i know, i know.
you're wondering where i've been for the last couple of weeks.
am i still alive, did i come down with malaria and why haven't i updated?
well to be truthful [as one always should be], i've been painfully busy and i say painfully because there is a certain amount of busy i do enjoy but i have long past that line and am now dwelling somewhere near dazed and confused.
the holidays, whoa.
a whirl wind of well, weird and a total lack of the classic holiday spirit [for the most part]. that sounds terrible, which it wasn't but that really is the best way for me to describe it. it was so difficult to 'feel' like it was Christmas when it's 85 outside and i'm wearing shorts. my roommates and i did our best to decorate our cement walled hovel and make it a little more cozy. our 3ft. plastic tree received a lot of love.
even with the huge Agape Home Christmas party and other parties at other venues, familiarity was not reached. it just felt like any other day. but it was good. it was really good. hearing 'jingle bells' screamed at five in the morning on christmas day
and actually receiving a real stocking for the first time in my life, the moments that were good were so good.
and though i missed my family, i had some pretty spectacular stand-in's as anna's parents, Rob and Esther, opened their home to me and really made me feel like i belonged there. plus there have been so many people visiting for the holidays, including amy's whole family, anna herself and her fiance dom, and Esther's cousin rick and his whole family.
so if anything, i wasn't lonely.
i was fortunate to have Christmas eve off, which i spent with my friends doing some last minute shopping and general wandering around chiang mai. normally my family has what we call a 'traditional swedish meal', this year i had pizza,
a totally acceptable stand-in. one event that did stick to some form of tradition was the candle light service i went to at my church. it brought back so many fond memories of singing carols and trying to mold my candle with just the heat of my hands [totally works].
i worked Christmas morning which was fun because i was able to be apart of some of the classic Agape home traditions like eating buttered toast with condensed milk and drinking hot milo for breakfast. it was so much fun watching the faces of kids as they torn through so much neatly wrapped paper to get at the new treasures inside. after shift i went to a lunch with my friend's families that a missionary couple has at their home every year. we played volleyball and ate actual turkey, it was wonderful.
on Christmas night it so happened that all the people who actually had family here dispersed to be with each other, leaving me, sarah and our friends ozzie and shanna with no one to claim us. we decided to call ourselves the 4 orphanes and proceeded to go eat at Subway for our grand Christmas meal, and grand it surely was.
i realized then as i realize now that i kept waiting for it to feel like Christmas when everything i was longing for had nothing to do with what i really should have been rejoicing about. but i have everything to be thankful for and though rejoicing may come slowing, it does come...even when i don't 'feel' like it.
in fact especially then.
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