Being the cinephile that I am, I really love finding myself in moments that could be taken right out of some indie film that only a few quirky individuals will have had the time to waste watching. The Coen Brothers and Quentin Tarantino are standard-bearers for the types of movies that I’m referring to here, but of course many other fantastic movies have been created by wackier minds than these. Weird stuff, man. In any case, the World Race happens to be full of absurd scenes that I find myself laughing at even as I experience them.
Just in the past week-ish, I’ve eaten some amazing Italian food with a Greek professor and an Irish teacher on a beach in Thailand. We discussed French and Russian literature, mid 20th century American economic policy, and the nature of hell. I’ve had (decent) huevos rancheros with biscuits and gravy in a Thai café complemented by leftover blueberry pancakes. I’ve stood in a circle of grown men and women who were each silently, intently, and very happily, enjoying soft-serve ice cream from McDonald’s. Last night, no joke, I had pizza with a Swiss-Cambodian man in the middle of a frenzied Buddhist festival where everybody shoots everybody with water-guns.
I swear, every time I walk into a run-down restaurant in Southeast Asia where Russian, German, French, and English voices are audible, I think I’m in a cold-war Bond movie. Maybe it’s just that I only know true diversity from seeing it in the movies, or maybe life is just a whole lot stranger than I imagined. Either way, I don’t want to take these moments for granted.
AS I WRITE THIS POST, I am listening to Celine Dion’s “The Power of Love” being played over the speakers in a coffee shop just outside of Battambang, Cambodia. When I ordered my coffee, they brought me a free scarf. Don’t ask, because I have no idea what’s happening either, but it is a pretty neat scarf. Almost everything has ceased to surprise me.
Driving home from dinner Wednesday night, our taxi driver was jamming out to The Eagles, Johnny Cash, and John Denver…and he didn’t speak a lick of English. It was all pretty funny until Take Me Home, Country Roads hit me way harder than I expected as I found myself on the exact opposite side of the planet from the place I call home. Looking out at the ancient city walls across the river, I heard Denver singing,
“I hear her voice in the morning hour she calls me
Radio reminds me of my home far away
Driving down the road I get a feeling
That I should have been home yesterday, yesterday”
My life could be a lot harder, and I’m still uncomfortable calling myself a missionary under any but the most generous definition of the term. I’m not a soldier or a single parent. There are far greater battles being fought by people whose unwritten blogs deserve far more readers than mine. I don’t want any pity for living out of a backpack for a year. My backpack contains a net worth which exceeds that of nearly every person I meet on this journey.
But I do miss home. I do struggle with big, uncomfortable questions. I do feel the weight of the world’s brokenness. Sometimes I wonder what I’m accomplishing in the midst of the madness. What am I but a drop in the bucket? Am I really maximizing my utility? I’m only 22 years old. I withdrew my acceptance from medical school to be here, and I put a lot of other dreams on hold to follow Jesus into a world that sometimes feels like it was dreamed up by a slightly-less-macabre Tim Burton.
This month is “manistry” month with the guys, and I’ve spent a lot of time measuring out the shortage of good men in this world. Perhaps, and this is only a tangential observation on manhood, good men are those who know which battles are worth fighting. Win or lose, the battlefields we choose to serve on say more about us than our performance on those hallowed grounds.
I would rather lose the fight for Jesus along the dirty streets of the Cambodian countryside than win the fight for building my own kingdom and the Coleman Beddingfield brand that I wasted years of my life cultivating.
Funny thing is, despite the daily struggle, I never really have to worry about losing this war because I already know that my Savior has won.
Life is weird. Leaving home is hard. Jesus is worth it. I know, pretty basic stuff if you think about it.
Tune in for next week’s profundity…
Until next time,
The Dude Abides
