Gratitude

Here I am in Florida with my parents, catching up with them and learning about football, but other bits of my life have been shining through the windows with the Florida sun. Yesterday Megan drove here from West Palm with her son Jaeden, age two, whom I met for the first time. I remember sitting in Megan’s apartment in Oaxaca at our women’s Bible Study, praying for a baby for her, and here he is with luscious olive skin, warm brown eyes, and pale blond hair, chasing down the enormous cranes that live around the pond in the center of the village here. He falls in, of course. He has so much fun with Robert, driving the golf-cart, wrestling on the couch, walking on the banister, chasing cranes, that when it’s time to leave, he cries. That’s a new one for Robert, but excellent practice…I felt I was breathing in fresh air and beauty. It’s so true that being around children is refreshing, life-giving. I said, “It feels like being around “our” refugee family.” Robert said, yes, in one sense they are also like children—vulnerable, eager to learn, dependent on you, seeing everything with laughter and fresh eyes. I’d never thought about this.

Christmas pic

As we walk home, Jaeden happily sitting on Robert’s shoulders, getting him all wet, a car stops beside me. It’s Peter whom I haven’t seen in years, since he came to Oaxaca and photographed Monte Alban completely flooded with water, mirroring the sky. Peter creates training videos for organizations all over the world and has biked around just about every country on the planet, I think. We plan to get together the next day.

In the evening, we meet Petal and her family. Her son Julian has just graduated with a degree in engineering and a masters in management in just four and a half years of study. He is not only smart but very articulate. We are talking about how God does not win pyrrhic victories. This story that we all live has a hands down, unequivocably happy ending. It won’t be like the kind of victory the US would win if we had global, nuclear war. Rather, “His kingdom comes. His will is done, on earth as it is in heaven.” This happens!  The depth and calm and intensity of the conversation, and the give and take without someone getting angry and raising a voice in the slightest is as luscious a treat as the five course meal Petal laid out on the table. How good it is to talk about the things of God with joy and utter respect for one another, iron sharpening iron, “brothers dwelling in harmony.” Petal said she wishes we lived closer so we could have such conversations all the time. I would love this (and her cooking, too!) Some day, Petal. Some day.

Last night we walked over to where Peter is visiting his mother, Aunt Hazel, the missionary woman who welcomed us to Olanchito, Honduras, the very first day we arrived in 1965, and the only “aunt” I’ve ever really known. I was four. I remember it was Christmas, and when we walked into her home, she had a Christmas tree up. Peter and Rachel and Esther were so excited about gaining new playmates that they were jumping up and down on our newly-made beds. The energy had to go somewhere! Peter was a like a cousin to me. We were nonstop playmates and then schoolmates at Los Pinares, the boarding school we attended in Tegucigalpa, and our families spent many weekends, holidays, and retreats together. Eventually Peter joined me at Wheaton College, where he set up the Honduras project that goes on till today. Now he owns a company in Honduras, where he was born, lives in Madrid, and helps Christian NGOs all over the world think through the hard job of serving people and carrying the gospel cross-culturally. He makes me laugh like he always did. I am glad we have met up again.

As Peter said when we left, “I don’t regret anything about how I was raised. I’d do it all over again.” Looking back at these few days in Florida, the days with my parents, with Megan and Jaeden, with Petal and Julian, with Hazel and Peter, I realize what a rich life God has given me for having grown up in Honduras and worked in Mexico. It has shaped me in a way I would never exchange for anything. These friends remind me and fill me with strong gratitude.