A certain key to professional communication is for the speaker, or in this case blogger, to establish an eleven letter word called credibility as soon as possible. This usually happens within the first paragraph or so of a conventional article. Being a freshmen at APU, my explicit credibility is close to none. It also doesn’t help that I’m from Colorado, therefore relatively new to this whole Southern California vibe.
However, in lack of my credibility lies my perception, something which no one can take away from me. I want to use my perception to talk about the drudgery that is “SoCal’ weather. The way I understand it, it never ever forever never rains out here. For a poor boy from Colorado, that just about breaks my heart.
Here’s a smallish known fact about Colorado: the weather changes about every 30 minutes, and it is awesome. You could walk inside a grocery store from blinding sunshine, leave thirty minutes later in pouring rain, and arrive back at your house thirty minutes after that in snow. It doesn’t make sense but it does keep you on your toes!
For me, coming from a state with such diversity, I was more than a little sad that I wouldn’t get to experience the schizophrenia of Colorado weather, specifically the powerful rain showers that cover the state in their beauty. As usual, I spoke too soon, because yesterday, I got just what my heart was longing for…
After some debate with my lazy personality, I persuaded myself that it would be best to counter the onset of the dreaded Freshmen 15 by going on a nice jog at the Citrus College football stadium conveniently located right next to the dorms on APU’s East Campus. I left, running shoes and white shirt, in the slight drizzle of rain; it was a little cold, but looking toward the potential calories I could loose, I set off to the swooning melodies of my iPod.
I arrived at the track, stretched (a must do for running, folks) and began my jog. Not to long into it, I realized something: I was soaking wet. This wasn’t your typical, Oh my lanta I haven ‘t ran in ages I’m so sweaty right now and my body hurts kind of wet; the rain had picked up, and conspicuously matted my hair, shirt, and iPod in a matter or seconds. It was more of a soft, seductive, inconspicuous slip from a dream, where you realize something has been for quite a long time.
Katherine Mansfield , a classical fiction writer, once said, “I love the rain. I want the feeling of it on my face.” Truths don’t come much more simple than that.
You see, to me, that rain was a reminder of home. Life doesn’t get much more beautiful than a new freshman experiencing a taste of home all the way from his or her new one. The taste, while not making the hard transition into this new life , this whole new experience, any easier. But, I know, at least personally, that it gives a renewed hope that God has each and every one of us right where He wants us to be. What’s even better is that this hope translates into a hope for tomorrow, for the future.
So what is it out here that gives you hope for tomorrow? Hope for a future?
