A text comes in from a good friend and like that I'm at a little local coffee shop with chattering mouths, mocha smells and abounding sweets. Oh America, I love you. I try to live in the land without and I get here and I splurge on a land with too much. The lack of balance is so hard to go between. It's been a week of splurge. Two cups of coffee because it tastes so good, every meal out with a friend or family member, predictable phone reception, a lot of miles logged in my sneakers, cool weather, new sweaters, and it goes on. It's a joy I haven't felt lately. A familiar joy of the known. Of freedom. I am giddy getting in my car. The seat molds to my bum and the radio is already in English. It's so great. Lilly said the other day before our road trip that she was most excited about riding in a booster instead of car seat. Little things bring great joy! Lilly snuggles her warm body next to mine at night and consumes a hot bagel with butter at sunrise. I swim in warm salt water and run through streets of trees with changing colors. I am enjoying every minute. We both are. Dinner and a friend across the table who knows my story and my struggle lends words of encouragement. I crave relationship more than I know. I don't need a girls' night every night but six in a row and then none for months is out of whack too. I absorb the six and think can I bottle it up and take it with me and let it burn slowly like a good-smelling candle. I get a call from mom that she may meet me for a free afternoon. Her body struggles to do what she wants it too. Her brain still swelling and still slowing her down. She's thin and fragile but strong at heart and fighting for her team in the Series.
Good friends, best friends, traveled the road from TX to TN and we soaked up every minute. I can't imagine life without these two. Abby walked into the house and Lilly's jaw drop. A six year old surprised by a best friend in a world away of no best friends. I wished I would have recorded it. I am filled up by relationship. The simple swap in information of our lives. I listen to hard stories and schools starting. I hear the struggles and the joys and tell mine. It unfolds over park afternoons and outside fires. Sarah and I sit on the Main Square steps eating fro yo dreaming of our future and the girls 20 years from now. I can't stand it. I'm all filled up and on cloud 9. Lilly too. There they go, two pink scooters like a blur around the block. They can't stop giggling.
The road trip was the same way. New friends and old ones. Ones who ask about Haiti and ones who ask just about us. Unexpected gifts make grace look real. I'm grateful. I want to give more, bless more, think of it more. Dinner time with people who know my place. Who understand what we're up against with no timeline. It's refreshing. Lilly is big now. Listens and repeats. I have to speak code if I want to get past her ears. It's a new stage. We spend time talking about discerning and wisdom and what people need to hear and what helps and what hurts.
I talk to a friend in a hard marriage and have no answers but a lot of prayer. I stay on the phone late with the Farmer to find out where he is on a heartbreaking story that unraveled itself in the midst of a messy church. We talk present and future. Treatment for Aves and homeschool strategies for Lilly. It's a hard conversation that has no real concrete answers or even steps. He's feeling fresh hurt from the church and more piled on from a co worker who skipped over offering an invitation that would have made a difference. But we hold our hands open and say out loud it was never ours. We didn't deserve it or own it or need it. We just want it. Hurt takes time to heal and the time moves slow when it's fresh.
A few more days away and we're back on a plane. I can't spend all my time on the computer. I have to soak it in.
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