So I'm in atlanta currently and i got a bug in butt to go ahead and write something to remember this week by.
It is somewhat long, but for the most part the people that keep up with this, like to read or have nothing else to do.
Sleeping on a dusty floor in an empty apartment in the middle of what I referred to as the Mexican ghetto, I wondered what I had gotten myself into.
The events that led up to this point and events that followed are part of a trip that I am pretty sure I will never forget. My family and I left on Monday afternoon from Hope Arkansas in 3 vehicles, one including a 16 foot moving truck. I had a descent amount of time to think along the way, and I was leading the pack so I could see both my parents behind me. It was funny to see everything I owned moving 70 miles an hour behind my dads white knuckles. I had always thought my furniture looked fast.
We split the trip into two days, and the second day we were traveling was one of the busier travel days of the year, so when we finally arrived into the outskirts of Atlanta we got a very quick eye opener of what I was going to be driving in from day to day. The highways in Atlanta at the smallest are six lanes, and can sometimes be up to eight, and with us having a convoy of three this was proving to be overwhelming. I am unsure of where I had previously set my “whelm” level for it to be “overed” but I was sure that I was somewhat nervous.
I have always been bad…eh… terrible with directions, so for my birthday my parents bought me a GPS, and over the last month I had been using it around Arkansas as I visited friends for the last time before leaving, and I hadn’t made a single wrong turn. When we got to Atlanta though I thought it was going to catch fire trying to draw all of the roads. I have the voice in it set to this British woman (who, for all I can tell, is totally into me) and she was spouting off various things for me to do , “Keep left”, “Turn Right”, “Make U-turn when possible”, “and my least favorite “Recalculating”. When it says recalculating it is basically saying “You retard, I told which way to go but you didn’t, now I have to find an alternate route”. Over the course of this trip I think I heard recalculating like 20 times and each time my dad would cry a single tear of blood. I guess what I am getting to is, I am so terrible with directions, and Atlanta for a new comer can be so confusing that even Garmin does no good.
We finally got to the exit. Buford St.
The first thing I noticed in my new neighborhood was that not a single sign was written in English. My choices were Korean, Vietnamese, Spanish, and another one that looks a lot like the Wingdings Font on Microsoft Word. I assumed that my apartment would be further down the street, keeping me safe and secure in the arms of unfamiliar but still white, English speaking people. “Recalculating” I heard, I had missed my turn, which meant my apartamento was in the thick of Mexireanamesedings.
We got to the complex and it turned out to be really peaceful and serene, with trees everywhere, which was surprising, so we went into to do all the leasing stuff. Oh, and a note to anyone moving away, you have to do all this stuff ahead of time, I spent the week before I left faxing all sorts of things, and mailing money orders, otherwise I would have been out of luck. So we went inside and a lady named Yaritza who I had been speaking with through the duration of the two week process helped us, she used the term “Most Definitely” almost as much I use the word “the”.
“So is my apartment ready?”
“Oh, Most Definitely Mr. Johnson”
“Cool. Well if were are done signing things, then we need to start moving in”
“Oh, Most Definitely Mr. Johnson, we just need to do a walk through first….” She hesitates for a minute, with her face perplexed, and I am only assuming she is wondering if she met her quota, “Most Definitely” she blurts.’
When we get to the apartment it looked like they had done paint time trials inside because there was paint everywhere, on the carpet, the wood floors, the sink, the tub, the windows, and to top it off, it wasn’t dry.
“I thought it was ready”
“Oh Most Definitely it will be tomorrow”
“But you said it was ready now”
“It Most Definitely is. Tomorrow”
At which time my dad again cried another single tear of blood.
The place seemed far from ready and I was pretty bummed, I had been comforted by the soothing sounds of “Most Definitely” instead of the realistic abrasion of truth. We asked if we could stay there anyways for the night, that we would sleep on the floor to avoid paying for another hotel room.
Which leads me to sleeping on a hard dusty floor in the middle of the Mexican ghetto wondering what I had gotten myself into, and I began to ponder the past events getting me here. I had spent the last few months desperately searching for work, after getting turned down for multiple production jobs I had run out of places to apply, so I started applying for cell phone sales positions and I applied to a bunch. Each day I would check my email and find either nothing at all or a letter saying I wasn’t needed. I was getting worried… I was filled with doubt.
I remember a drastic turning point in my search for work, I bought a book called When God Writes Your Life Story, and the book stunk for the most part, but it brought up a point that I already knew however I had forgotten to apply. My time with the Lord each day could be summed up with cries like “what am I supposed to do” “are you listening” “what do you want me to do” “please open a door”, and at first glance this doesn’t seem all bad. But in Matthew 6:29-31 Jesus is talking to the crowds about worry, and he said (loosely) If you make me and my kingdom your primary concern then you have nothing to worry about, that he would give us all we need from day to day. Paul writes in Philippians about worry as well and he ends by saying that if live for Christ and his kingdom that we will have a peace that our minds can’t even comprehend.
So I made a change, and I realize this all seems so obvious, but its easy to get lost in the fog of routine in our daily walk. I changed my emphasis from seeking help finding work, to drawing nearer and nearer to Him. That was in September I think, and since then I no longer worried, or at least not as much, and my quiet time became more vibrant, and in the long run the Lord provided me with a job that couldn’t be any more perfect.
As I laid on the floor of my filthy apartment, unable to get comfortable, I couldn’t help but smile, knowing beyond doubt that I was where I was supposed to be.
This was on Tuesday night and a lot has transpired since then, my apartamento turned out really cool, and traffic as slowed abit. Currently it is Saturday morning and I am sitting on my couch, which is a story in itself as to how we managed to fit it in my apartment, missing my parents, my brother, and my friends. The moral to me of this whole thing is two thing: God wants us to be our chief focus, that everything else is “extra”, and secondly is that our comfort zone is not what God is shooting for, he wants us where he wants us, and in the beginning it may cause tears and loneliness, but in the end it will be very clear the reason we were there. And also a smaller third moral is that my parents are pretty much as good as it gets.
This isn’t all that happened on this trip, but in my mind it is the part that sticks out most vividly.
