Facebook Friends

Tonight I met some friends in person for the first time. I am a huge fan of facebook. It's how I stay connected with the friends that I've made in the many places I've lived. Typically on my facebook account I only accept friends that are really truly friends of mine. In this case, however, I bent my rule slightly.

I noticed a comment on the status of one of my Egyptian friends, and I commented in agreement with the first comment. The girl who made that comment replied to mine, and thus a bit of a conversation started. So when she sent a friend request I accepted. She is Egyptian but lives in Kuwait and we have been facebooking back and forth for a while now. We discovered that we have several things in common: 1) our faith 2) we both live outside of our home countries 3) we are both international school teachers 4) we both love to read. I'm sure there is more, but those are the main things that we discovered on facebook.

She came home to Egypt to spend the summer visiting family and friends, and we arranged to meet in person. I wanted to bring my husband along, so I showed him her photo from her facebook page, and it turns out that they knew each other as children,that they were in the same Sunday school program.

So tonight we met her and her sister at Chilli's and had a blast! John was a little concerned that we might not have much to talk about, but the conversation flowed quite naturally. We met at five, and we didn't look at our watches again until it was nine. We talked about mutual friends. They entertained me with stories from their childhood, we discussed the difficulties of living outside of your home country, we talked about faith. It was really good. It was what I needed. We are going to try to get together with them one more time before I travel. By the time I return she will have returned to Kuwait, so this is my last chance to hang out with her.

I've been struggling with the fact that so many of my friends have moved away this year, and God knows that. But it's cool the way He brings different people into my life at different times. He never abandons me.

Days like that

I had a bit of a meltdown yesterday. Thanks to my mother's fine example and coaching my husband now knows how to deal with those. He dealt brilliantly yesterday.

I used to cry and he would try to fix it and when he couldn't he's get frustrated and angry and desparate to make me stop. When my mom came to Egypt for the wedding, I had multiple meltdowns. Getting married in another country, culture, and language, can be incredibly overwhelming. I cried a lot and at random moments. My mother, knowing me as she does, would simply pat my back, let me cry, and say reassuring things. She knows not to try to fix things. She knows that I just need to cry sometimes. Watching this was enlightening to John. He realized that he doesn't need to make things better, that he just needs to let me cry. He's been amazing at it ever since.

He was great yesterday. I spent a good part of the day weeping. Why? I'm sure there are a million reasons, the biggest being hormones. Hey, I'm a girl. I cry a lot. I was missing my family, and wishing the John could come with me to see them this summer. I think I was also prcessing the fact that once again things are happening the people I love in the States and I'm far away and helpless. I'm realizing that most of my friends are gone and many of them are not going to come back in the fall. And I kept going back to a comment my mother-in-law made last week about how much weight I've gained (here gaining weight is not bad, so she has no idea how psychologically damaging a comment like that can be to me). I kept thinking: I'm going back to America and everyone's going to notice how fat I am! Tragedy. Yes. Vanity. Yes. He just let me cry. He was good.

Today I'm feeling a bit more stable. What is my problem? I do not know. I just have days like that sometimes.