I'm a
little over halfway through the third decade of the time God has
granted me on Earth. My life is better, worse and different than,
yet the same as I had imagined or at least hoped that it would be.
My
sophomore year of high school, I had an English teacher who asked us
to write a letter to ourselves about where we would be and what we
would be doing ten years from that moment. I don't remember what I
wrote, but it was probably something generic about how I'd have
graduated from college and have a normal job. A normal life, you
know? Whatever normal is. All I know now, is that I certainly
didn't write that I would be married to a romantic, outgoing,
break-dancing doctor. And while that doctor saves lives in a remote
village in the Amazon rainforest, I would be raising our daughter in
a large city in a South American desert.
Another
lesson in that English class taught me that “the best laid plans of
mice and men often go awry.” While we spend
time doing certain jobs or internships or taking specific classes
that are supposed to eventually help us get to where we want to be
going, our path may not be straight and the destination we have in
mind may not even exist. When I finished college, I was Kenya
bound and then would travel to Peru for my year with a Fulbright
Grant. Upon completion of that prestigious opportunity, I would
return home and lead a normal life. Well, there you have it again.
Normal. What's normal? Whatever it is, I didn't achieve the normal
life in the Midwest that I had imagined.
Just in
the past couple of weeks, the three of us each encountered something
unexpected.
While
returning to our house from a nearby bakery, I decided to cross the
street with Iris to avoid an extremely low hanging live electrical
wire. Paying little heed to the woman at the other end of the block
who had her back turned to us, we naively continued on our way. Just
before reaching the barefooted individual, a horrible stench reached
our nostrils. Stepping out in the street to go around the alleged
epicenter of the foul odor, we looked over to see the elderly woman
churning the sewage below the sidewalk with a stick as if she were
churning butter. Who would have thought? Why anyone would do such a
thing is something I will likely never know and probably never want
to know.
Meanwhile,
Igor continued to survive the Amazon. What I'm about to tell you may
make you chuckle, but it is no joke in jungle to encounter creatures
when one has no idea as to whether or not they are venomous. Seated
in his room, Igor saw his family of geckos getting their fill of
insects near the window. He noticed something that he'd never seen
before, just as it burst into his room and began to screech. Making
an incredibly loud sound that he described as “the screeching of a
bird”, the butterfly-like insect with a one foot long wingspan
swooped around his room. Fearing the foreign critter, he covered
himself in clothing to protect himself and went to battle with a
bucket and broom. After five minutes, Igor won the war and threw the
corpse outside. Igor learned about that creature as a few nearby
boys began to howl with laughter that the doctor had been frightened
by a giant cicada. One creature that wasn't dangerous. Hopefully
the next one isn't either.
Iris,
too, was startled by an insect. She normally is filled with
curiosity about most things and tries to get her hands on everything,
but a large tan-colored cricket flew onto her toys and the onto the
wall next to her as she looked and let out a yelp hoping I would
rescue her from the terrible thing. I did. She clung to me while we
captured Señor Grillo (as we named him) and helped him out the
window.
All of
this is just to say that I have millions of ideas about what may
happen in my life, yet little to no direction for the future and at
this point couldn't even write a letter to myself about where I'll be
in two years. My plans barely extend to next week when I intend to
fly to another continent with a ten-month-old as my travel companion
to watch my brother marry his best friend.
Life.
Always an adventure.
I'd
love to read a line or two from you in the comments section about how
your life differs from what you may have previously planned or
imagined!
