Next Step

The lights hum. Sirens wail by every once in a while, waking those hailing from quieter places. The girls next door laugh loud, and outside the room another one paces back and forth, talking to her mother on the phone. Keys jingle against pockets; doors open and close. Footsteps, mostly heavy ones, travel down the hall. A few floors up, someone sings a worship song and it floats down through the vents. The girl outside closes her conversation to make herself dinner.

The walls inside are dingy, torn by some former resident's adhesive hooks. The window is small, tucked in the corner and looking out to a brick wall. The flowers in it are struggling to live. Two desks stand in close proximity, like the room's inhabitants often do. The same inhabitants' artwork decorates the walls, covering some of the torn places.

Dishes sit unwashed on one desk. A pile of laundry accumulates in the corner. The bathroom begs to be cleaned.

Hours of homework assignments line themselves up like soldiers on calendars and planners and notebook paper. Mostly, they are finished, shot down one by one. Some prevail and are ignored, left for tomorrow.

And here I sit, on the top bunk, finding solace in words as always.

This is my new life.

This moment of stillness is precious, rare. Homesickness, a resistance to change, chases me often. I wish I could stop, catch my breath, sleep in my own bed.

When I go home, my own bed won't be there.

Back there, my sister moved from our shared former bedroom to her own room upstairs. My best friends started at the same school. My old Bible study has a meeting on the calendar, which I will not attend.

But here as there, God is moving.

He is whispering, little things, hard to hear most of the time. Things about life. Things about all I still have to learn.

And there are so many. One week here has proven that.

My classes are a wealth of knowledge. Every page of required reading beckons me to know God more, with deeper intimacy. I want this.

I want this because I want Him.

That is my Ebenezer, my anthem song for the days and moments when things get hard again.

The girls gather in the hallway for a meeting and I am called away. It's time for the next step. I want this.

I want Him.