I think this might be the best way to sum up the season we are in: all the feelings. I have been speechless for weeks, attempting to put into words all that is happening and all that we are experiencing, and it wasn’t until we saw Inside Out this week that I realized it has just been so many emotions, so many feelings, and I am just swamped by them. All the feelings.
Last week we packed up our sometimes-working car and headed off to Chiang Mai for a whopping three weeks. Our lives have changed so much since really digging into our neighborhood, and we are there so much. We have traveled away for a weekend or left for a day or two to escape the knocks on the door, but we are really constantly around our home. This is the longest we’ve been away outside of trips to America, and we’ll be in Chiang Mai for nearly half of our trip to the States earlier this year!
So that means a lot of things. A lot of feelings, if you will. In some ways, we were ready to take a break. Our lives are not light by any means, so time away seemed promising. But what brings us here? Not a break of any sorts: we are taking an intensive Burmese course, with about two hours of class every day and–so far–about seven or eight hours of studying outside of that. Rest probably isn’t the right word; just different energies.
It has been so nice to be staying a friends’ house who so graciously opened up a place for us to live and study, where we can also cook, bring lunches with us to class, and do laundry. This is more helpful than I could ever say, and we’re really, really thankful. So many feelings of gratitude for her.
But now that our lives are even more engrossed in our little community than before, it’s not easy to leave. It means stocking up two families on rice and organizing food and clean water to purchased for Aung Moo, the blind man in the neighborhood. It means running around ensuring the pregnant women have a way to get to their appointments and the followup tetanus shots are arranged. It means sitting down with a few precious kids in more unstable homes, reassuring them that we’ll be back and when.
It means organizing a friend to oh-so-bravely commit to three long Thursdays of baking bread and three long Fridays of flower & bread deliveries all across town. It means taking orders ahead of time and writing out the lists in English & Burmese. It means sorting out money and ingredients. It means teaching Pyo Pyo & Nyein Nyein how to clean up after bread–washing dishtowels and taking out trash. {Side note: They know me well. As I told them about washing the counters, they said, Yes, because you don’t like ants. And when I mentioned washing all the dishes, they said, Yes, because you don’t like ants. And when I mentioned taking out the trash, they said, Yes, because you don’t like ants…} It means trusting our home to them–the mess, the treasures inside, the space.
It means all the feelings: the trust, the joy, the sadness, the hope.
And then we arrived to Chiang Mai, and dropped our car off at a repair shop. We had been putting off a few things they told us they couldn’t do in Mae Sot, namely a new alternator we were hoping would make it all the way to the city. We also had a few odds and ends: can you add a new wiper arm? Could we repair the windshield that’s been broken for over a year? Can we find out what that cold water that drips on our feet is?
We got the dreaded call that it was a little more than we thought: in checking it over, they found four holes in the gas tank and a leak in our LPG tank; so in a vehicle with two forms of fuel, we were leaking in five places. All the feelings–thankfulness we survived without blowing up!? Thankful for an opportunity to repair it, and really still thankful for the car. There was plenty of anger and disgust and confusion mixed in there, too.
And with such a bill, the effects of the soccer ball to the windshield is just going to have to remain a bit longer.
Oh, and then one of the new belts needs some adjustments, so it’s squealing through the weekend, and we’re getting {a whole lot of} stares.
And with all the questions about if it was a good purchase, all the thankfulness for the relationships its built in the community, all the hot days spent on the side of the road, all the realizations that we do have a car and we are the richest folks on our street…All the feelings.
Meanwhile, another friend in Chiang Mai was traveling this week and oh-so-graciously let us borrow her car while ours was in the shop. This has been such a blessing, continuing to make this trip possible.
So as we struggle through messy lives, study hours a day, try to help a few families get a few more dollars a day, make sure that little guy has food, and hope that we can eat after we fix our car…God is good. We have friends looking after us in every direction, loaning us cars and rooms, and stepping into our chaos. The friend helping us with Housewares? We texted back and forth all day on Thursday, as she had a surprise guest show up to bake with them, had a vaccine clinic from the local hospital set up in our driveway (not unlike this one a few years ago) while they baked, had her two kids homeschooling at our house, miscommunicated about lunch, and then she locked up our house at 7:30pm that night. It was not a day for the faint of heart.
We’re studying today, and we’ll be off to the car repair shop again tomorrow. We’re catching up with old friends in the city, fitting in a few long-delayed doctor visits and necessary trips to the US Consulate, while we study our lives away for this community we love and continue to ask questions of what God is up to and what the future holds, while we celebrate our new website and seeing some dreams coming true. All the feelings, folks. All the feelings.