red special birthday plate.

today has been a difficult day. if i'm being quite honest with you all, it has been extremely difficult. for a variety of reasons and due to several very different factors; today has just been a hard, long day. and actually quite random.
i'm not entirely sure what started it all out.
maybe it's the fact that i am supposed to leave my house at 7:35 for work and i woke up at 7:22 this morning because the volume on my alarm had been turned all the way down. awesome.
maybe it's the fact that i felt all out of sorts from the beginning.
but today, wednesday, september 19th has been a very "out of sorts" day.

it happens every day. every hour of every day. my mind wanders to them.
what are they doing right now? what are they laughing at? what are they working on?
but today, today my mind wandered much more than normal.
to the point that i became quite tearful on several occasions while at work, which is highly unlike me. and honestly has never happened before.
but today, today they were all that my mind could think about.
why?
i have no idea.
but the literal ache in my heart was just too much.
the obvious distance between us was just too much.
the fact that i am here and not there was just too much.
and my heart was really, really sad.

next week is my 27th birthday.
i am not exactly sure looking back on my life what i thought turning 27 years old would look like.
but i am excited to be 27. i love my life. i love the people in my life. i love my life.
but i am not excited to be turning 27 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. if the truth be told.
i will do fun things and laugh with my sweet family and friends, sure. but none of those things are what my heart and soul are longing to do...so the thought of "celebrating" here kind of just makes me sad. and slightly nauseous.

i want to be sung to in French.
i want to dance around the gazebo to the beat of the drums.
i want to eat rice and fish off the red special birthday plate.
i want to get handwritten notes on white paper ripped out of a notebook.
i want to be there.

but tonight, i am not there. i am in Tulsa, Oklahoma. and i just got home from helping my 12-year-old nephew with his math homework. and although it wasn't exactly like helping 30 African children with their homework under the one light in the gazebo powered by the generator, it made my heart smile. so even if life doesn't look 100% what i want it to look like right now; i am thankful that God provides opportunities for my heart to smile even after days like today. because i may not be spending my 27th birthday in Benin with the children of Arbre de Vie, but i am confident i will spend at least one of my birthdays there. and even though next week i won't be able to eat my cake on the red special birthday plate, i will smile as i eat GG's homemade brownies and hum "Happy Birthday" to myself in French. because sometimes, even after long, hard days, we have to rely on even the littlest things in our lives to make our hearts smile.