A life to remember....

I've had this blog in my head for a year now, but words continue to fail me.
A year ago, Valentine's Day.   A day of red, pink, roses, and chocolate.  A day of love.  A day that I will always remember with tears in my eyes.
A year ago, February 13th,  I was boarding a plane in JFK for a direct flight into Jordan.  It's a long, 11 hour flight, but I'd rather just get it over with.  The weird thing about flying in that direction is that you lose an entire day.  I left the night of the 13th and landed on the 15th.  The 14th never existed.
Valentine's Day has never been a most celebrated holiday, so I was ok with letting it slide.

There are people that God places in your life for a season, and during this time they teach you, push you, stretch you, encourage you, lift you, love you.  Then there are people that He takes away, sometimes to teach you things, sometimes to save you from the rotting infestation that they are.  Then sometimes He just takes away, and there are no reasons, no words. Just loss.

Three years ago, I was given the gift of being able to return to Thailand for 3 weeks.  I knew strongly I was supposed to return, and I thought maybe it was to see if I would spend more of my future there.   I spent a year there after graduating from college and that country and its people will always hold a dear place in my heart.  During my year there, I made a dear friend.  Her name was Belinda.  She was from Australia and she was a saving grace.  I lived with 20 Thai girls and was constantly surrounded by Thai(not an easy language) , and high school girl drama. Belinda lived at a children's home 45 minutes outside of the city and was also surrounded by much of the same thing.  Every Sunday after church we would leave the drama and go sit in a coffee shop.  Drink Cappuccino.  Embrace the silence, the beauty of the city, and talk for hours.  During the holidays when I had more time off, I would go up to the home and stay with her in her apartment.  I joked that it was the "village" only because roosters would wake me up every morning.  Those weeks at her place were peaceful and fun.

  At the time I was 22, and she 26, a role model for me. Leaving her family, her country and embracing another culture and people.  She knew Thai well, she knew the ins and outs of the country, but she also just lived it in a such a way that was normal.  Maybe it was her Australian laid back way, but she handled her life with so much grace, it was inspiring.

Three years ago, I got to see Belinda again.  It had been over 4 years, and it was so good to see her face to face.  She had just been in the hospital with dengue fever so was a bit tired, but like the Belinda I always knew, continued to tackle her life with ease, passion, and wouldn't let a little bit of fever stop her.  We drank Cappuccinos together, rode around town, and it was so wonderful to see how far she had come in her life while I was gone.   But our conversations were different this time around, they weren't the carefree "I want to change the world" conversations they used to be, because the realities of giving up your culture, life, and family come with a lot of loneliness and questions.  Belinda was now thirty, beautiful, and single, and knew that Thailand was her life.  How do you find someone to spend your life with when you've given so much of your heart to another country? How will they ever love it the way you do? Will you have to give up one for the other? What do you with a calling that can at times be so painful?

Now three years later reluctantly embracing my 30th birthday, I understand these questions with a more intense reality than I ever thought I could.

A couple of month later, I was in Cyprus at one of my best friend's wedding.  It was 10 days of joy and fun, and no contact with the outside world.  On the last night, I checked my email at the business center in the hotel.  I had an email from Belinda. I knew she was home in Australia for the holidays, and so clicked to read how things were going.

 She was sick.  She had cancer.  And she didn't have long to live.

What do you do with this kind of information? I admit I still don't know. I find that it's extra hard to face the reality when these people aren't part of your day to day anymore.  She's been absent from my life for 4 years.  Yes, we email, we skype, she sends me pictures.  But our heart to heart weekly talks are no more.  I've already said good-bye and grieved a friendship, realizing that my friendship will still be a friendship but will just look a bit different.
I realized in that moment that my time in Thailand was a gift.  The Lord showed me so many other things, but more importantly he allowed me to have one last time to see my friend, a role model, a sister.

And so brought a year of cancer treatments, updates, and tears.  What was supposed to be three months home for vacation ended up being a permanent move home.  The tiredness she felt when I saw her wasn't because of the dengue fever.  But being the Belinda I knew, she didn't let this stop her.  She embraced her time with her family, she traveled, she spoke, she used every opportunity she could.  She even traveled back to Thailand in between Chemo treatments to encourage her Thai family. She even sent me care packages to Jordan.  SHE sent ME care packages.  Full of TimTams and other Aussie goodies.
Then came the email that I knew would come.  That the treatments weren't helping any more.  And I wrote what I knew to be my last email.
And when I landed in Jordan on February 15th, I found that I missed the day where a beloved friend and sister had left this earth to wait for the rest of us in heaven.

Barely into her 30's she impacted so many people's lives, and still remains to me a role model.  Someone who gave her 20's to a country that needed light, who gave up the 2.2 kids to have 100 of her own. And the year she spent battling her sickness she spent it giving to other people.
Sometimes I ask the question of God, why would he take her from this earth? Why would he take someone dedicated to a dark country, who knew it and loved it so well, why would he take them away? His answer is that he didn't need her there.  He is still working there without her.  He asked obedience and that is what she gave.  He needed her with her family and then he ultimately needed her home with Him. And to this day my human mind still doesn't fully understand.

 I write with tears in my eyes.  I write more for myself than any of you, an event that happened a year ago that I still have yet to talk about.  But Belinda is someone who's life deserves to be remembered.  Whose passion and love for people deserves to be recognized.  And whose sacrifice is one worthy of Him.