I've wanted to live in Latin America since my first trip to El Salvador the summer after my freshman year of high school. In fact, I'm fairly certain my pastor thought he was going to have to return to Indiana and tell my parents that I'd decided to stay.
(Don't worry, Mom. I haven't cancelled my flight home yet. That's not where this is going.) Still, living two months in Nicaragua has been hands down one of the best experiences of my life. It's like I moved to Cloud Nine for the summer and realized it was everything I had ever imagined and then some.
But I was disappointed to find that Cloud Nine has mosquitoes. And not just mosquitoes, it also has flies, giant cockroaches, tarantulas, scorpions, and mice. Oh, and don't forget the drunk men that sit on the street corners and wolf-whistle as you pass by.
Looking back, it seems silly, but this has been my dream for so long that I was surprised to find that it wasn't perfect. I knew on a "head level" that there were going to be hard parts and things I could do without, but on a heart level I was slightly disappointed that my dream was being tainted by reality. After a few weeks of settling and adjusting, I admit that I slowly began to think of my life here as "normal." Instead of marveling that God had provided for me to have something that for so long had been a desire of my heart, I was caught on the tiny details that didn't match my vision for how things would go.
So I suppose in more ways than I'm willing to admit, I'm an Israelite. It's always shocked me that only two chapters after the Lord parted the Red Sea that they might escape their captivity in Egypt, the Israelites are already whining: "If only we had died by the Lord's hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted..." (Exodus 16:3).
How did they so quickly forget the years they spent begging the Lord to free them of Egypt? Did they not believe that He who sent plague after plague to breakdown their captors would remember them now that they had been freed? What caused the chronic lack of trust that so quickly turned thanksgiving to whining?
And then I must turn around and ask the same of myself. Was it not just three months ago I was on my knees begging the Lord to provide for the logistics of this trip? And now here I am, letting the mountains God moved to get me here be overshadowed by a handful of mosquitoes and the mouse that ran under my bed a month ago.
I refuse to let my dream-come-true be ruined by the fact that it actually came true. Instead, I will praise God that He has brought me to a place beyond my wildest dreams and trust that He will provide the endurance for the parts that aren't quite as I'd imagined them. I refuse to allow myself to have an attitude of entitlement about the ways my God has blessed me.
So, hello from Cloud Nine. It's wonderful here... And yes, there are mosquitos. But I have a God who is bigger-- and lots and lots of bug spray.
