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nine days in.
For all my talk of city-living, it turns out I’m still a girl from the suburbs. I arrived, for better or for worse, in my new neighborhood last Wednesday evening in a state of shock. Twenty-five minutes away, and it is a different world here, truly. It turns out that the thread of my confidence in living in South Asia was very tenuous indeed. Uproot me from my familiar little neighborhood, from Skyline apartments, and I am lost. I spent the first couple of days holed up in our apartment, kids bouncing off the walls, paralyzed by intimidation. It is loud here. It is crowded. Yes, all of South Asia…
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we’re moving!, part five.
“How are you feeling and how will the move affect your health?” I am feeling . . . much better. Not one hundred percent, but much, much better than I felt this summer. I know your faithful prayers are a big part of this. I still have bad allergies and headaches every day that range from mild to migraine. But we have noticed an overall improvement, and with my last two colds I have been able to fight off sinus infections with vitamins and herbs, which is a huge step. I’ve been talking to a couple of doctors who work for our mission agency, and they have given me some…
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on missing.
Our friends, John and Alison and Joshua and Caleb, are in North Carolina, saying their last good-byes and getting ready to board a plane to move to South Asia. A shiver courses through me as I think back on our own good-byes and leave-taking, just about this time last year. It is one of those experiences (both the leaving and the arriving) I look back on and think, How we did survive it? Yet, when we were living it, God’s grace was enough. Of course. But I surely don’t want to ever go back. When we left home, the grief just filled me up until I thought there wasn’t room…
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sick.
I have been sick for a week-and-a-half now. Thankfully the anemia is gone, but I’ve gotten two separate, violent stomach bugs and now I have a sinus infection. Is it getting kind of old, hearing about my health? It’s getting old writing about it. All of this illness leaves David and I at a loss. Right when I started to get out and about, to want to wear something other than sweatpants all day, to get a spring in my step, I got hit hard. We got hit hard—because it affects the whole family of course. It has to be my immune system. I am taking endless vitamins and supplements and drinking…
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a fine balance.
It’s sobering to write about a second car accident in a single month. Today I drove to a small grocery store fifteen minutes from our house. It’s on a corner of a busy intersection. I pass through the green light and pause on the other side, turn signal on, waiting to cross traffic into a parking space. As one opens, I look behind me, and just begin to turn the wheel when – WHAM! I see a flash of a sari and hear a woman scream. She had tried to speed around me to the right, clipped my car, and went sprawling onto the pavement. I quickly park to the…
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me again.
Thank you so much for your prayers and for keeping company with me on this blog. Your prayers are helping us. David and I feel cautiously optimistic that the worst is over. I am gaining a little strength back. I have been able to get up several times during the day and am not needing sleep as much. Over the past couple days I have done some laundry, chopped veggies for dinner, and changed a few diapers . . . which feels like a victory. I still get exhausted so easily. I want more than anything to take care of my kids, but I can’t be around them very long…
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me.
So. How I’m doing. It’s been a hard week. Really hard. Here’s the whole story. On Thursday night we went to see a doctor for these headaches I’ve been having for weeks now, and when we got home I just had–for lack of a better term–a break down. At 7 pm I went to bed with a splitting headache, but it was more than that. I felt like I couldn’t move. I couldn’t talk to anyone or even bear to hear normal noises, like my kids’ voices or doors opening, or see light. My arms and legs felt too heavy to lift. So, we’ve had a week of stopping everything…