Anyone who knows us knows that my family is really
close…like
they-made-a-cardboard-cutout-of-me-to-cart-around-with-them-all-year-and-sometimes-they-dress-her-up-in-seasonally-appropriate-clothing
close.
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The picture I received from my family on Thanksgiving,
my four people plus flat Sav in a scarf. |
It’s the kind of
close that makes a little sister secretly collect letters from her big sister’s
family and friends to send with her to Rwanda so that when she’s feeling down,
she always has a loving word from home. It’s the kind of close that makes a father
and a daughter unknowingly get each other the same parting gift. It’s the kind
of close that makes a family quote the live action Grinch until they are
laugh-crying one day and have knock-down drag-out arguments the next. It’s
weird close.
Holidays have always revolved around this, around the gift
of my family and around our shared faith. Yes, there is always the classic southern
Thanksgiving complete with banana pudding.
Yes, there is the annual decorating of the house with no less than
13 Christmas trees. Yes, there are the marathon Christmas Eves that keep us at
church from noon to 1 a.m. I’m not saying I don’t and won’t really miss these
events, I will, but what I will miss most is time with the only four people in
every one of my memories of these events. My people.
So I knew the holidays were going to be tough. I was, for
the first time, not really looking forward to celebrating, and just a few days
before American Thanksgiving I found myself subconsciously taking inventory.
Savanna’s Pre-Thanksgiving Inventory, Take 1
What I did know I didn’t have:
A way to watch
football
Pumpkin spice
anything
Cool weather
Turkey
My family
What I didn’t know I did have:
Typhoid fever
Yep, just a few days before Thanksgiving I made my way,
disoriented, feverish, and dehydrated, to a clinic in Kigali where I was
diagnosed with Typhoid Fever and immediately admitted. (Note: At the behest of
a beloved mentor-who also happens to be the best storyteller I know-I have
written the whole misadventure down for posterity and would love to share it,
but it’s long and I won’t recount it all here.)
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| My Typhoid room! |
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| My view of the outside world. |
As I spent the next five days in the clinic hooked up to an
IV being pumped full of fluids and antibiotics, I had a lot of time to think. Typhoid
(and drugs and a significant amount of alone time) does things to a person, and
I took another inventory. This one looked pretty different.
Savanna’s Pre-Thanksgiving Inventory, Take 2
What I did have (for sure):
My health
Folks from five different countries pray over
me in the hospital
Friends from Rwamagana travel an hour
to Kigali to visit me
A God of healing
A phone full of well-wishes from friends and teachers at RLS
Notes of love and prayer from my sending communities in the
U.S.
Four people halfway around the world, in Texas, who I love
more than life
What I didn’t have (anymore):
Typhoid Fever
I want to go on record of saying that I fully acknowledge
how much it sucks that it took a serious bacterial infection to make me realize
just how thankful I should be on Thanksgiving. I am a (mostly) healthy, white,
upper middle-class American with countless loving communities; I am privileged
beyond belief-I know that. In my oversight I can only ask for grace. But
I will also say that the pain of being without people we love, especially
during the holidays, whether that separation is temporary or permanent, is very
real. My mistake in approaching this holiday season was that I thought I
was without my family, but I wasn’t, I’m not.
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| Banana pudding I made for part of my Rwandan family on Thanksgiving! |
I have family in teachers and students at Rwamagana Lutheran
School. I have family in a local baker who opened her home to me, no questions
asked, so that I could wait on results from the clinic. I have family in
Rwanda, in the U.S., and in YAGMs around the world who were, as my grandmother
says, “praying hedges around me”. And I have family in the five other beautiful
and broken and straight up weird souls that make up the YAGM Rwanda team.
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| Sometimes family finds you, I'm lucky to be a part of this one. |
So yeah, this Thanksgiving I didn’t have turkey, but I did
have Typhoid. And finally walking out of my hospital room of my own accord,
breathing in the fresh air, and wondering at the bright blue Rwandan sky, I have
never been more thankful. I am thankful for a strong body that can fight
illnesses, for awesome medical personnel around the world, for clean water and
good food, for friends that send me play-by-plays of football games (Go tigers!),
for chicken when there’s no turkey, for the universality of banana pudding, for
this beautiful country I get to call my temporary home, and for an ever-present
God. I am thankful for my four people in Texas, and for my family, all of you, wherever you are-from Rwanda to Jerusalem to the UK to the US.
But most of all, I am thankful that in this world that is often so dark, there is still so much to be thankful for.
