Today is one of those days when I literally ACHE to have my own home. For years and years we have lived as nomads, changing rental locations every few months or years. This is just the lifestyle of missionaries. I joke that moving frequently keeps you clean. When I look at pretty things in stores I resist the urge to buy by thinking about having to sell it or pack it or move it in a few months. Yuck, suddenly “pretties” lose their attraction.
I really do love my life. I am doing exactly what I have always wanted to do. I am proud of us as a family for thriving in another culture. I am fulfilled and happy in my life and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I have wings to fly and no weights holding me bound to this earth!
But there are days when wings don’t feel like enough. There are times when I think I would like roots instead of wings. When I see friends on Facebook posting pictures of their new houses, I feel jealous. When I see others making pretty Pintrest crafts to adorn their newly remodeled kids’ bedrooms, I feel jealous. Then I remind myself that Pintrest is a gateway drug to hoarding, and I shut off the Internet.
I feel like a 2 year old, spiritually speaking. “I want what I have AND what you have.” On these petulant days, I have to be deliberate in my thankfulness or I will start feeling sorry for myself. I pull myself out of my rumination and look around for something to trigger the avalanche of thankfulness that I am sure is hovering over my head in the spirit realm. I seize upon the parrots swooping noisily over my yard and I am thankful. I feel the tropical breeze cooling my rental house and I am thankful that it is 75* and not -10*. I notice the paint peeling off the side of our house and I am thankful, in a perverse way, because I don’t have the responsibility to scrape and paint that wall. I watch my children run around our yard, and I know that we are blessed by Costa Rican standards to have such a large yard. I look at the high wall surrounding our house. It is topped with electrical fencing and razor wire. I feel safe living here, and that is something else to be thankful for.
Does the bird complain about the weight of wings? Never. She blissfully rises into the sky without a thought of what she might be missing down below. The bird is content with her fragile, little nest because most of the time she is soaring above the clouds instead of puttering around indoors.
I bend my thoughts to the sky. I pull my mind out of the dirt where it is trying to suck water from the dry ground. I stretch my soul towards the heavens and rise on the warm thermal drafts of thankfulness. Up and up, higher and higher I fly. I have wings, for what do I need roots? Today I declare in faith, “I am content to fly.”
Photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/courosa/5788131697/”>courosa</a> / <a href=”http://foter.com/Kids/”>Foter.com</a> / <a href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/”>CC BY-NC-SA</a>
Monkeys in My Bag 