A comfortable life

(This month marks 5 years that we have been living in Zambia. I have had several different trains of thought so maybe a few blogs on the subject. ) 

5 years ago we said our goodbyes, through many tears and some excitement as well at what lay ahead. We slept our last night in our home that we built and expected to raise our family in. We left our dear friends Larry and Trenda standing on our front porch as we loaded up to leave. 

The same front porch that for hours we sat on and watched the kids play in the front yard. Running barefoot in the green grass, flying kites in the wind, eating pizza spread out on picnic blankets, sledding down the hill into the neighbors yard, building snowmen and throwing snowballs, Birthday parties, water balloon fights, Basketball, and bike rides. Rocking in the rocking chairs and watching the sunset. 

And that was just the front yard.

Back yard was trampoline tricks and hours and hours on the pirate ship and swing set. Walks around the property into the woods and the back field. Skating on the makeshift pond, zip lining down from the treehouse. Picking wild blackberries, tending our baby fruit trees and hoping they would make it. Hiding in the hay bales, watching the deer and wild turkey, seeing the mist rise up in the evenings and the dew in the morning spread out across the ground. 

It was home. A place we belonged.

In a sense it was our little “kingdom”. Protected, safe, and focused mainly on our family, and being the best little (ok who am I kidding,  big) family that we could be. 

Home used to be a nice house, comfortable surroundings, conveniences, hot water, plenty of bathrooms and space for the children to run wild and free.  Beautiful landscape, familiarity, friends riding up on horses, bible studies in basements, desserts at the dinning room table and space.  Belonging and familiarity. 

Solitude, Peace, Quiet.  and, did I say comfortable? 

And now we live in a place we don’t belong, renting an old house that is home but feels nothing like home and laughing at the irony that of the 5 houses we have owned it is THIS rented house that we have lived in the longest. 

Home now, when I read what I just read above can’t even really be compared. In fact I almost started crying as I was reminiscing. 

Home (at least this month) is heat and rain and flies and waterbugs that find their way up into your drains, sinks and across your bedroom floor. It’s mosquitos and more mosquitos and having to bug spray yourself just to sit in your own living room and watch a movie at night. It’s looking out across the yard at concrete walls surrounding you and hearing the banging on gates at early hours of the morning. It’s campaign vehicles driving through your neighbor hood blaring their message across their loudspeakers. It’s mourners packed into mini-buses and on the back of trucks singing their songs as they go to the burials. It’s traffic, car horns and people walking and crowding everywhere. 

It’s the incompetence of government systems that some days are more than you can handle. It’s dust and dirt and weeds and mud. And sometimes having to just keep your head down and keep going. 

It’s stares and stares and stares. Stares that can be turned into big white tooth grins, but sometimes, many times, there is no desire to put forth the effort and give the energy to even get the smile. It’s houseworkers that in theory sound ideal and a luxurious, “oh I’ll just tell my maid to do it”,  but end up creating stress and sapping energy and resources out of you as well. Just existing and living at times can feel so much harder. There is nothing “comfortable” about living here. 

But, there must be something.

Something pulling, drawing us, keeping us these 5 years and compelling us on for the next 5, 10 or 15. 

There is a lot that we have “stayed” for. 

People, places, and “innocent” faces. 

Opportunities to be had and help to be given.

But maybe too, we have stayed so we could find our place.

Not someone else’s place for us. But ours. 

So we could find our new “comfortable” in a very uncomfortable place.   

We moved alot, changed alot, uprooted alot, but at some point we decide this is it. 

This is where we settle. This is our home. And sure, when compared to what we used to have, and what home used to be, its rough. No disagreements there. 

Maybe someday, if we move to a nicer house, have a nice kitchen with a dishwasher, bigger bedrooms, more bathrooms for the kids, 2 hot water heaters for showers, away from the congestion and noise and room to run wild and free. 

Then maybe we can say not only are we “comfortable” here. 

We are “living in comfort”.  I would take that one too. 

Just this month though, I have felt a sense of “comfortable” with our life and our friends. Like we finally have something here. We are not alone. It has taken time, but we have true and dear friends here. The friends that have become our support system in the absence of other dear friends and even dearer family. That now, as we hit the 5 year mark I feel comfortable with who we are, where we are, and where we are heading. 

It has been a rocky road to get there at times. But I can honestly say I haven’t ever thought, “get me out of here!”  Well, ....at least not in reference to out of Zambia. ;) 

There is a significant difference between living a comfortable life, AND

being comfortable with your life. The clear conscience, can rest well at night, who needs their own little kingdom or bubble away from the real world anyway, let’s all learn to think of others not so much ourselves,  it really and truly is ok when we mess up, live a little- actually live ALOT, have fun, we really are totally blessed, - “comfortable” LIFE. 

I now would take the latter over the former any day.  

And I thank God He has shown me the difference, here in AFRICA.