On Our Last Night In China

A late night letter after scrubbing bathrooms and stuffing endless amounts of socks into bags.

I want to say thank you. Thank you for the walk through the back part of our buildings the other evening, when the sun hung low and filtered through the trees and a place that normally feels haphazard and strewn with piles of rubbish appeared utterly, breathtakingly, beautiful.

Thank you for the attentive and genuine woman who gave me one last massage, telling me how much she would miss me and how much she fears our children will miss their home here, but assuring me that we will come back and when we do to be sure to call her— because she will take us to Shangri-la to climb mountains like we both love to do. She tells me this while carefully applying glass cups to my back, explaining where my skin is not so good and where my circulation is healthy and telling me I will not be able to get this done in America. Thank you for her. Thank you for all the massages and conversations over all the years. Thank you showing me how this culture cares for the body in ways I was unaware of. Thank you for the way she made me feel cared about, a foreigner, who didn’t really bring any benefit to her, but she cared anyway.

Thank you for all the people who have let us love them here, and who loved us in return, even when they knew we would have to leave someday. Thank you for those who love the sojourner. Thank you for letting us sojourn here as long as we did. Thank you for taking me to unexpected places. Thank you for each city we lived in, each apartment, each quirky decoration and piece of unwanted furniture. Thank you for the things I learned about making do, being content, finding what matters. Thank you for all the many times I found things of beauty. The Christmas tree that first year on the side of the road in Jimo Lu. The blue antique doors. The apartment with the arched window in the kitchen. Even with the leaks and the rats and the seven flights of stairs, I loved it. And when it was time to let it go, even for that I want to say thank you.

Thank you for the ladies who dance in the park, for the old men who play hacky-sack, for the grandparents who bring the babies out to play, and for all the many friends I’ve made in the many parks over the years. Thank you for showing me how people can bring joy to one another just by coming together each day. Thank you for the goodness of a neighborhood.

Thank you for the smell of lamb meat roasting on bamboo sticks over a long, thin charcoal grill, the smoke thick and hot and drawing an inevitable crowd. Thank you that this will always evoke a certain place and time for our family. Thank you for soft, gluey pockets of dough filled with juicy pork and cabbage. Thank you for mapo doufu and yaoguo jiding and for the Korean friend who taught me to make kimbab and the ayi who taught me to make jiaozi and the Chinese friend who taught me to make his mother’s beautiful recipe for the best Sichuan fish. Thank you for foods I never would have guessed I would love, but now have become staples. Thank you for the bittersweet youzi and the buttery smooth nangua and for strawberries in February and mangoes in June and the best Shandong apples in September.

Thank you for the times I could see the mountains. Thank you for the steep gorges. Thank you for the stubbled rice paddies. Thank you for the train rides, the best memories— of smoke filled cars and card games and instant coffee. Thank you for the friends who showed us places where God was at work, and places where He was desperately needed. Thank you for the ways I saw things done differently than I knew or expected. Thank you for the men and women who seemed like giants to me. Thank you for keeping me small. Thank you for being bigger than I knew, wider than I could see.

Thank you for the valleys. Thank you for the times when shadows fell long and often they looked like me. Thank you for the hard years. Thank you for the friends who stayed. Thank you for those who left. Thank you for the things I couldn’t see, the things that were hard to admit. Thank you for the mirrors I had to look into. Thank you for the Words that were always, always faithful and true, sometimes cutting to the bone, sometimes binding up wounds.

Thank you for the blue skies, and the long days of gray. Thank you for the silty, polluted air that showed me what it means to live in a place that is not idyllic. Thank you for bringing me to the city, and sometimes, oftentimes, to my knees in it. Thank you for the love of the city. Thank you for the good things that happen in the city. Thank you for the three I have lived in.

Thank you for smallest glimpse, like peeping through a pinhole in a curtain, into the work of the Kingdom in this place. Thank you for that one, who endures. Thank you for that one, whose faith is just beginning. Thank you for them, who are like lamp posts impossible to move or put out. Thank you for the many who gather, who are not disheartened, or afraid. Thank you for showing me what it can look like to be faithful and full of faith in a place that does not make it easy. Thank you for showing me that we are owed nothing, but promised everything. And that Your work is without borders or need of government support.

Thank you today for friends who make it hard to leave. Thank you for the soft hugs of my kids who are struggling to say goodbye. Thank you for our neighbors serving us dinner on our last night, and for reading with us from Psalm 84. Thank you for hearing the Scriptures in French, and the sound of many tongues proclaiming timeless truths. Blessed are those whose strength is in you, whose hearts are set on pilgrimage.

Thank you for this long pilgrimage. Thank you for always being our home. Thank you for being the place we can always find our rest. Thank you for the years behind us now, and the the years that lie ahead.

“We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise then when we’d first begun.”

I can’t say I feel ready to go in this moment. I don’t even know if I feel a sense of peace. But I am thankful. So thankful. For it all.

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