hanging in there and a fun dinner.

I am slowly beginning to emerge from the fog.

I spent almost the entire week holed up in our second-floor flat, battling sickness – first with every home remedy I could find on the Internet, then, finally succumbing to the usual antibiotics.

And now it is Sunday morning, and I feel the tiniest shred of energy seeping back into my bones.

Judah and Amelie have been sick this weekend too.

Judah had an upset stomach on Friday and threw up in the afternoon.  We had a invitation to our neighbors’ for dinner Friday night, and we briefly considered keeping him home, but I think we were all four so desperate to be out and mingling with the world – even if just the world on the seventh floor – that we took him anyway. 

We met these neighbors, Srinivas and Archana, at our community’s Republic Day carnival.  They were friendly and interesting and have lived here in our city for sixteen years – which is longer than most people we meet. 

They invited us and another family from our building over at 7:30 on Friday evening.  Their penthouse-flat – just an elevator ride away – is like something out of a movie, or a magazine.  It is completely South Asian, with its ornate Hindu décor, heavy carved teak furniture, terra cotta tile and cushions for seats, and the faint smell of incense hanging in the air.  In the living room was a real bench swing suspended from the ceiling, which Judah and Amie were amazed by. 

But the very best part of the flat was the terrace.  All of the seventh-floor flats have a huge terraced balcony at the top, and this one was its own separate, magical world.  It was a maze of plants and trellises and rustic benches and a picnic table and twinkle lights.  Breath taking.  When Srini said he takes his morning cup of coffee up there, I wanted to die of envy.

We spent a leisurely evening up on the terrace eating samosas and crackers with plum sauce, and talking about travel and Shakespeare and our city’s sudden population explosion – while David and I played tag team trying to keep the Judah and Amelie from destroying anything too expensive.  Each family had a little girl — one eight and one four — who played with the kids.  We didn’t eat dinner until almost ten o’clock.  This group, typical-Hindu, is vegetarian, so dinner was two kinds of vegetable pasta, bruschetta, and a pear-and-vegetable salad.  I brought brownies and cookies for dessert.

Friday night was a bright spot in this long week.  We hunger for meaningful connections with our South Asian neighbors.  We love our team, but we are lonely.  It’s hard being the new-kids-on-the-block.  We want so badly to be enfolded in this community we’ve found ourselves in.  And that takes time.  As our friend Jon said the other day over Skype, there is an organic nature to relationships — they are grown, not built — that simply cannot be rushed.

Thank you for praying for us, in these hard, homesick days.

God is using you to encourage us, with your prayers and your words.  I know you may not think it, but when you share your stories of your own struggling and his faithfulness, it helps us. 

It is easy for me to begin to think that if I were only back home, everything would be so much better.  But then I talk to you and realize there is no magical place where we are trial-free – and even if there were, that is not good for us.  Or, as Donald Miller says, without conflict there is no story.  I listen to you, who are struggling with loneliness or depression or relational conflict or homesickness or poor health, who are also having to choose between what is safe and taking up your cross, and I see that God is giving you the grace you need just like he is giving it to us.

Thanks for being honest.  Thanks for keeping us, a whole world away, part of your lives. 

Thanks for sticking with this long, meandering post to the end. 

Much, much love.

P.S. Today we listened to “The Dead Man Came Out” from the pastor of one of our supporting churches, and it was bread for the soul.  Oh, how I want to enjoy Him more.