HEY! Here are the links to my most recent podcast episode, about our time on the island of Ometepe here in Nicaragua. ENJOY.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/normal-life/id1439912956?i=1000434627063
https://soundcloud.com/createdformore/normal-life
And now on to the blog…
The World Race is quite the experience. You are constantly being put through situations that stretch your patience, understanding, and abilities.
Some months you are in a cramped living space with anywhere from 15-40 people, learning how to juggle each other’s preferences and personalities.
Some days you are suddenly informed that you must put together a teaching lesson for kindergartners who don’t speak English or a spur-of-the-moment sermon to patients in a hospital waiting room.
And minute by minute you are reevaluating yourself and those around you, searching for points of comfort or normalcy throughout your day.
I’ve slept on a floor mattress in a cramped room with a couple standing fans, on a sleeping pad in my tent during rainy downpours, a memory foam bed with air conditioning, a tile floor to escape the heat, a few decent bunk beds…
Every new month is a time of transition, and I do believe that each transition is quicker and quicker. Because change has become our normal! And in the midst of all the change, of all the readjustment over and over, we find routine.
Around here in Nicaragua, we finish digging holes in the plantain fields around lunchtime, and then we have the afternoon off. So I shower, read a book, listen to a podcast, sit outside by the lake, etc.
During our downtime in Lesotho, I would pour myself a cup of tea and read more of the Old Testament out by the pavilion, or on my bunk bed. Some of us would play cards or walk to town to buy snacks.
In Malaysia, when we weren’t doing ministry or cleaning the YWAM house, I would go grocery shopping with the other treasurer, or stop by the ATM, buy a cup of coffee, or relax at the house with a few others and listen to music or watch a movie.
My point is, the World Race is very exciting and different, but it can also be very regular.
Yes we are “traveling the world” and doing things I would never do at home, but we are also just living normal lives.
Normal lives, in weird places.
It’s a steady toss back and forth between weird / unpredictable and casual / uneventful. And that juxtaposition has become the driving force of our days, no matter which place we find ourselves in.
Some schedules are more rigorous than others and some living situations are more ideal than most. But you can bet that we are always slipping into habits and routine, even if they are a stark contrast to how we would define those words back home. It’s human nature, I think, to seek out comfort and normalcy within diversity. And oftentimes we do it without even noticing.
I still watch Friends, but sometimes it’s on an island with a volcano in the background.
I still listen to news podcasts and catch up on American politics, but sometimes it’s while I am hand washing my clothes in a bucket as chickens waddle by.
I still drink coffee in the morning, but I usually have to pinch out a couple of ants floating in my cup.
I still question my future and worry about the people closest to me, but those thoughts are now about things thousands of miles away.
It’s the weirdest feeling and the most unusual experience. I often have conversations with teammates about how these things we are learning and doing will apply to our lives back in the States. We are becoming more introspective, self-aware, well-rounded people who can adjust to quick changing circumstances and unfamiliar environments.
Some of us will go on to become preachers, social workers, veterinary technicians and whatever else. But all 37 of us will be able to look back on that one time we were farmers in Nicaragua, or teachers in Swaziland, or delivery room nurses in the Philippines, or camp counselors in Malaysia, or construction workers in Thailand.
We are taking new skills and changed mindsets allllll the way back home, back to routine, back to normal life.
But really, it won’t ever be the same again.
