(Extra)ordinary // some Thursday thoughts

It’s easy to fall into the “Gap Yah” mentality (which I think I was in a little before I came to Peru). The feeling that every day should be filled with adventure, excitement and crazy experiences. My camera should be full of photos of incredible scenery, exotic foods and fun with new people. My tan should be coming on nicely, my journal full of memories and I should be always happy and living the dream with my lack of responsibilities for these few months.

Right?

Not so.

I love life here. But it’s not all fun, smiles and monumental experiences. In fact it’s becoming pretty normal. Stay somewhere long enough and the extraordinary becomes ordinary, I guess.

My very wise and wonderful dad wrote in a letter to me, which I first read on the plane out of the UK and is now stuck on the wall beside my bed, that “there will be highs and lows and probably a lot of mundane stuff”…and boy, was he right. Our weeks consist of lesson planning, worksheet making, youth group planning, reading books, listening to music (and singing, obvs), music practice, taking team members to the clinic (!), eating lots of rice, having meetings with Warmis and attending women’s/kids workshops, teaching English lessons and running said youth group, many taxi journeys, watching films and sleeping. Sure, it’s not the life I was living in Redhill, but it’s my everyday, normal life now.

Mother Theresa said, “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.” Another of my favourite Mother T sayings has a similar theme: “Be faithful in the small things, because it is in them that your strength lies.” That’s what I’m learning. Life isn’t all adventure and memory making. It’s the day to day that matters and is what we spend most of our life in. Persevere. Plod on. God is in the mundane and the ordinary. Jesus lived on earth for 33 years. Not every moment of that was filled with miracles, teaching and healing people. If the Son of God had to eat, travel, sleep, plan and do the stuff of everyday life, it’s pretty certain that we do to.

I’m reading a brilliant book at the moment called “Follow Me to Freedom” by Shane Claiborne and John Perkins (thanks Em!), where they talk about being an ordinary radical. I love that. I’m an ordinary girl living my (most of the time) pretty ordinary life, but that can be radical and world-changing because I follow an incredible, radical, transformative God.

He is building His Kingdom through our faithful plodding, one day, one person at a time. What an amazing God we follow.

(P.S. We’ve been here 2 whole months…WHAAAT?!?)