Sometimes I get bored with my life overseas.
I still enjoy it, don’t get me wrong, it just loses the sizzle every now and then. The exotic allure of the “overseas” part gets pushed out by the humdrum realities of the just plain “life” part.
And then I hear myself talk and I’m like, “Who gets to do this?”
“John took Carl and I to the camel races before church on Friday” is my sentence of the week.
True story. He did.
We got up before the sun to go drive beside racing camels, honking our horn and yelling as if we had bet the farm on number six.
Carl yelled the loudest.
It was great — but maybe even greater was hearing the sentence roll out of my mouth and remembering —
I love this life.
I couldn’t even have imagined combining those words to form a thought in other stages of my life.
Like, maybe, if it was game night and we were playing some kind of speed round where you have to draw random words out of a bag and make a sentence before the sand runs out.
“Ummmmm.”
“Frank threw Bob and Sue over the purple airplane on St. Patrick’s Day!”
“Uhh! Uhhhhh!”
“Simon jumped on slimy watermelon at the birthday chicken!”
“Ahhhh! Hurry! Hurry!”
“John took Carl and I to the camel races before church on Friday!!”
“TIME!!”
“Ok, I’ll give you the airplane one but there’s no such thing as a birthday chicken and dude . . . who goes to church on Friday?”
Turns out . . . a bunch of people . . . all over the world. Which I never would have known apart from this life overseas.
And camel racing is a thing. Who knew?
And John and Carl — they’re like brothers. Would have missed that too.
And pausing . . .
Just for a moment . . .
On the exotic overseas bit . . . makes me remember how much I love the humdrum realities of the just plain life bits too.
I just told my daughter goodnight.
I love this life.
How about you? What’s the sentence that is true now that you never could have imagined as a younger you? What’s the single thought that resets your sense of overseas wonder? What’s sitting right in front of you that if you paused . . . and thought about just for a moment . . . would remind you just how much you love this life?
The End.
