An Idealistic Childhood

Sometimes I like to lay around and feel bad that I have totally messed up my kids because of the decisions my husband and I have made about living overseas.

After all, I am forcing them to give up a 'normal' childhood. We brought them both home from the hospital to our typical house in the States. It was nestled on 5 acres out in the country, 1/2 way between two great West Michigan cities. It was an all brick ranch. It had all original oak wood floors. There was a barn on the property. There was a mini-fruit orchard in the backyard. A home-made swing hanging from a big branch. When I would come get my small boy out of bed in the morning, I would often find him laying on his stomach with his head propped up on his hands, looking out the window and watching deer walk through our backyard. It would have been a typical mid-western up bringing. An idealistic childhood.

Then we moved.
And sometimes I start feeling all bad about the 'good' things my kids may be missing out on.

Then I find stuff like this in my kids notebook and I don't feel so bad anymore.

Translation: I skipped school and went to Little Petra. There are lots of caves. And everyone knows that there are lots of mountains. I like goats. I pet a Billy Goat. I saw a donkey. I climbed a mountain. I went to Little Petra, not Big Petra, Little Petra. And a Bedouin that had no teeth that was cross eyed.

{Just so you know, the Bedouin that had no teeth and was cross eyed was from a different trip we took. For some reason, she felt the need to document it on this trip, however.}

Little Petra, not Big Petra, Little Petra

Stuff like that makes me think of all the things my kids are gaining from this wonderful adventure we call our lives.

• they have friends from around the world, I can count 10 nationalities off the top of my head!
• they eat all kinds of things and don't complain
• they have strong immune systems!
• they are aware of world news and world history in a way I never was at their ages
• they see people everyday that live in poverty and are often suggesting ways to me that we could help them
• they are exposed to different religions which allows them to contemplate their own journey of discovering who God is
• AND they get to skip school and hang out with toothless, cross-eyed Bedouins

What more could you ask for?

It may not be the idealistic mid-western childhood that I always imagined my kids having. But it is a surprisingly wonderful alternative.

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{A few days after I posted this, my sister wrote this beautiful piece on our childhood.}