I have another confession, one of those dark and dirty little secrets that good Christian girls never deal with but secretly I think we all do:
I have a serious problem with boredom.
I want to be Eowyn, practicing sword fighting skills with Aragorn as a mighty army descends upon them, threatening the lives of all of her people who are in desperate need for her to step up and save the day. I want to be Galadriel, pouring out wisdom on every lost group of heroes that stumbles upon my hidden home, feeding them more than just food but refreshing their souls. I want to be Arwen, the beautiful elf who holds the heart of the future king and is both his encouragement and his torment, his true love who has captured his heart and is the reason he is riding out to meet to meet his destiny.
I want an adventure, a crucial role to play, a chance to save the world and an urgency that drives me onward.
I think that’s a big part of the reason I came on this Race: it was the chance to leave everything behind and actually be a part of the saving- the- world movement my generation seems to be obsessed with.
Unfortunately, there’s more to real life than movies, and there’s more to this year than I calculated. At some point the cameras stop rolling, the music hits its crescendo and fades away, and we’re left with real life to live- dishes to do, hair to wash and laundry to fold. It’s kind of, for lack of a better word, boring.
Real life can be boring at home, but here there are all sorts of other interesting facets playing into the days: we’re here as a team, a new little family, but at three months, there are definitely days when I feel like I’m surrounded by strangers. We’re supposed to be a family, but we all have different views and opinions of what that looks like in the day to day. We’re trying to operate as one, but we’re all still figuring out how we fit into that puzzle, and to be completely honest, we haven’t quite gotten it down just yet.
For the record, this is not a dumping blog where I say my team is terrible and I’m a saint. I have an equal load to bear in the why- we’re- not- a- real- family dilemma. But this is not a finger pointing blog at myself, either, so I’m going to move right along.
Boredom and unease. Restlessness and frustration. A brush with greatness that leads right back to the mundane.
This is part of the paradox of life. It’s what the characters in Lord of the Rings had to deal with when the cameras weren’t on and the beautiful melodies of a hidden symphony weren’t tickling their ears, offering foreshadows, suspense and drama. They had to deal with peeing in bushes, not washing their hair for days (weeks!) on end, not always liking their food, not always getting along with their fellowship family.
And yet, despite it all, at the end of the movie, none of that mattered anymore. The miles travelled, the struggles and tears and bad jokes and rotten milk all flows under the bridge, because all that matters is that Middle Earth is safe, united under a perfect king and ready to forward into a new era.
Life here isn’t perfect. Even in Romania, with running water and electricity, there are still struggles to face, hours that won’t seem to end, people that can’t seem to agree. But, when I look back at this time in my life years from now, will I choose to see these times, or will I choose to remember the mission we were fighting for?
