Ghost Town on Christmas Eve

I stepped out on the cold front porch of my apartment this morning to a brisk twenty-eight degree greeting; the only greeting I have had today. Mt bare feet carried me down the side walk to check to make sure my car is still in tack. Though it was below freezing, the lack of college students around made me think that last night might have made my car another prime target for robbers. I looked around as I walked and was caught off guard at what I found. Silence. Not a person in sight, not a car driving down the road, not a student rushing to class, not even a homeless person gathering the pecans outside my apartment. The only thing that made me realize that I was not in a surreal, deserted wasteland was the faithful sound of the bells of Pat Neff and the Science Building telling me that it was 9:00.

Why am I still in Waco on the morning of Christmas Eve? I wondered that myself as I wondered what the rest of my family was doing. I left my sister and her husband yesterday in Houston as they prepared to go to his family’s house. My mom traveled to her home in Sabinal to see her family. My dad traveled to his home in Uvalde to see his family. Where to I go? My home is here in Waco. But that’s the problem. My home is not a place. My home is the people in my life that have loved me and comforted me and that I have lived life with and those people are everywhere. Those people include my parents and my sister, but it also includes my friends in Waco from my church and my staff last year and my roommates this year and from many other places. But they all went to their homes this month. So my home here is temporary. As people graduate and as I prepare to go on to grad school the reality sets in stronger that my home here is temporary…just like the home that I grew up in was temporary. It wasn’t supposed to be, but that’s how it is. How do I deal with that? I’ve been trying to figure that out since I was a junior in high school and my family fell apart. I haven’t come up with anything yet. The only thing I know to do is go day by day and plead for God’s grace to get me through.

I wasn’t supposed to be here by myself on Christmas Eve. I was supposed to go home on Wednesday, but the weather prevented me. Not the weather on Wednesday. Though it was nasty out, I could have gone home, but I had to travel back to Waco on Friday, (today) to sing in my church’s Candlelight Christmas Eve service for Advent. Since the weather was predicted to be really bad on Friday, my mom didn’t want me to chance driving up and back on Friday. So here I am in this ghost town trying to make the most of my Christmas Eve by relaxing, enjoying myself and learning how to make the most of this life on earth. That is a pretty big challenge when I consider the fact that I was “made for another world.”