It was mid-day in the peak of the hot Malawian sun, making water run #who-knows-what-at-this-point, about halfway up the final hill of the mile-long stretch. 20 liters of water on my back (this is real heavy), thick sand shifting under my feet with every step, my crooked shoulders feeling like they have about had it. I stop and bend over, shifting the weight to rest on my back. The sun still beating, I look straight down at my feet caked black with dirt, sweat drips off my face and down my sun-burned arms. All alone, I smile. I smile big, and all I can think is, “how the heck did I get here.”
I don’t know how, but oh do I love it.
I’m all about moments. I love the moments in my average every-day African life that I can’t help but stop and laugh. When I can’t help but stop, and smile, and realized how blessed I am.
I don’t want to lose sight of this for a second.
Every single day of my life is made up of hundreds and hundreds of moments. Such photograph moments. Beautiful ones, incredible ones, challenging ones, painful ones, fulfilling ones. I love them all, I want to cherish them all.
I don’t want to carry water for an entire mile in the blazing sun without even stopping to think how ridiculous it is. I don’t want to sit crunched in the bed of a pick-up truck with 19 other people and not stop and realize how funny it is. I don’t want to look down at a dinner plate full of sun-dried, fermented, little minnows, with their dead, beady little eyes looking back up at me, and not stop and contemplate how disgusting that is.
I love the times where I have stood knee-deep in endless Lake Malawi surrounded by mountains and horizon lines and just paused and admired the beauty. I love the dusks where I have sat out on the cement sewer cap by the house and gotten lost in the peace of the sunset. I love the nights where I lay on the floor of the roofless kitchen and stare up at the stars as we worship. I love every time I go somewhere and hear the children smile and laugh and yell “mzungu, mzungu!” I love the blistering hot afternoons that I sit in our room and literally just sweat. I love the times before meals where the 22 of us laugh. I love the mornings we spend working, the afternoons we spend dancing (and then working some more). I love the times I sit on the pile of bricks behind our house in pure silence. I love looking down at dark smiling faces and deep brown eyes. I love every hug and handshake with the mamas just sitting on their front porches.
I love the moments where I can feel God tapping me on the shoulder, “Stop and take it in.” Stop and make a point to remember this.
I may not feel it at 5:30am when a teammate wakes me up to go fetch water from the well, but every single moment is a blessing. No matter how tired I am, how beautiful it may be, how gross it may be, how much I may miss things about home. I thank God for these moments, and I want to take in every single one and live it to its fullness. Because one month from now, freezing in Connecticut, these are the moments that I am going to think of, and these are the things that I am going to miss. I don’t want to wait until afterwards to realize that these moments were worth cherishing. I am here right now, and they are so worth cherishing. I am here in southeastern Africa, in blistering hot, breathtaking Malawi. I walk, I work hard, I laugh, I cry, I sweat…
And I don’t want to miss a single moment of it.
