This is Life

I had a very strange, yet not infrequent feeling this evening as I walked from the Gilgel Beles translation office to the hotel that I frequent when spending the night. Maybe you’ve felt it before, maybe you can relate, which I would find as an after the fact encouragement. Bear with me as I try to explain it.

 

It’s the feeling of being all alone in a crowded street.

It’s the feeling of being totally unlike everyone else, and not only in skin color.

It’s the feeling of being the object of everyone’s attention, whether they call out greetings or insults to me or stare in silence as I pass by.

It’s the feeling of being personally unknown by everyone within a thirty mile radius.

It’s the feeling of being dirty, not having showered, an itchy stubble for a beard, and literal dust/dirt clinging to three days worth of dried sweat on every square inch of my skin so that if I rub my finger on any given spot on my face, neck, arms, trunk, legs, feet, etc, the dirt rolls up into black globs that I’d rather not know is really there.

It’s the feeling of being separated from loved ones, a separation which was highlighted today all day as the mobile phone network stopped working last night.

It’s the feeling of being wasteful - that I could be doing so much more or a better job in each given day.

It’s the feeling of being tired, yet without the realistic expectation of true rest anytime soon.

It’s the feeling of being filled with bottled-up emotion: some good, some not.

It’s the feeling of being exactly where I am supposed to be, but yet realization that this doesn’t make everything suddenly peachy.

It’s the feeling of being normal.

 

It is this last point that is most interesting to me. I can honestly say that I feel there is nothing abnormal about our lives. The street I walk down is a 15-minute gauntlet of these feelings described above, and yet it all feels strangely normal. This is our world. This is life. And it is becoming increasingly difficult to imagine it any differently.

 

Ps. I warn you for those of you who see us on our first furlough coming up later this year, don’t make us out to be martyrs for the cause of Christ. If you do, we will quickly disappoint you. After all, we are nothing more than normal Christians, living life as God has given it to us, just like, we hope, you are.