First Half of Junior Year

     Well, this semester has only about a month left to go. Sure hasn't gone the way I thought it would. For one thing, I thought it would begin in late July, just after the Tulsa group got back from SGYC. But that class was canceled due to not enough folks signing up. And in early August there was a chance to leave NSU, so...

     Oh, by the way, I found a new Relient K song that I really like.

     It was a hard decision to make, with really no good answers. Like Coulson said in the fourth Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. episode, sometimes you have to make a hard call and live with what happens afterward. It really hurt to abandon my place within the leadership structure and leave the BCM gang. College is a miserable and lonely experience, but it becomes a tiny bit easier when there's coworkers around who are just as miserable, confused, cynical and frustrated as you are. And it was really nice living nearby Grandpa and Robbie. And there's a serious lack of Tiger Cookies now...
     But they needed me here, too. And free rent is good. And Rags is a very happy cat.

     But...yeah, it's been kind of a hard semester, for a lot of reasons. Online classes are pretty time-intensive and accelerated, without a whole lot of direction or feedback. So in a way you're flying mostly blind the whole time. (Which I'm used to, but anyway...)

     Going into my freshman year, in the post called "The Golden Road" I mentioned that the Montgomery title sort of symbolizes our journey throughout life, and college in particular. That road can take some pretty strange paths, let me tell ya.  Fall semester freshman year it lead straight into the middle of a Fire Swamp, more specifically into and through an oily quicksand well. Once it cleared out there it led into a desert straight from Josh and the Big Wall. And then there was the break over summer, which didn't exactly feel like anything other than plugging my dead battery into a wall-socket charger through GBC and SGYC.
     But once the time for the third semester-battle came around; for that is what college is: A war, between society purportedly offering this education for unclear reasons and far too involved a process - both time-wise and financially - and knowledge, learning and wisdom. And also it was re-entering a spiritual warground as well, but that's a different post for another time. Anyway, this path I've been walking along plunged into the valley of death from Psalm 23 or the Paths of the Dead from The Return of the King. And I'm not Strider, nor Aragorn. But God is faithful; and he carried me through it, mostly with getting involved with the BCM, and the usual camp folks, reruns, long walks and random strangeness of life. As Abigail the Cow told Joshua in The Crippled Lamb, "The Lord has a special place for those who feel left out." The second half of my sophomore year was back in the desert. Most of the summer, too; though the road began to get slightly greener as it went up a sloping incline.
     This semester, this first half of my junior year, the road has gone meandering and  twisting along a mountain with cliffs and drop-offs and hairpin turns. And it's really foggy, and the radio is broken, so it seems kind of cut off from civilization.

     There's also been this small plane that took off somehow despite enormous headwinds along the runway as I was starting out, and it's been steadily flying through stormy weather ever since. One of the engines started failing late last fall or early this spring, and then it started dropping from there. It's pretty much crashed by now, which could explain the mountain terrain. It'll probably be patched up somewhat soon enough to take off again, but how well will it fly?

     I somewhat know the literal terrain of Rogers County; it's mostly plains and hills. But I don't know what the terrain mentally I'll be traveling over.will look like. I mean, I'm hoping it will go okay, but I really don't know. Why should RSU have a different tone than NSU(or TCC)? Sure, it's been different than either of those so far on this admission stuff, more human and less factory-like, with less interruptions and hassles than expected, but how much of that is politics? Once the election's over...then what?

     I really don't know. But there will be some lessons to learn and ways to grow in Claremore, just as there have been in Beggs, Tahlequah, Westville, Morris, Tulsa, Broken Arrow, Conway, Louisville, D.C. and everywhere else I've traveled through. There's still a lot more plot twists in this script we call life that I didn't expect.and will face. I'm a master at planning things that don't quite work out at the last minute. The hard part is to say "God's will be done," and actually mean it. But that's why we keep going. We're not there yet, but maybe someday we will be.