We celebrated Chinese New Year with our American friends in Honduras. They have three adpoted Chinese children. The food was picked up from Thai King- a local place that makes “Chinese”-even “tacos del chino” or eggrolls. You can’t have a much more cross-cultural experience than that.
Later I reflected on the transient nature of the expat community. My kids are also part of that TKC group. During the 70′s while I watched shows like “The Waltons” and “Little House on the Prairie” I dreamed of my ownplace out in the country where my family would grow up and stay. God has a sense of humor, my Dad would say, because other than those few years in small town Tennessee my childhood fantasy has become quite another thing as an adult. I wouldn’t change it, but there are days when it’s unsettling to be rootless.
Over the weekend we hosted an event at the school, a competition for the high schoolers where they were quizzed on a wide scope of knowledge. Trading off babysitting responsibilties with daughter #2 we went alternately to the matches or stayed here. Inside. All.weekend. long. Yup, I was a feeling a little claustrophobic with construction workers out front and in my side yard and hundreds of kids from other schools all over the campus. Reminded me of that time at the end of carrying my kids when I felt claustrophobic in my own skin. No where to go to get away from it. There are days when living the way we do is a stretch. When I long for a car and wide open spaces. And it’s a challenge to choose joy and go forward when what I want to do is watch old “Waltons” episodes and hide.
As we approach the season of Lent I’m reminded of how very little I truely give up. How seldom I deny myself by choice. Today on FB someone had posted this quote by CS Lewis, “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking about yourself less.” Moments of contemplation are not wrong. But spending a large part of your time considering your own self is such a waste. My verse for memory this week is Jude 24 and 25, “Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with EXCEEDING JOY, to GOd our Savior, who alone is wise, be glory and majesty, dominion and power both now and forever Amen.”