Aside from living and working in a place where folks are overtly and covertly hostile, and being ever-conscious that folks are trying to kill me, I find it most disturbing to have a full bladder and have to get up and get fully dressed to leave the warm tent to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night...several times.  Gone, it seems, are the days when I could pee one time before bed and not have to get up again until the sun came up.  *Sigh*  And yet, among many blessings is the fact that the facilities are only across the street and not several miles down the road, praise God.  Oh, the horror stories.  The horror stories.

And HALLELUJAH (or however you spell it) that there has been running water on most days.  Thank Jesus for sparing me the ordeal of the port-a-john.  I even hated writing that.  Lord only knows how I'd survive 300+ days, several times a day in that thing.

All that to say this:  Perspective can be a glorious thing.  Sure, clarity is most often a bitch, but it is invaluable for sorting through the rubbish of this precious, precious life.

From one minute to the next, I don't know if I'm standing next to the guy who's planning the next IED attack, or if he just wants to get a tomato and cheese omelet.  And I try not to give much thought to the possibility of being in the wrong place at the wrong time when the next random rocket is fired, try to resist the urge to rip a new asshole into the inconsiderate heffas who don't know the meaning of combat showers or flushing their own waste down the freakin' toilet, try to treat each day here as any day anywhere else but here, because the truth is that anything could happen to anybody anywhere.

But the truth also is that there will be days and nights where sleep won't come easily, and so I jot down my thoughts, hoping my bladder doesn't refill itself before I'm able to lie down and get some fast sleep before I have to jump up and run across the street in a dancing tight.  For some reason, I always wait until I'm in a dancing tight to get up and go pee.  *Shrugs*

Every few minutes of the day, I'm praying, "Lord, Jesus, please keep us safe."  If you read this, and you pray, feel free to pray with me.

Funny how it took me all these years and a trip halfway around the world to learn to weigh and measure properly the people and things who matter and those that don't.  Funny how I am now in a better place than I've been in a very long time.  I can only hope that others won't take as much time or distance to say and (and mean) good riddance to bad rubbish.

Here's to perspective and clarity.  To the people and things they help us to appreciate and to put away.  The sooner, the better.