Our family recently completed our move to Texas. By “completed” I mean we’ve spent most of the last year in Texas attending two missionary training schools at YWAM-Tyler. But following God’s call to join the staff at YWAM-Tyler, our official move to Texas just happened a couple of months ago. Our lives as we knew them were packed up into a 8’ x 16’ storage container and at 5’ x 10’ cargo trailer, just waiting to be unpacked into our new reality. As we arrived at our rental house we quickly got to work unloading boxes and bins, toys and tools, furniture and mattresses.
Amy and I finally went to bed in what will be our house for the next year. So I quickly drifted off to sleep, right? Not so much. As I laid there my mind began recollecting and calculating. I was pretty sure it had been one year to the night we had last slept in our bed! Pondering this revelation set me on a tangent where I recalled all of the different places I had slept in the previous year. So I began counting. Assuming I hadn’t forgotten any, I came up with 26. On average, that’s a different bed approximately every two weeks for a year. Here’s a summary that might help put it in perspective:
- Most nights were spent in two different beds at Dorm #3 at YWAM-Tyler
- 9 different hotel beds (Little Rock-twice, Tyler-TX, Dallas, Colorado Springs, North Platte-NE, Davenport-IA, Dearborn, Searcy-AR)
- 9 different host homes (Thank you family and friends!)
- 2 Bunk Beds (YWAM-Tyler cabin, YWAM-New Orleans)
- Several nights on cots
- 2 sofa beds
- One night on a bus in Brazil
- One night on an airplane back from Brazil
- Beds in 21 different cities, 9 states, and 2 countries
Of all of the beds in which we’ve slept during the last year, one probably stands out the most. When our family arrived in Canapi, Brazil last September, we were shown to what would be our home for the next month. Our family occupied roughly 600 square feet of upstairs space in a small house that included an open landing, two small bedrooms, and a bathroom.
So, what about the bed? I’m sure our nearly 24 hours of travel and the exhaustion that ensued skewed my initial opinion about how comfortable the bed was. Let me just say it was a bit firm. Actually, really firm…like no mattress I had ever slept on before. I like a firm mattress. I hated this one. It sat beneath a window (without screens) that, due to the mid 90 to low 100 degree temperatures most days, needed to be open at night (that’s right, no air conditioning). It turns out that crickets in Brazil are of the flying variety. It seems like they spend at least as much time in the air as on their legs. So, open window + flying crickets = discovering crickets in bed occasionally.
By the way, I didn’t mention that the bathroom could only be accessed through the bedroom shared by me, Amy, Titus (who had a pack ‘n play squeezed into the corner), and our board…I mean mattress. And if you haven’t traveled to many places outside the United States, let me explain a couple of things about bathrooms. Toilets are only supposed to get flushed when they receive solid waste (to conserve water), and toilet paper doesn’t get flushed, it gets thrown in the trash (don’t get me started on foreign plumbing). The result is the occasional wafts that result emanating from the bathroom while we lie on our bamboo mattress and try to sleep.
You might be wondering why I’d be (seemingly) wasting your time to tell you about beds. Why do I feel like it’s important for me to share about sleeping on an uncomfortable mattress in a sometimes smelly room that may or may not have crickets? Let me share something I’ve learned in the last year or so: Living smack dab in the middle of God’s will for our lives and for His purposes has a way of transforming even the most unfortunate circumstances and uncomfortable surroundings into something so beautiful and so fulfilling. While the sleeping accommodations were less than ideal in many of the places we’ve stayed in the last year, they in no way influence the fondness of our memories from those places. In fact, our experiences in these places make our memories or our sleeping arrangements seem more fond.
Smelly cricket-room: so what…ministry in Brazil was life-changing. Squeezing our family of nine into a small hotel room: no problem…our life on the road is full of opportunity to share the love of Jesus. Sleeping on cots in a basement: whatever…we’ve had such sweet, sweet times of fellowship with family and friends. Bunk beds in a cabin: bring it on…so many amazing relationships were built living in community with others. Our lives are so full and we feel so blessed to be living our lives of ministry, it has a way of making every circumstance and memory a precious one. Even sleeping on bamboo, or a couch, or a plane, or a bus…
