anything but ordinary

"is it enough to love?

is it enough to breathe?
somebody rip my heart out
and leave me here to bleed
is it enough to die?
somebody save my life
i'd rather be anything but ordinary please
to walk within the lines
would make my life so borin'
i want to know that i have been
to the extreme"

now i'm going to be real honest,  a part of me wishes i could lie and say that these lyrics come from this really cool indie band that no one has heard about and i'm just about to open up a whole new world of music to you and you'll have me to thank for your musical taste. but let's be honest, it's avril lavigne's "anything but ordinary" off of her debut album, let go.  what few people know about me is that i went through a weird phase circa 6th - summer before my 8th grade year of being a mixture of a punk/wangsta. i watched BET on a regular basis and listened to the likes of blink182 and good charlotte.  avril was definitely the coolest chick i had ever seen.  she was such a hard ass. i wanted to be her, and quite honestly, i thought i could be.  just like i thought i could be this really cool hip missionary who travels not only across the country but across the globe, feeding starving children, building houses and orphanages, creating sustainable communities in the poorest of third world countries. thetn i came out here and have realized that what i want to be, isn't necessarily what He wants me to be. yeah of course, i would love to say i've lived in darfur for 2 years building up an entire school and water system.  or that i've aided and cared for an old man in india dying of leprosy right alongside the missionaries of charity. and really, maybe i will be able to say those things, or parts of those things. but what i'm trying to say is i've missed the mark. i've missed the mark in realizing that it's not what you do, but how and why you do it. i'm going to be honest right now and say that i came out here completely for myself. to find myself, to prove to myself, to figure out myself. but these are none of the reasons why i am staying.  right now, i know i can go home if i really wanted to. and a lot of times i do. but i don't. and i don't really know why but i know that it's for some reason bigger than myself. 

but yeah, i've failed to realize over the last couple of years, that just because i have dreams for myself that involve me "helping others" doesn't mean that that's what i should be doing. if i think long and hard and ask myself why did i want to be a missionary in other countries or even in other states, i would have to answer honestly and say because it would be a cool experience for me. it would bring god closer to me. it would make me feel like i was doing something good. you see the pattern? me. not them. and more importantly, not Him.

this experience is allowing me to recognize how incredibly hard the ordinary things can be. but also how important they are.  you always hear talk of how this world needs more people who are willing to make a difference. you see, before now, i never even considered "normal, everyday people" as part of this equation. and if i did, i thought these people needed to change in order to become people who were going to make a difference. change the world. well changing the world and making a difference is so much more than ending world hunger and finding a cure for AIDS...if that makes any sense. to quote mother t like i always seem to do, "love begins at home, and it is not how much we do... but how much love we put in that action." love is more than doing the most radical thing you can think of. in fact, i'm starting to think that love is more so about the things you don't really want to do. but doing them for others. whatever that may be. it's not necessarily about being a radical doing the extraordinary and opposed to the ordinary as much as it's about being a radical doing ordinary things with an extraordinary amount of love. and that's why this experience has been so difficult for me so far. it's not what i'm doing that's so hard or radical. it's the fact that in order to do these things, i have to do them completely out of love. if i don't, they won't get done because i will have zero motivation to do any of these mundane, domestic tasks. and if i do do them, but not out of love, they will mean nothing to me or anyone else.

i guess what i'm trying to say is this is completely different than what i thought it was. this is not what i wanted or what i asked for. what i prayed about.  but i'm realizing that just because it's not the "glamorous life of a missionary college dropout" that i thought it would be, doesn't mean it's not the work of God and of love. because it is. completely. trust me, i don't think i would be here in this place where i know no one is He wasn't the one runnin the show here. there are already things i'm finding out about myself that would hinder me in doing missionary work in foreign places with great love. for example, my deep homesickness that i can't really seem to shake. of course i have my days. days where i'm so busy i don't even have time to think about my family and friends. but for the most part, my heart aches to be near them. to not only hear they love me but to feel it as well. i also am realizing more and more, that a wife and mother is what i want to be. and i believe what God wants me to be as well. i mean, the warning signs were endless: thinking my baby dolls were real, babysitting and loving every minute of it since i was 10, and sometimes even being "that girl" that looks at wedding pictures and baby names online. this yearning for the family and friends that got me to where i am and the desire to create a family of my own would not really be suitable for being a nomad, traveling country to country for years on end. tirelessly serving people i don't even know. i'm not saying i couldn't do it. i know, that through the Lord's strength, i probably could. but that doesn't mean i would do it well. i'm not really sure that my heart would be in it. like it is in other things like children and family.

so to all you out there that think like i have for so long...for those of you who think that the only thing you can do to follow God and be an example is to start a nonprofit organization and bring education to an entire country, please reconsider. not the actions, but the intentions. the reasons why. i'm not telling you that you can't do those amazing things, in fact, i'm sure you can. but just think about it. let your soul sit in the heart of the Lord and realize itself. sometimes you just have to let Him bring things to you instead of you bringing things to the world in order to find Him.  we must seek Him, but we must seek Him within ourselves. and sometimes, you find that you do something radical in order to truly know that it's the everyday ordinary things that make such an immense impact.  a dear friend said something on the phone tonight that has been stuck in my head ever since. "it's not the things that you do, those things disapear.they are forgotten. it's the spirit that is remembered and lives on." beautiful right? yeah, i have insightful friends.

small things. great love. tiny teensy eentsy things. big gigantic huge love.