Cheese and chocolate

Hello, everyone! It’s been a few weeks. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but I have…mostly because the nudge to update has been less of a nudge and more of an ominous cloud above my week that I. Just. Can’t. Quite. Get. To.

But now it’s Sunday and I have a quiet morning before our afternoon church service. So here I am, pecking away on my phone because I’ve been staring at my computer screen far too many hours this week and the idea of voluntarily sitting down in front of it again threatens my emotional stability.

First, the reason I have fallen a bit behind in writing:

FAMILY!

Yes, my parents, sister, brother-in-law, and nephew came for a visit! Well, to be more accurate, we met up in Zurich and after a luscious week in Switzerland, came back to Spain for them to get a taste of my life.

This post is a bit of an introduction to our time together. We’ll see how wordy I get along the way. I was tempted to copy and paste the online journal we created for this trip, but as I read through it, I realized just how much it was not written for public consumption. *slight blush*

We met up on March 7 after we had all missed a night of sleep and felt covered in layers of trip grime gleaned from public restrooms and random people coughing on us. I arrived a while before my family since my flight from Madrid was more on time than their flight from London.

While I waited, I was startled by how much the people looked like me. Or I looked like them. I’m not sure which. As would soon be discovered, this caused some confusion because “Guten tag” can only go so far.

After the joyous reunion with my family, we were more than ready to leave the airport. But first, our reserved rental vehicle was a 5-seater for 6 of us. And then there were seatbelt issues that kept the car dinging at us as we wandered through the labriynth of airport traffic and had to pay 12 CHF for even daring to be there at all.

But as we left Zurich, the scenery continued to improve and so did our moods. Dad and I made the first shopping trip while everyone else snoozed in the van. Dad made a beeline for the meat and cheese and looked disgruntled whenever I dropped vegetables into our shopping basket. We may have spend a considerable amount of time in the chocolate aisle, but it was nothing compared to the time it took us to find a simple tube of mayo.

As we wound up into the mountains, we kept exclaiming over the stunning scenery…and the lack of guard rails on the narrow roads. Forget hairpin curves; winding up to the farm where we stayed was hairpinning all of the way! (My poor brother-in-law was very patient with the other 4 gasping drivers in the car with him.)

From the outside, our Airbnb looked a little dumpy. Mud. Dogs. Random farm equipment. (All of which we would eventually realize is part of small farm life in the Bern area.) But once we were inside, our place was warm, clean, and welcoming. The hostess had left us a loaf of fresh bread, homemade butter, cheese and jam.

We made ourselves at home.

Our first full day in Switzerland was rainy. We didn’t get a whole lot accomplished since it took considerable effort to drag everyone out of the house by 1 p.m. (Which means I don’t have to try to make a long story short for blogging purposes–the long story is short!)

We puttered along, “oh my”ing at the incredible scenery. We also snickered at the “ausfahrt” (exit) signs all along the way. My Swiss friend sent a message to welcome us to Switzerland.

“It’s so beautiful up here in the mountains!” I wrote back.

She laughed when she responded in a voice message. “These are the hills.”

We drove to Gruyère where we strolled around around the free part of a cheese factory and then feasted on cheese fondue until I wondered if I’d ever want to eat cheese again. Our waitress spoke English, which was helpful. She also spoke Spanish, which was fun.

Side note: The prices took us a while to get used to. Visiting Switzerland isn’t for the empty-of-pocket. Even though we had tried to prepare ourselves, at least one of us would often sigh or grumble.

We sipped hot chocolate from a shop across the the street from the cheese factory as we wandered back to our van. We tried to get a peek at the local castle, but we would have had to park and walk through the rain to even see it. So we started for home.

That was pretty much our day besides a quick Aldi stop and two liters of fresh milk on our doorstep when we got back to our Airbnb.

I’ll write more another day. We really did do more than eat cheese and chocolate, although those two reasons alone are enough to warrant a trip to Switzerland!

Have you ever been to Switzerland? What sorts of things did you do?

Rewarded loyalty

“I would like five carrots,” I told the market vendor as he weighed the other produce I had collected from his stall.

A moment later, he breezed back with a bag bulging with considerably more than five carrots.

“No.” His coworker pointed to the bag and looked at me. “That’s too much, isn’t it?” He had overheard my tiny order.

I remembered the first time I had bought produce at this stall. It was the coworker who had pretended to forget to give me my change and then came back, minutes later, surprised that I was still standing there–neither oblivious nor angry. He quickly handed over the correct change without my reminding him of the amount.

Now I found it refreshingly ironic that he was the one looking out for me.

Long ago, I wrote about how I tend to be a loyal shopper, shopping in the same places, even when I know other places have better prices. I still do that today. On market morning, I make sure to stop at my normal vendor stalls first before picking up what I couldn’t find at other stalls.

You may think my loyalty is blind, but that’s not fair. And this is why…

One day I was meticulously selecting the brightest pomegranates from a pile. My produce vendor noticed what I was doing and slipped over to show me how to tell when pomegranates are ready–and it has nothing to do with how rosy they were!

Sometimes I’m offered samples of special fruits. And when I ask if new apricots are sweet, they answer honestly because they know I’ll be back even if they’re not.

The first time I made puchero, I ordered my bones and cuts of meat. The shopkeeper happily filled me with advice on preparing the dish. “Boil these bones for 15 minutes before putting them in your soup or they will make the soup too salty.”

One day I bought semolina flour for harcha. “You like harcha?” the shopkeeper asked. At my happy sigh, she disappeared to the back of the store and came back with harcha, still warm from breakfast. More than once, she has given me handfuls of mint leaves from her personal stash when there wasn’t any to sell.

Another shopkeeper refused to sell me a lone chicken breast. He quietly shook his head until I understood that it probably wasn’t the freshest chicken breast north of the Mediterranean.

Sometimes when the fabric vendor sees me coming, he pulls out the bolts he’s pretty sure I’ll like. And if I stroll into his stall wearing something homemade, he spots his fabrics with delight.

Just the other week, my shower curtain rod was repeatedly falling down. Finally, after several days of clattering, banging, readjusting, and scratching my head, I decided a new rod was in order. But the store down the street didn’t have any. “Come back this afternoon,” he said. But that afternoon, he still didn’t have any. So he opted to get to the root of my problem–what was the problem exactly?

As I was still making feeble attempts to explain without the proper vocabulary–”The thing in the middle of the stick…”–he began to work on something he had dug out of the dusty depths of his under-counter. Then–pop!–out came a yellowed suction cup and he told me precisely how to position it to keep the shower rod up. “You can even trim around the edges if you don’t like how it looks.” And my curtain rod has stayed up ever since. The yellowed lip of the suction cup is a happy reminder of the resourceful people who are looking out for me.

My meager loyalty has been rewarded so many times over that it has been crowded out by their generosity. In fact, I’m not even sure that my loyalty has much to do with it at all!

It’s February

It’s February. February. February.

I have to remind myself of that. The other day during our team lunch, I declared with a sigh, “I’m so glad it’s March!”

They all laughed at me. Or with me, because I laughed too, even though I was startled. Was I really an entire month off?

You may wonder why I feel like I already have one foot in March. Because a few family members have tickets to come to this side of the world. Yea!! It has been a long time since the last “exclusively-mine” visitors, especially family. Long, as in, 2019.

But it’s still February, and that is a good thing. More time to anticipate my visitors, yes. But also more time to just plunk myself down right here in the middle of today. To study elusive Arabic vocabulary, to take a spontaneous walk with my neighbor, to attend Spanish class, to plan and teach English lessons, to stand in the middle of the market listening to a soul’s sad story, to spend an hour orienting myself at my new job as a space heater thaws my feet, to bake a batch of granola, and even to reheat leftover soup and eat it straight out of the kettle (*cough* Yes.).

So, it’s still February. And I’m glad.

Bricks and churros

Meeting her was like being handed an armload of bricks. Surprising, heavy, and requiring concentration to keep the bricks from tumbling everywhere. She was sturdy and strong. Like she was giving the world the finger, and the world was cowering. And yet… and yet, her inner chaos spilled over on everyone she touched.

I had noticed her for years, only ever at the market. She was eye-catching: tall, broad, non-conformist, and always purposefully raiding booths at the traveling market.

Then one day, we crossed paths. Literally. And she stopped me. “Who are you?” she asked with bright eyes.

She was thrilled with my stumbling Arabic, my height (we stood eye-to-eye), and my nationality. We exchanged numbers and parted ways. I walked home, a little dazed by my ability to attract strong women who longed to take me under their wing. How many times had this happened before?

She and I messaged back and forth for a couple of weeks. She had a situation costing her a lot of time and energy. “Pray for me,” she said.

Last week, I messaged her. “Are you going to the market? Can we meet for churros?”

I found her at the market, rooting through piles of merchandise, somehow sniffing out deals I had already walked by once.

When she reached out to hug me, body odor clogged my throat and I tried not to breathe. It wasn’t her, but her clothes, I thought. She might not have access to a washer. “SHE’S AMERICAN!” she blared at the market vendor in a voice as big as she was.

She insisted on paying for the churros. “It’s all the same.” She waved me off as I fought back. We found a table and she started talking. Loudly. As she told me her problems, neighboring tables shot us glances.

I was hyper-aware of the intrusive volume as I munched on churros and wiped my fingertips on the gray churro wrap, but it took most of my concentration to follow her story. I felt like I was juggling those bricks now, trying to keep all of my senses from screaming at me while I focused on her words. There were a lot of them. Both senses and words.

When she told me why her marriage had crumbled, she shrugged. “We get along fine now. But you know, we were too young to know how to solve our problems.” Another shrug. Another middle finger to the world of pain.

An airborne brick was about to land on my foot. What should I say? Was she anything but “fine”? Even with all of the pain she had just detailed? Had anyone in her life ever let her be anything but “fine”?

I pressed my greasy fingers against the paper again, admiring the pristine fingerprints I left behind, dark against the pale gray. My fingerprints. Beautiful. Special.

And the woman sitting beside me left her own greasy fingerprints on everything she touched. Also beautiful. Also special.

“Was it hard to relate to his family?” I asked finally.

And when I looked up from our fingerprinted churro paper, my breath caught. This “load of bricks” in front of me was dabbing her eyes. She wasn’t crying. Not quite. But I had touched something still raw. I sat quietly, ignoring the cooling churros. Ignoring the eavesdroppers around us. She didn’t say more, and I didn’t pry. Our friendship was too new for that.

But I walked home with this God-given reminder that I had just had greasy churros with God’s image bearer, His beautiful creation. Her wounds and scars would never be able to disguise that.

And it’s a….

…girl!

Congratulations to my sister, brother-in-law, and two little nieces on this latest edition to your family. She’s beautiful.

Linnea Ruth, may you always know that you are loved and delighted in. God has a purpose for you.

Even on those days you feel smothered by too many little mothers, remember that you are wanted and treasured. 🙂

I can’t wait to meet you. I love you, little girlie!

Repetition at the sea

My favorite part of the beach is feeling the immenseness of God while seeing the careful details of His creation–a tiny shell, a delicate strip of seaweed. And all of the while, the waves rhythmically pummel the grainy shore.

In his book Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton writes that maybe God is like a child in the way He enjoys the repetition of His creation. It’s not that He is stuck in a rut or that He even has a factory that stamps the same design on daisy after daisy. Instead, He delights in the repetition of His creation like a child, “[exulting] in monotony.” “For we have sinned and grown old,” writes Chesterton, “and our Father is younger than we.”

I think about this as I pick smooth pieces of broken shells out of the sand around my towel. The sea creeps closer. Then the wind picks up and I turn my back to it and watch people walking their dogs along the walking path. On top of the mountains swelling beyond the port, are caps of brilliant snow.

The roar of look-alike waves settles something so deep in me that tears prickle behind my eyes.

Just that week, darkness had threatened with a roar, but the roar of a starving lion rather than a roar of majestic waves. And for a few awful moments I had felt its breath on my neck, breath that smelled of despair.

Will the lion come back? My heart races to even consider it. Please no, God. Not again. But, if I’m honest, there are tired days I want to let myself be consumed, as if stopping the struggle could bring relief.

I pack my things–my damp towel, the handful of broken shells, and my sunglasses. As I walk to the bus stop, the salt from the ocean spray still clings to my lips. I lick them. And then I lick them again. The salt remains. I smile, imagining that I smell like the sea.

My heart has quieted. Perhaps it was in the faithfulness of the Father’s repetitive creation. Or the delightful majesty of ocean and mountains. Perhaps. But even in the bitter wind, His Presence is here.

Snippets of life

Below are a few things I’ve seen or experienced recently. They’re not written in any particular order or of any particular importance (or of any particular grammatical observance, truth be told). Just some snippets of life.

Speakers wound up in trees and fastened to light posts play “Joy to the World” as I walk down the street, in step with the music. Then I notice others in step with the music–a Muslim family, several Spanish businessmen, and others. “Let eevery heeeart prepaare hiim rooom…”
Russian classmate #1 is disgruntled that she cannot absorb a complex Spanish grammar structure. Russian classmate #2 says: “You’ve only been here 7 years and you want to understand everything. Calm down. We’ve been here for 20 and we still confuse this.” Bulgarian classmate begins to giggle. “Yes, calm down! You still have 13 years of confusion ahead of you!”
After a rain, crushed snails in crushed shells dot the walking/biking trail like flattened M&M buttons.
An elderly man I meet on my morning walk that tells me that his mornings are better on the days we cross paths.
Little boys at the Kings’ Day parade, squeeze around me to get to the front, chattering in hopeful Arabic and clutching rumpled plastic grocery bags to fill with candy.
A winter evening curled up with a book and a cup of lemon balm tea…and Christmas lights I hesitate to take down.
A shopkeeper tells me how long I should spend with the friend I am planning to visit in another town. “Are you going to spend the night at her place? No? Then you need to go before lunch and eat with her and spend a lot of time with her before you leave in the evening.” Oh, how I love to hear the North African perspective on relationships!
As I walk by, an elderly man comes out of a café to speak to me. “How tall are you?” he asks and all five feet of him steps back in surprise when I tell him. He says that the other day he was breakfasting with another man in the café. When I walked by, the other man said he would not like to take me out for breakfast. Because I was so tall, surely I would eat a lot! That makes me self-conscious as I walk home, realizing that my oblivion doesn’t exempt me from being a topic of discussion.
On my way to catch a bus, I notice a lady with her head in the dumpster. She doesn’t have that look of someone who usually sifts through others’ garbage. (And I’m not judging because I have rescued a few garbage items in my life.) But I pause, curious as she bats her broom handle around. “Can I help you?” She mutters something about losing an item. She doesn’t know if it could possibly be in the garbage she took out. I peer in and see a lavender bag of trash on the very bottom of a very empty dumpster. She doesn’t relinquish the broom when I reach for it, but I hold open the dumpster lid while she fishes around. Finally, success! She snags the handles and pulls it out little by little (still muttering). I manage to avoid the linty end of the broom that is headed my way and still make it to my bus on time.
I am at the counter of a North African store when a little boy comes in, not even big enough to see over the counter. He sets a hand-written list on the counter. The shopkeeper grins at him, “Peace be upon you, Arkan. How are you? At peace?” He looks down at Arkan’s mother’s list, reading aloud the first item before Arkan interrupts him. “I want a sucker.” Ahh, that’s how it’s done. And I wonder if suckers are free because he is so stinkin’ cute or if his mother ever notices that the grocery bill is always a little more than she anticipated.

A different 2023

How will 2023 be different for me?

I like to imagine that this year I will have it all together… whatever “it” is.

I will eat better, walk straighter, live unstressed, except now and then when my body is due for a good ol’ adrenaline rush. I will invest more deeply in the friends I have. Care more and help to carry the burdens I sometimes ignore because I just can’t handle theirs and mine. I will write more…and better, of course.

All of those ideas are good and hopeful. But today, as I sat down at my makeshift desk in my makeshift guest room and wrote about my relationship with God, I wondered: How is it that I can spend so much time with Someone and still know Him so little? And misunderstand Him so much–often not grasping His big picture nor sharing His heart for those around me?

Healthy eating, straight walking, unstressed living, friend investment, and better writing are helpful goals. But, I want knowing God to be the big focus–the all-encompassing focus–for me this year.

That’s how I want 2023 to be different.

Recommended books for you

Ready for some winter reading recommendations? These are some of my reads from 2022. Click the links to read the descriptions.

Note: These are recommendations, but I cannot necessarily endorse 100% of each book’s content.

SPIRITUAL ENRICHMENT

Connecting: Healing Ourselves and Our Relationships by Larry Crabb

The Radiant Midnight: Depression, Grace, and the Gifts of a Dark Place by Melissa Maimone

You’re Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God’s Design and How That’s Good News by Kelly M. Kapic

Try Softer: A Fresh Approach to Move Us Out of Anxiety, Stress, and Survival Mode–and into a Life of Connection and Joy by Aundi Kobler

Given: The Forgotten Meaning and Practice of Blessing by Tina Boesch

MEMOIR / NON-FICTION

A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell

The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker

Food Americana: The Remarkable People and Incredible Stories behind America’s Favorite Dishes by David Page

Salt, Sugar, Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us by Michael Moss

Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well by Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen

Elena Vanishing: A Memoir by Elena and Clare B. Dunkle

Women Who Risk: Secret Agents for Jesus in the Muslim World by Tom and JoAnn Doyle

The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women by Kate Moore

Between Worlds: Essays on Culture and Belonging by Marilyn Gardner

Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea

FICTION

Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James

The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt

Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry

Happy reading!

Christmas earthiness

Have you taken the time to contemplate Christmas: the beauty and hope…but also the earthiness? God made flesh. Immanuel.

I read recently that the Bible doesn’t record the bloody agony of Jesus’ entrance into the world, not because God is ashamed of Jesus’ humanity in light of His deity, but because those things were so normal that they weren’t noted. Everything was remarkable about a virgin great with child. What wasn’t so remarkable were the hours she spent delivering that Child.

Jesus was divine, yes. But He was also human. And when we forget His humanity, we forget how much we are known.

Hebrews says, “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace” (4:16). Why? Because He was tempted as we are, yet without sin. Therefore, He can sympathize with us in our weaknesses (Heb. 4:15).

That, of course, is only one part of the Word being made flesh, but it’s a part that I tend to forget. We are not fighting life’s battles alone. We can come boldly to the throne of grace to “receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Heb. 4:16).

Merry Christmas to you all!