Friends in High Places


3 years ago I was laying awake at night's crying over my children.  We were getting ready to move, again, after only 2 short years.  One of my biggest concerns was this, would they have friends?  They were only 2 and 4 but we were setting out to move into an area that I wasn't very sure of.  Despite my initial fears of moving around the world to China, we had survived and we had made friends, really good friends.  Now here we were preparing to move to a development zone where foreigners were few and far between and my kids would stick out like a sore thumb.  I didn't want them to end up socially awkward not knowing how to make friends their own ages or always being on the outside looking in.  What if it was all too much for them and they never made any real friends?  I would agonize over these fears as I tried to sleep.

I was remembering that this past Saturday as I watched my kids chase dozens of friends around the school property during a community spring fest. As they ran back and forth from playground to bouncy castle they would occasionally stop to check in with me for a drink or snack or to show me some new trick they had learned.  But for the most part they were occupied with a whole mess of friends.  This day particularly stood out to me as I realized what a vast array of friends were present with them.  Of course the crowd contained lots of their classmates from school who they play with daily.  Then there were our Chinese neighbors who we have been friends with for the past 3 years.  Kids from the expat community that we have befriended across these years.  Perhaps most special was the visits that day from our very first friends in China, with their two little boys, and my niece Ella.  I was struck as I looked at my laughing children how very blessed we are.  I was also rebuked again that no matter what my fears are, God knows them ahead of time, and is prepared already to conquer them.

In the transient community where we live, having a friend for 5 years is almost unheard of.  No one stays that long.  But yet we have friends of 5 years who have shared all of our China experiences with us.  Even more unheard of, in fact I have never heard of anyone else in this situation, my children have cousins living nearby.  Now nearby for us is an hour+ away! but it's close enough to get together for birthdays and holidays.  Who has cousins nearby when they live on the other side of the world in a foreign country?  Not anyone.  It's a bit crazy.  So not only have my children been blessed by having friends at school, neighborhood friends, and community friends.  But they have the incredible benefits of long term friends and cousins.  God didn't just answer my prayer in the minimal sense, He poured out blessings on me too rich to contain.  He has done that for me again and again.  Every time I whisper to Him the fears on my heart, He shows me that He answered before I even began to ask.

This summer will be the 5 year anniversary of our move to China.  Sometimes people ask me why we are still here.  Why so long?  Why this place?  Isn't it too far from home?  Isn't it too difficult?  Aren't you tired of it?  Why do you stay?  I stay for many reasons, but one of them is the simple fact that every time I see an obstacle that seems insurmountable to me, He conquers it.  Whenever I'm tempted to doubt if we can stay here, He meets my fear with a solution that I couldn't have come up with by myself.  He always answers.  I wouldn't want to live with less than that.  He's always surprising me with what He can do and even more than that what He will do for me.  I always want to live in a place where I get to see that.

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