Extraordinary Average

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a Bougainvillea bloom on one of the roads where I live
I sit on my bed after a full day.  My wet hair dangles around my face and I contemplate the peeling nail polish on one hand while I scratch one of my more than twenty mosquito bites with the other.  I can hear the bat flapping out of the guava tree in my front yard and night sounds pile up outside my cantilever windows like cans down an alleyway. Sometimes I’m amazed when I think about where I live and the work I do. I feel so average most of the time and tonight I certainly look it.

But then I get to thinking about it. I live on an island in the South Pacific. Every day I speak a language other than my heart language and I emerge from my house to hibiscus and banana trees in the heart of a valley nestled among jagged, jungle-covered mountains. I walk down a dirt road and walk into a clinic that routinely sees malaria, dengue, ameobaisis, tuberculosis and other tropical disease along with everything from sprained ankles to significant trauma and everything in between. On any given day I can do everything from counting pills and checking in patients to performing lab tests and sutures. I guess its not so average after all, even if it feels that way sometimes.

I want to be that way in my spiritual life too. Not just my ministry, but my private spiritual life. Its easy to be busy and look like you’re have an extraordinary ministry. But if my personal spiritual life is average or sub-par than all the external isn’t worth a hill of beans. In fact, it will all start unraveling at the edges the moment something unexpected happens. Like a house of cards it will come tumbling down around my ears in a flurry of changed expectations and unfulfilled plans. So lately, I’m trying to take the time to sit on my bed and contemplate my chipping nail paint so that I can take times like that to talk to God. Only He can take my average and make it extraordinary.

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