A couple days each week a local woman down the road prepares meals for my team. Today is one of those days when Elle cooks, and it is my turn to pick it up. I’m currently sitting waiting as she prepares our dinner in her outside kitchen as the scent of authentic Thai food hits my nose.
Everything around me is dirty or well loved. There’s no way the silverware sitting in front of me has ever seen a dishwasher. Life here is raw. It is hardly manicured, but fully embraced. Maybe that’s why I feel my truest form of self here, right now, in this very moment. Not that this moment sitting on a rickety bench next to Elle’s skillet with sweat dripping down my face is anything special. Ants crawl up my leg, and I’ve given up trying to slap them away. This doesn’t appear to be one of those life altering, profound, “I was created for this” type moments. But in a way, it is. I was created to live. Live and live well. I read a quote the other day that says, “Today is a living, breathing, screaming invitation to believe in better things.” I am learning the art of celebration. In the mundane, in the ugly, in the uncomfortable, I choose to say “hey God thanks for the invite to truly live and acknowledge you.”
Sidenote- Somewhere in the middle of writing the above paragraph, Elle finished preparing our meals. I walked home, decided to sit outside our house to enjoy the breeze, and continued writing.
I was just approached by 7 Thai children, who laid down their bikes to watch me write. They were absolutely fascinated by my English lettering, and I ended up showing them every single page of my journal. Letting them leaf through my scrawlings, paintings, notes, and journal entries felt very much like showing them a piece of my heart. I gave them the pen and they filled several pages with Thai lettering. Needless to say, many of my pages now have grubby fingerprints on them and the front cover was dropped in the dirt never to look the same again. But it’s okay, because I’m not quite the same as I once was either. I am fully embracing living an unpolished life.
“I believe that this way of living, this focus on the present, the daily, the tangible, this intense concentration not on the news headlines but on the flowers growing in your own garden, this way of living has the potential to open up the heavens, to yield a glittering handful of diamonds where a second ago there was coal.” -Shauna Niequist, Cold Tangerines
Today I’ve had the opportunity to take care of my teammate who has been throwing up, picked up food for my team, and swapped handwriting tips from some Thai kids. I’m leaning against a blue mildewy concrete wall, and the sidewalk I’m sitting on could really use a pressure wash. My Birkenstocks are 50 shades of grey darker than when I got here, and my far-from-manicured hair is wrapped up in a buff. I’m really craving a homemade manao soda from the vendor across the street. Like Thailand, I’m me in my rawest form. Hardly manicured, but fully embraced.
Last night I went to a Thai teacher’s retirement party. It had been a 10 hour ministry day and I was tired. There was some painfully bad karaoke, Thai pop music, and two people desperately trying to get the party started by asking people to dance. And you know what? I got up and danced with 50 Thai teachers as an audience. The discipline of celebration doesn’t always come naturally. But just like any discipline, you learn more about yourself in the process. Sometimes your decision to dance when you don’t feel like it helps get the party started for everyone else. So dance. PS- I got my manao soda.
