Just to help you get a feel for this phrase and all that it implies, let me give you some examples.
With 102 degrees raging through my body, a sore throat, and my brain pounding out of my skull, I did it! I rode a ski lift, climbed a million steps, walked up to the top, turned around and thought, “Wow, is this real life?” I was standing on miles and miles of brick and concrete most commonly known as The Great Wall of China. The site was to die for and the history beneath my feet stood strong as ever.
The Great Wall of China
One night in India, we made our home in a 10×10 bedroom/jail cell at a convent. We had to get up and be ready to leave at 4am the next morning and exhausted doesn’t even begin to describe how we felt. At 3:30am my teammate Erin leaned over the sink to wash the shampoo out of her hair. All I heard through a bunch of grumbling was, “My gosh. This is my life.”
Erin, with clean hair, on an Indian street
I lay down on the couch and three of them fell on top of me. They loved to watch movies with us, drink hot cocoa, and play games. It was month two of the race in White River, South Africa and the most beautiful little brown girl you’ve ever seen wouldn’t leave my side. (http://ashliblackwell.theworldrace.org/?filename=i-showed-her-my-marsh-mellow-stash)
Buhle, is her name and when I asked her about her best friend, she said it was me. One day we sat to write down all her favorites. “What’s your favorite thing to do, Buhle?” She thought for a second and I could see her weighing potential answers in her mind. “Playing with you, of course, is my favorite thing to do!!” Oh my word, how would I leave this precious child at the end of the month? “This is my life,” I said to my teammates, “this is really my life.”
To say it was chaotic would be an understatement. 47 world racers with anywhere from 3-5 bags each attempting to flood onto a train slowly rolling down the track, threatening to leave us standing at the train station, transportationless. We were excited to have sleeper tickets because we’d be on this train for 25-30 straight hours. After 30 or so minutes of confusion, aggravation, and language barriers, I made my home on the top bunk and tried to settle in – only to realize that I had to pee. I knew from experience on many trains in China that the bathrooms are less than impressive but I could not hold it. So I climbed down, found my shoes under a random Indian man, and made my way down the aisle to the “toilet.” It was, of course a squatty with which your excretion falls straight onto the tracks. So by “squatty” I mean, “hole.” While trying to hold myself up, (because we all know train rides aren’t smooth), I grabbed onto the pipe in front of me only to find out that it was where the water would come from when I “flushed” and now it was detached… and in my hand. Still in squatty position, I tried frantically to reattach the flusher pipe before water came rushing out onto my face and flooding the bathroom. Once that mission was completed, I left the bathroom, made my way back to my top bunk, climbed up and looked across the aisle at Teresa who could tell something was wrong. When she asked if I was okay, all I could think about were the germs infesting my hands, how nasty the whole train was, the fan above me that would not come on, the sweat dripping down my body. So all I could murmur was, “WHAT. Is. My. LIFE??” She smiled and sunk back down into her bunk, knowing that I need not say more.
My top bunk on the train. With no space to sit up. Yay, me.
Unless you’ve been away from home for a long time, you probably don’t fully understand how hard it is to watch life go on without you. It’s bittersweet, really, because I want to be there but although I can’t, I get so excited for the people I love going through big changes and events. And I can’t say enough how crazy cool God is to have even brought me here: to this place of abandonment, brokenness, and dependency. But when one ex-boyfriend after the next gets engaged or married – when my best friends land that killer job, receive a promotion, get engaged, married, or have babies – when I watch people like my mentor Jamie or my parents ‘doing life’ with their husbands and children, I can’t help to take a look at my own life and notice the stark contrast. I LOVE that my friends have some huge, exciting stuff going on and I LOVE talking to them about it over email and Skype. I share in their joy and enjoy every second of it. But sometimes, I just look around… wherever I am, whatever I’m doing, and I go, “ THIS IS MY LIFE!!! This is really my life!!!” The abandonment, the brokenness, the dependency on Jesus. The traveling on trains, planes, and buses. The language barriers, historic sites, African dirt, Indian heat, and Filipino smiles. The junk food, the tents, the relationships, the cultures, the ministries. I see cool things, serve cool people, and worship a very cool God all day long. It’s all my life.
And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
At the Taj Mahal
