Have any of these things ever bothered you? And if they haven’t, would they if you did experienced them?
Flies landing on you and re-landing on you despite your best attempts to keep them away. They land on the food you eat, the cup you’re drinking out of, the bed you sleep in. At night they land on your face. You feebly swat them away in your state of semi-consciousness only to have the same fly land between your eyes for the tenth time in minutes. Oh, and there are hundreds of them.
How about sweating? Who likes sweating? I know some of you work-out fans are thinking “Oh, me! I love to sweat!” Yeah, not what I meant. I’m talking about sweating a lot, all the time. Whether you are in the sun, in the shade, or in your bed….sweating. Sticky, hair stuck to the back of your neck, cooking in a kitchen that reaches what I’m assuming is well over 90 degrees, sweating. You shower to attempt to cool off…yet the second you step out the stickiness hits you again and before you know it you can’t tell if your hair is wet from that shower or….you guessed it, sweat.
Maybe walking….lots and lots of walking! Walking to your friends house miles away, carrying heavy boxes for blocks and blocks, or going to the grocery store and carrying everything back. That includes milk, a sack of potatoes, various meats, and every other item you pick up on the usual trip to the grocery store. Only then you have to walk miles back home in the blistering sun, carrying it all, with four children in tow.
Dust. Dust might be the best part of course. No matter how clean you attempt to get whether it be a shower, sponge bath or bucket shower the dust still settles in. It finds its way into your clothes, your hair, your eyes and of course your feet. You’re feet are always a different shade than the rest of your body…we call this color…dust.
Community. Multiple people sharing a small house. And when I mean small, I mean like the size of your garage. Often it looks like 6 people sharing one bedroom or the whole family sharing one small bathroom. And no, you don’t have air conditioning.
Would these things bother you? Would they inconvenience you? Would they alter your daily life?
They did inconvenience me. They annoyed me. They frustrated me. They made me miss home.
Yet….
For most people around the world, this IS their life. This is their normal. These things don’t make them angry or hinder them. They live with joy despite all these things. They find ways to embrace the dust, the heat, the flies. From what I’ve seen of the people of Romania…they don’t let much bother them. The fact that I let these things affect my mood and my attitude is well….embarrassing. They don’t complain and this is their reality all the time. This is only my life for a month.
Instead of being annoyed by these things, they choose to find joy in the little things. You can see joy in the heat as the children jump into lakes and streams laughing and giggling. Joy in the walks they take together to visit a friend a few miles away. Joy in the beautiful fruit trees that grow every few feet here. Joy in the time they take to sit and really listen to a person.
All along, maybe my whole life, I’ve been choosing to let things bother me. In the little things at home and often in my travels I found the things that bothered me. Not always of course, but often and especially this first month, I chose irritation.
They chose Joy.
And guess what? Our lives looked drastically different because of it.
What will you choose?
