Short Trip, Long Thoughts

I just got back from a two-day conference working on an EFL program with a friend of mine from back in my Indiana University days. It was a lot of hard work, and I think my brain leaked out my ears sometime late this afternoon. I am drained.

After I finished up working with my friend, I went across town to see my best friend so we could have dinner. Even as close as we live to each other, we just don't see each other very often. We live less than 90 minutes away, but life just gets so busy.

These two days have been thought-provoking. My Indiana friend and his wife are missionaries currently serving in France. Just hearing about their life and work made me want to be back overseas. He asked me a couple of questions that made my life here seem so....small...somehow. That wasn't his intention, of course; he's absolutely not the kind of person to cast aspersions on anybody's life.

One of the questions he asked me was what I do with my time, other than teach. I told him that I'm usually at school until 4 or 5, that two nights a week I have a night class, and that the other nights, I usually come home and fall down. When I said it, I thought to myself, "And this, THIS, is my life? It can be summed up in three phases, all of which involve teaching in some way?" I feel very confused right now.

He also asked me where I see myself in 5 years. I don't know the answer to that question. I never have. I can barely see into next year, much less in five years. I've learned that I can't even guess the places God is going to take me in five years, and I've sort of stopped trying to figure it out. If I keep living the way I am right now, though, I think the answer is going to be very, very simple: in five years, I will be exactly the same save the silver in my hair.

The next great weird-out came when I was at dinner with my best friend, her husband, and their two little boys. I was watching her boys be preschool boys (they're a hoot) when another little face peered around the corner of the booth. A moment later, a family made up of a harried looking mother and father and a toddler boy sat in a booth nearby. A woman then walked her three-ish little girl past on the way to the bathroom. Everywhere I looked, there were parents and little kids. I felt like I had been set down on an alien world where I had no part. Am I ever going to have that?

I have some things to think about right now. I am not going to run off and join the circus or anything, but I'm not comfortable with all the things that the past two days have stirred up.