Y'all, football

I meet a lot of new people here. Mostly because everyone I know lives, well, not in Alabama. It always makes me laugh when the first question out of someone's mouth after they meet me is "so where are you from?" ...I mean, is it really that obvious I'm not from here?

But then when I say I'm from Massachusetts, the next thing is always "you don't sound like you're from Boston!" Trying to explain to people not from New England that there is in fact more to Massachusetts than just Boston is a more difficult task than you would think.

And then there's the football thing. I grew up with Sunday afternoon football, occasionally Monday night football. We root for the Patriots from our couches at home and are perfectly content with it. To my northern friends- it is a whole other world down here. Whether you are meeting someone for the first time, meeting someone for lunch, in a board meeting or a staff meeting... any and every meeting begins and concludes with football talk. And not the NFL. And not just college football... high school football too. They actually changed the date of halloween here because there was a high school football game on halloween. So the city of Opelika mandated that trick-or-treating would be done on the night of the 30th, not the 31st. Seriously, football is a big deal here. I went to a football game at a very small high school out in the country and I wanted to know if they had their own football field or if the game would be somewhere else. I thought I was going to cause a heart attack. Apparently every school has a football field. Except the town I grew up in. We had Bullens field.

But somewhere in between the struggle to not succumb to the peer pressure to say "y'all" and the process of learning my roles in a new job, a lot of new names, and how to keep up with football stats, I've survived my first month in Alabama. There have been easy days, and there have been not so easy days. I've been tired, really tired. There have been trials but there have also been many, many blessings. I am learning more and more every day about the sovereignty of God, and how much better His plans are than mine. Seriously, He's just good at the whole planning thing.

By the way, they do in fact know about iced coffee and sarcasm down here. So that was a relief. I might just make it after all.



"But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ." -Phil. 3:7-8