Define normal…
Is it to be caught up in the sweeping tides of the everyday?
Is it to be settled comfortably in the configured nest of routine?
Is it to be surrounded by those things which bring joy continually?
Is it to be mesmerized by surging technologies?
Is it to be checked out from reality altogether?
Is it a particular method of living?
Is it merely a set of circumstance?
Is it an identity?
Is it normal at all?
As I stepped out of the plane in San Jose from my first international flight on record, I started to feel my personal norms being shattered into pieces. I shuffled my backpacks through customs, spat out my first few words in Español and stepped out into the breezes of global living for the next eleven months of my life. It was mind blowing and all encompassing. Our squad leaders haggled for fair taxi prices so we could make our way to the hostel we would be staying at that evening. We crammed ourselves and luggage into one van and passed through the lights of San Jose. We arrived, we slept, we woke, we ate, we waited, we caught more taxis then caught the bus for our five hour bus ride to Los Chiles. Just for the record, communicating to the conductor that we needed to be dropped off in a different location that what our ticket called for was an adventure all in itself. After much horrendously broken Spanish, uncertain hand gestures and a phone call to our contact we were finally set up for success. We met our lovely host Tony in the night, threw all our belongings and four people into one Isuzu (which made for two trips) and took the dirt road up to our long-awaited destination. Finally, we are here.
Our days have been ever changing, in constant flux. Our responsibilities have differed on a daily basis from chopping down the Costa Rican jungle with machetes, blazing new paths, to laying hands on the sick in prayer, to defining new muscle groups while mixing concrete, to chasing geese and chickens around our contact's farm. The things which never seem to change? There are a few. Rosa's incredible cooking, the whelming exhaustion at the end of every day of work, the gratitude for standard electrical outlets, God's provision for each day and the temperature of the chilled showers each night. Everyday we are striving to live less for ourselves. Every day we are reminded of the great opportunity that we have been presented with. Every day we are in revision. This is the new normal: to have little which is normal.
