Whispers on the Wind
posted December 5, 2011
Attending university in West Texas, wind became a constant companion. Whether it was twisting our skirts, ruffling our hair, or scattering our papers across the campus mall lawn, the wind kept girls griping.
And that was on calm days.
Other days, it blew in dust storms, propelled ash from nearby brush fires, knocked over fences, and increased (or decreased) gas mileage significantly.
On the Great Plains, the wind never stops. It’s perpetual, varying only in intensity. For me, it became like the big, Texas sky - larger than life, comfortingly constant, and wrapped up in my purest perception of “home."
Since childhood, I’d thought of the wind as a constant reminder of God’s presence, occasionally in the gentle caress of a breeze and other times in the roaring, attention-demanding howl of a gale. Sometimes subtle, sometimes smack-you-in-the-face obvious, but ever constant.
So no matter how inconvenient the breeze, no matter how I clutched at my skirt as I skittered from building to building for class, I never could work up too much annoyance with the wind. In fact, sometimes stillness seems stifling.
Moving to the Bulgarian foothills has been an adjustment. Working as a teacher has challenged me. Heck, just finding parmesan cheese in the grocery store was a feat of monumental proportions for this fumbling foreigner.
But one of the biggest transitions has been emigrating from the Christian bubble of my private university town, away from my decidedly conservative state, out of the Bible Belt completely. Finding a church to visit, hoarding the time to attend, and scraping together the wakefulness to remain alert during an all-Bulgarian service presented challenges starkly contrasting the community I just left, where we had a church on every corner and Chapel every day. (See that? I even still capitalize "Chapel.” That’s one-part Optimist style and one-part Bible Belt influence, for ya.)
Yet today, as I exited school amid unseasonably temperate weather, the wind that ushered in this warm front conspicuously rattled the bright, yellow leaves overhead. I started at the sound, but then sighed with relief as the familiar breeze brushed by my face.
Because even as lonely as Bulgaria sometimes feels, I’m never really on my own. And the nostalgic sensation jolted my senses: I’m here for a year; how am I spending it?
And for all of the folks back home, I’d like to blow a little of this breeze your way: Plenty of places in this world haven’t yet received the cool relief of this wind. So if you feel at all inclined or convicted, take heart: there are leaves in need of rustling.
original post available here.