Oklahoma City Revisited

http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/08/08/travel/escapes/08American.html?scp=1&sq=Oklahoma%20City&st=cse

The New York Times has run a story today about the boom of Oklahoma City.
Dante and I have owned our home in the OKC suburb of Edmond now for three years. That in itself is hard to imagine. OKC is its own quirky place and I remember my first 18 months here.
I hated it, and hate for me is a very difficult thing. The wind grates against you, especially in the winter, like an unsolicited rub from an irritating stranger who won't stop drumming his fingers along your skin.
The culture was, at best, very bizarre. In two years' time, I saw horses grazing alongside my bank's drive-thru ATM machine; I had fought aggressive Thug Christians who were more interested in saving my soul than they were in looking at the man or woman in the mirror.
(Unbeknownst to them, my soul doesn't need saving. I gave my life to God a long, long time ago, more than 15 years ago, and I can't imagine a day that my heart isn't with the Man Upstairs).
I was fed up with the question (which came from many, many people): "How did your husband get that job in Oklahoma? It should have gone to an Okie."
It took me a long time to put this place into perspective, especially when Rep. Sally Kern's face showed up on the Ellen DeGeneres Show for Kern's assertion that gays are worst than terrorists.
As the saying goes, things happen for a reason and as I've believed all my life, God has a plan for me. I was all prepared to move to Texas to get my master's degree. But it didn't happen that way. The University of Oklahoma made me an offer I couldn't refuse, so, as one friend put it, "You must make hay while the sun is shining."
And so I'm making hay. I have come to know so many people here in Oklahoma City, and it's grown on me more than I like to admit. Oklahoma is its own quiet place, where the wind blows harder than it should and the pace may not be what some people like.
But for me, it serves more of a purpose now and I'm glad to see that OKC is getting some national attention that isn't about Rep. Kern or the silly county commissioner with such a controversial comic book.