Suddenly I feel like we are not so far from home. As we are driving back to our little church in Palacagüina, Nicaragua I am beginning to think about life on the race, and my life before; realizing the change in myself, and I like it.
In the beginning of this race I didn’t want change. I wanted to be myself, and thought no one and nothing would ever change me. “I’m my own person, free spirited, independent.” I guess what I am now realizing is that change is inevitable, even if I had chosen another path to go on this year it is and always has been inevitable. Maybe change isn’t even the the right word for it. Maybe it’s just growth, but I want more of it. I really don’t have much time until I go home and I don’t want this trip to go to waste. They say some people get the travel bug after an adventure like this, and they’re definitely correct. I want to take joy in the little moments, to find God in the smallest of things. To make dinner with my mom, to read more, to paint, to travel, and to meet new people.
I recently read the book Cold Tangerines (which I recommend to anyone who needs a little inspiration) and in it she says that she wants a life that sizzles and pops. She wants to make every day different. To love people with an intense love that could only be given from our God, and to show others Him through our love. In my opinion a lot of people, including myself, see life as multiple big events; just waiting for the next one to come and then once it’s over, it’s about the next. Growing up I couldn’t wait to get my license, and then I couldn’t wait for senior year or senior prom, then graduation, this trip, and now it’s what I’m doing after this trip. Will I stay in Texas? What job will I have? How will I decorate my apartment? Will I be steadfast and firm in what I believe in? Will I get married? How many kids do I want? What are their names going to be? All of these detrimental moments that I think will be so monumental and will make my life so grand, in actuality may not. Life can seem mundane when I get up every day to do construction, moving bricks and rocks and dirt and making mud and concrete. It feels like a lot of small things that don’t do much, but that’s because I forget to look up. But when I do, I am amazed. We are building a kitchen for the children. We not only get to feed the hungry, but we get to be the hands and feet of it. It’s a lot of little things that make something so grand.
And then I stop and look around me, I’m sitting in a bus filled with some of the best people I will ever meet in my life, in Nicaragua, and I’m worried about my “next big thing.” But as Shauna Niquiest writes in Cold Tangerines, “I don’t want to wait anymore. I choose to believe that nothing is more scared or profound than this day.” And just like her, I believe that “God is all around me, heaven is all around me. Life without God is meaningless and I know I wouldn’t have come to this conclusion without Him … To me, life with God is prismatic, shocking, demanding, freeing. It’s the deepest stream, the blood in my veins, the stories and words of my dreams and my middle-of-the-night prayers”.
I used to think being a Christian was boring. A life filled with nothing but strict rules to follow. Where I’m from, it’s easy to fall into a legalistic stand point of faith and how it should be acted out. Once I realized that faith is simply a relationship with our creator who hard core pursues us every single day, life opened up. Life had meaning again. I want to see this world not only through my own eyes, but through Christ’s. To see past someone’s smile and to know their story, to authentically care for everyone He created – and let me tell you, God is pretty creative. I am extremely blessed by a life made up of so many extraordinary little moments.
