Alone in the Heartland: Iowa City

Driving west on I-80, the land is flat and gas stations with convenience stores pop up every few miles, with cheap coffee and energy drinks and that aisle with the chips on one side and candy on the other, then hats of the universities nearby—Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, Michigan; you'll get all of those if it's one of the bigger stores.

And then you exit for Iowa City. A curling river divides the city in two, the landscape rising and then falling at the river's banks, not flat like the land off the interstate and not barren but trees growing and old houses with professors. In the winter, the snow everywhere, piled white but gray on the roads and sidewalks and in the alleys, but white on the grass and on the limbs of the tree, white where it is natural for snow to be.

The first month of college is spent trying, very quickly, to find friends—or, people to hang out with. You find people to be with and after another month you shed them, because you found your real friends, and they found their real friends, too. That's how it went for me, mostly, except that instead of looking my friends I watched Alias and fell in love again with Jennifer Garner. Those times weren't joyful—rather, lonely. A fog is cast over the first few months I had in Iowa City—like a hermit, I shunned everyone.

But soon, God worked, as He always does. I met Josh. I met Michael. I met the Monroes and I met people like Tiffany and Jeremy and Joshua. I met these people, or God had us meet, but still it was hard, because I was reluctant, as people are, to open my heart, reluctant to be vulnerable and let people in. But slowly, the Spirit opened me up.

God put me in a church, gave me not friends but family. He stifled the depression that had started to creep in. He gave me a community—and in that community I began to develop, as a seed in soil grows from something small into something very large. I learned so many things about me in this community—ironic, almost, how one must grow in knowledge of self in a community.

I started to let myself go.

And I learned things in Iowa City during the fall of 2008—
-On weekends, I need at least one night without a social event.
-Jennifer Garner holds a good portion of my heart.
-My life can be shit, but it's all right, because God is God.
-After a week of 2-degree weather, 20 is balmy.
-A band from Massachusetts' music is changing not only the way I feel, not only the way I think, but the way I live.
-I like smoking cigarettes with homeless people on Halloween.
-I'm not too hot with the ladies.
-I am where I belong.
-I actually do like supreme pizza.

With love,
h