birthday party.

Sunday night was my birthday party.  The girls –- Colleen and Keli and Maggie –- came at 8:00-ish.  Colleen set up all the little tea candles she brought around the living room and I turned on my new Regina Spektor album, and the four of us kicked back and relaxed.

We caught up on our week and talked about our favorite TV shows back home and ate the Death by Chocolate cake David got for us (Yes, that’s really what it was called.  And it was to die for).

David had asked the girls to come prepared to share a way that I point them to Christ, and so, as the evening wore on, they got down to business and did it.  I felt so awkward and embarrassed at first, but it ended up being the sweetest part of the night.  Maggie read something she wrote; the other two shared straight from their heart.

Their words made my heart swell up and my eyes get tearful.  They nourished my soul.

I think in those sacred moments, the four of us realized that we need each other’s words.  These things aren’t understood.  You have to say them out – because we never see them in ourselves.  On our own all we see are the ugliness and irritability and failures.

I believe we parted ways feeling that we will begin to say these words of affirmation — of Christ at work in us and using us — to each other more, both in the everyday and on the special days.  We want to make this a birthday tradition.

Sunday night was a gift.  These two months have been so hard, have been like a survival, and honestly many days I feel like I do not have the resources to look past my own needs and my family’s needs to really serve my teammates.

But God is showing me — I don’t just need to serve them, I need them to serve me.  And in my fiercely independent American way, that is the much harder pill to swallow.  I desperately need this community he has placed me in.  Perhaps I could survive here without them.  But I cannot grow and be stretched and be fully who he has made me to be without them.  It is humbling, but very good.

I love these girls.