Nowata Pond

Each week (that I'm not working or otherwise in Texas), Julius and I go to craigslist Bible study together.

To get there from my little baby town, we take Highway 16, which is a deathpath of twists, small lanes, dumb, running woodsy creatures, and Arkansas drivers. And, because of the winter, darkness. No street lights to be found. It can be pretty terrifying. For Julius. He holds on. I'm not proud of that, but it's also not completely my fault.

We've been driving for weeks on this road and have thought we've gotten to know it pretty well.
Then, Daylight Savings happened.

It's light at 6:20pm when we leave.

The entire drive there, it was: "Woah! Look at that field of sheep!"
"Woah! That barn has a roof of solar panels!"
"Woah! Since when was there a church there!"

And my personal favorite: "Woah! Wait. That's not a lake?"

That's right. There's a certain place on the road that we were both convinced was a big pond.
It's a giant hole filled in with gravel. I guess neither of us ever thought it was odd that there was no reflection.

Darkness and light. It changes everything.

Things you thought were beautiful and good turn out to be a pit of black rocks.
Things you thought were nothing turn out to be full of life. And sheep.

For me it was just a reminder that life isn't always what it seems, both good and bad.
And what's fascinating is that you aren't able to know what's what except through discovery or time.

If we had pulled off to go check out the "pond", we would have had our imaginings about it disillusioned pretty fast. Otherwise, like what happened, it took the seasons changing for us to be shown the truth of the matter.