I’ve been trading Facebook messages with my little brother Amos because he’s in the office directly behind me (we share a common wall), and clearly, this is how we communicate in the 21st century, regardless of continent.
So, we’ve been going back and forth (when is the baby coming (hopefully this weekend; I can’t go visit my students until this kid shows), do you have a mosquito net for him/her (yes)), and then he drops this on me:
yaa. I keep thinking about how you took me in to be you brother and accepted me. Today I was think the far we have come and I kept looking at your photos.
And this just about reduced me to a puddle. It has been quite a road since I arrived at UCU in May 2009, the bewildered American seminarian. Amos told me later that he thought I was in class as an observer – no one knew I was a student. Through time and bumping along the masters of divinity road, the Lord gave me a little brother, and eventually a sister-in-law, and soon, a niece or nephew.
As much as I love being here, it’s hard to be gone from everyone who knows me. Yes, I have some friends here, the closest of whom are probably going back to the US in 18 months. It’s hard to live in another culture, no matter how well I’ve been adopted. It’s hard to know that you will never exactly fit in, and definitely never blend in. It’s hard to be single in a marriage-obsessed culture. It’s hard to live in a place where the people are transitory, like a university.
And yet, God’s grace abounds – Amos took me in to be his “big sis,” as he calls me. Never mind that in his biological family, he’s the seventh out of eight. Never mind that his father has eight biological children; when he sees me, he booms out, “Daughter!”
As a song says, I’m grateful that we’re bound with cords that cannot be broken.
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