الحمد لله

One of my favorite phrases in Arabic is الحمد لله: alhamdulillah--"praise be to God." Muslims say this approximately every five seconds.

"How are you doing?"

"!الحمد لله"

"How is the food?"

"!الحمد لله"

"I'm getting married!"

"!الحمد لله"

"I'm getting divorced!"

"!الحمد لله"

While I imagine some people find this annoying, I love it. How beautiful for a language, for a people, to constantly be acknowledging the graciousness of our Heavenly Father.

***

One of my dearest friends, Tiffany Whitsitt, is on my hit list. You see, she introduced me to this new website called Pinterest. It allows you to catalog any picture you find on the internet and save it onto different pinboards you make . . . sort of like clipping out hundreds of pretty magazine pictures and having them all in one place.

While this is all well and good, there is a downside. More than any other website I've ever been to, Pinterest has the ability to make you really  ungrateful really fast. Think about it: A community of thousands of people collecting pictures of the world's most beautiful things into one inspirational megacenter. As you wander through page after page of gorgeous herringbone floors, tropical paradises, extravagant weddings, and unbelievable homes, it's terribly easy to get caught up in IwantIwantIwant.

***

When my family went to Ecuador this past January, we stayed at a lodge up the Amazon that was close to a small river community. Every day, we went down to the river to play on the rope swing with the village children. Despite the fact that this dinky little rope swing was one of the only sources of entertainment in their small community, I never saw these children fight or bicker over it. Everybody played together and laughed like I'd never heard before. Squealing giggles and screams of joy shot into the thick jungle air, tumbling along the steady water until the river curved and carried them away. They had nothing and everything.

Day after day, I played a made-up game with them called "La Coccodrilla"--I was a hungry crocodile wanting my dinner, and would stand on a rock lunging at the children as they swung by. With their abs of steel and ridiculous  upper body strength, they easily summoned the acrobatics necessary to evade me--I would splash into the river with a "Noooo!!!" as my jumps fell short time after time. And even underwater, I could hear peals of their sing-song laughter above.

Their joy made me  joyful, their laughter made me  laugh. I remember going to bed at night with awful headaches because I had been laughing so hard for so long with my whole soul.

These children will likely never see a room with herringbone wood floors, they'll likely never visit the Maldives. Their weddings will be modest, as will their homes. But what do they care?

But what do I care?

I have it all, already.

.الحمد لله