There are Times...

There are times when I dream what life would be like if there was no internet. What would life be like if I lived in a place where I could get up each morning put on my cotton dress and walk to church early in the morning on a dusty road in my leather sandals with no care in the world but to prepare the next meal..to stop on the way home at the roadside market and pick up fresh bread and walk back home and then spend the day with my hands tending the garden taking in all of the sights and sounds around me.

This is not our life. But I do feel blessed to live in a place where early morning I can at least take my cup of coffee outside while our dogs romp around and check in on how our garden is coming along thinking to myself I hope to sometime in the future..maybe sometime this week pull a few weeds.

Instead, our life is filled with running..running a race that is so far removed from what I have ever imagined. There hasn’t been a day in years where a plan for the day hasn’t been changed midstream or interrupted , where a curve ball hasn’t been thrown, or where an unlikely situation hasn’t occurred.

I am a planner. I don’t like change. I don’t like curve balls. I am an introvert. I like the day to unfold as I have planned it out. I am impatient. I have a temper. And the biggest one? I really don’t like loud music…especially drums being played in my livingroom. I adore early morning quietness. I am the last person someone would pick to play this part in life.

For me, our little family is not the family that would have planned this particular journey either…it kind of just happened out of our love for music. We are just like everybody else, we fuss and fight with each other, we disagree, our tempers flare, we get tired, we all talk at the same time, sometimes we get on each other’s nerves. But somehow we’ve been called to do this together.

We have passion. We have purpose. If we fall, we pick ourselves up and keep going setting our eyes on the goal. We can’t seem to turn off the faucet that keeps pouring music into our home, the music that so many hear on the internet and at performances.

There are days when I want to stop…to stop talking on the internet…to live life simply…to be like everybody else and not plan for the future but to live life like we used to when the kids were little, when nobody knew us, when I wrote down plans for the day and they happened with no interruptions. But instead our life is completely encompassed in work. I am not complaining for our lives our not our own. We belong to God. Everyday we ask him to take us to where He wants us to go and He does and we feel blessed. I came to the realization a long time ago that our life would not be a quiet one. I knew in my heart one morning in church 6 years ago as I sat there that things would change. Our life was quiet then. I don’t know how I knew because nothing in our lives at the time showed us that. That moment was a gift to me preparing me to learn how to not only cope but to embrace the future.

I still dream that dream of that early morning walk and welcome the peace it brings me knowing that dreams are dreams that someday really could come true.