been in my share of metro stations all over the world but I’ll have to say that I felt a little nervous in this one, and very much alone. There was not a soul around. I looked around for an elevator but there was a single sign that said ‘stairs’.
I began to carry my bags up, all 150 pounds of them. One flight. Two flights. I switched it up and tried carrying one at a time to each landing, but no matter which way I did it, by the time I got to the fourth flight my arms were killing me and I was wheezing for breath.
There was a ticket booth and I shoved one bag and then another through the turnstile and then asked the lady which way to Union station and was there an elevator?
“Go up and left.” She said impassively, gesturing to a flight of stairs.
Oh no. I didn’t think I could manage anymore. I wrestled up a fifth flight. Then a sixth. Then a seventh. At the top I squatted down on the sidewalk for a minute and felt the bitterly cold wind whip around me and try to yank my hat off. It was pitch black and by the looks of it I was in a sort of seedy area of town. I stacked my bags on top of each other and tried to roll them along the cracked sidewalk, avoiding the calls from guys lurking in the shadows.
When I arrived at Union station I came down a long hallway and suddenly there was a massive train station with old marble pillars and a Christmas tree display and children sleeping on their mother’s laps. I bought my ticket and followed the crowds towards the platforms.
There were hundreds of families, mostly black, carrying their luggage in plastic bags and juggling screaming babies. I waited for the train until it came and then I was ushered into a darkened car by a female conductor that was the biggest woman I had ever seen in my entire life. Her head touched the ceiling of the train car and she picked up huge suitcases like they weighed nothing and threw them onto the top racks. I couldn’t stop staring at her.
There was a family of four in the car with me, and two men, one of whom sat next to me and started talking. The kids were alternating between whining and screaming and the man next to me was very friendly and told me his whole life story and the history of all his past relationships over the two hour train ride. I stared out the black windows at the distant lights whizzing by and listened to him and by the end of our journey he told me he was going to ask God to send him a wife exactly like me, and it was a pity I wasn’t single because I was exactly what he was looking for.
In the train station my new landlord was waiting to pick me up; exactly as he had described himself: glasses, short hair, a green fleece jacket. He helped me carry my bags out to his shiny blue GT mustang and on the way home told me all about the town and drove past my school so I could see where it was. He picked up some milk at the grocery store so I could have tea and then hung around in the house until he was sure I had everything I needed.
The house is big and empty and there is another lady here but apparently she is never here. The last tenants left the fridge full of rotten food and the bathroom looking pretty gross and the house smells funny. But my bedroom is basically clean and I unpacked my bags and set it up a bit. My sheets didn’t fit the bed but I spread one blanket underneath and one on top. The landlord went out and I didn’t have internet and suddenly I was all alone again.
I felt so homesick last night that I cried as I was falling asleep and I kept telling myself that it would look better in the morning. When I woke up to the pale light of morning I looked out and everything was brown. Bitterly cold and windy, but not a stitch of green anywhere; not even a leaf. Everything is flat and dead and brown. I felt the tears welling up again and I thought about home and suddenly these words came to me:
Bloom where you’re planted.
How can I bloom, God, I asked him, in a place like this where I am all alone and everything is dead? Why would you plant me here?
I got up and ate some cereal and bundled up and decided to walk to a church. There was a Presbyterian one down the street and I sat in the back while a lady played the organ and went through the sitting and standing ritual with the 20 other very aged members of the church. Afterwards I left and I’m not sure anyone noticed. I walked to the grocery store and bought too many groceries and on the way back home I thought my arms were going to fall off.
I’d heard it was a safe town here, small-town everyone-knows-everyone, so I stuck out my thumb to hitch a ride. No one stopped. I struggled on, every few minutes stopping to rest on the sidewalk and trying to huddle under my coat and hat against the cold. I stuck out my thumb again for a while, but still no one stopped and I kept going.
After a few kilometers a lady suddenly got out of her car. She was angry and asked me,
“Were you seriously trying to get a ride?”
“I don’t think I can make it home.” I said. I felt sort of at the end of my rope.
“It’s not safe to do that here.” She told me. “I saw you and turned around and came back. I’ll take you to your house if you want and give you money for the bus, but you should never ever do that again. This area has a high number of sex offenders and it’s totally unsafe for you to get a ride with someone. We just don’t do that in this place.”
So much for the small town feel.
I got home finally and put away my groceries and cleaned out the fridge, throwing out all the rotten food. I cleaned the bathroom and swept the floors and cooked something to eat.
And I’m all alone again. Perhaps things will be better when I go to school tomorrow and meet some other students. My classes start at 7:30 and I’m going to take the bus.
I don’t know exactly how I’m going to bloom where I’m planted but in the bible God says that he causes streams to flow in desert places.
“…The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake…”