Gëzuar Thanksgiving!

This week has been a hard week. The week wherein Americans celebrate “Thanksgiving” has been a tough week. I suffered through sickness, a sinus allergy that turned in to constant coughing, spitting, sneezing, and the eventually loss of my voice. I battled severe loneliness that comes with living in a foreign country with little communication with those you love in the place you call home. I opened up to a dear friend about some demons I’ve been battling lately in a personal life tell-all. For someone who identifies as a mostly introverted and anxious person, a tell-all in itself is more than half the battle. But I made it. I made it today to tell you about how it all turned around for the better.

We all have bad weeks and days and months and years. So I know I am not alone and I am definitely not trying to throw out complaints. The biggest disclaimer here is that without the bad days or weeks or months or years I would have never aspired to become a writer. This blog would not exist. In a way, my life thrives on the hard stuff, on that thick mud in the Black Forest that we just can’t get our feet out of. I love the hard stuff. It has shaped me to be the girl facing the world (or at least attempting to) in front of this screen. So do not take my truths for ungratefulness. Anyway, as I stated before by the end of the week things have started to look up. Why? It’s one of my favorite days of the whole year.

I. GIVE THANKS (right now. No I mean it. You’re breathing. YOU CAN RREEEAAADDD. Someone’s week may have been worse than yours.)

It’s funny that the day full of thanks arrived when I felt like I actually had nothing at all to be thankful for. I’m just another drop in the ocean. But I am so much more than that and even though it is taken me up until this moment to realize that it doesn’t matter. What matters is the reality of my status in light of being loved and accepted with grace. So there’s that. On Thanksgiving day I had the opportunity that unfortunately many don’t have, some by choice and others not by choice; I was surrounded by people that I had come to love in such a short amount of time (8 months) here in Albania. They are also people who I felt warmth flowing from in love for me. I never imagined that my first Thanksgiving away from family could have been like that. Another Peace Corps volunteer, who I call my Big (big sis), hosted the gathering at her home in her assigned city with another volunteer and I, her sister and best friend that are visiting from America and two Albanian families she had gotten close to during her service. We cooked together all day and in the end fellowshipped with one another with delight. It was a culmination of cultures that I will never forget. And that is what I was thankful for. All of those new people in my life. When I left America to come here, I felt like I was leaving a lot behind, but I also felt like I wasn’t. The slate was clean for me to start new. To build new relationships. Love new people. Hold new hands. And right now that is the reality. I will always make time for the ones I love back home in America but my heart is not split between the two places anymore. As volunteers, if we cannot fully be here it impacts our service in a certain way. That is not to say that that impact is good or bad, it’s just what it is and being here, present, is so much more effective in my opinion than living here physically, but living in America with our whole hearts. I am making a life here and living in the moment God has provided in this time and place because I am the last person to know what tomorrow holds. I am learning to walk by faith and it is a beautiful thing. A beautiful and hard thing but I would like to believe the beautiful things outweigh the hard things. The smiles outweigh the frowns. The laughs outweigh the desperate cries of fear and anxiety. That is my prayer for my time here. And for you reading this as well, wherever you are in this beautiful and hard life.
Love,
Jess