Georgia On My Mind

 I am back in Georgia for ten days because one of my best friends is getting married next week. I haven’t even been here twenty-four hours yet, and I am already soaking in the sights, sounds and smells (or lack thereof) that I have missed for the past two and a half months.

This morning I was sitting in the car as my dad pumped gas into the Excursion at BP. I know, can you believe it? The Excursion. I looked out the window as the cars drove by, and I thought about what a different world I found myself to be in at that moment. How strange for the streets to be filled only with cars. No one trying to sell you cashews or gum or touristy pottery. No one sprawled out on the ground because they’re jobless and bored or hungry or complacent. No one calling out, “pretty lady, I love you” or riding by on a bike to slap you need I say where. No school buses leaving behind a thick black trail of exhaust as they transport people packed like sardines from one place to another. Just cars…and the inaccessible people they carried inside.

My dad and I went to my grandmother’s house so he could take her car, and I’d have the tank to drive around. As I pulled out of the driveway, maybe I should be ashamed to say that the last thing on my mind was the sheer waste of energy it was for me, little heathercita, to be driving through town alone in this gas guzzler. On the contrary, it was more like this: “Dear, sweet, freedom. Oh how I’ve missed you.” And I did feel free. Free and powerful. But was it real freedom, real power? Whatever it was I liked it, and I was content to be in the driver’s seat.

I came home, and after a bit of a nap I decided to put on my tennis shoes along with my old cut-off jeans, and I was off, trekking through the Georgia heat at 12:30 pm. My mother later questioned how I could have walked around on this hot, humid day. To me though, it was bliss.

I walked through the neighborhood and into Stone Mountain Park. I went down my old running trails and was enamored by creation, by the breeze, by the sound of dirt and rocks crunching under my feet. No trash strewn about. No green slime running by a sidewalk towards the lake. Just swaying trees and the sound of wind blowing through their branches.

Even though I’m here, appreciating the freedom to drive, to walk by myself through the woods, something tells me it wouldn’t hold me over for very long. It wouldn’t be enough for me forever. If I stayed longer, I might grow numb to it. This “freedom” would become ordinary for me. Maybe that’s why I appreciate it so much in this moment. I know that I will leave this place and go back to a strange and different world where I won’t drive, where I won’t have well-maintained nature trails to venture through alone.

But maybe I don’t need those things after all. I get the feeling I will only be content in life if I would just dare to be grateful for what I do have (which is actually much more than I realize.)  Rob Bell says in his book Sex God that “Until we can center ourselves on what we do have, on what God has given us, on the life we do get to live, we’ll constantly be looking for another life.” I think I agree.

I appreciate the freedom I have right now to enjoy Georgia, my home away from home, but I don’t have to be in the U.S. to experience true freedom. I think the real stuff, the kind of stuff that freedom is actually made of, will come forth no matter where I am when my eyes are opened up to God’s blessing in that very moment…even if in that moment I’m inhaling a black cloud of exhaust and stepping into green slime.