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The next day he was shivering with fever and too weak to get out of bed.  Carl’s relapse of dengue so soon after our arrival gave him no opportunity to orient me to this city so different from college-town Whittier.  I did not yet know where to cash a traveler’s check.  I had not yet found a grocery store, although I walked right past it, twice, not realizing it was on a second floor.  I did discover street vendors, who sold flowers, bread, fruits and vegetables.

Two weeks after our arrival, Carl was still in a feverish stupor and Christmas was just days away.  For the children’s sake, I hung ornaments torn from paper onto a rubber plant purchased from the street.

It was a barren Christmas Eve. Carl was in and out of delirium, hardly knowing where or who he was.  Nothing felt like Christmas.  The children were too young to know what they were missing.  Carl was too sick to know what he was missing, and I was too spiritually inexperienced to understand what it was I was missing.  I just felt so alone.

An older missionary couple living across the street had urged me to come for their Christmas Eve open house.  I declined, thinking it was impossible.  However, when Carl and the children fell asleep, I decided to slip over to their apartment for a few minutes, longing for a taste of a real Christmas.  Their home was warm with candlelight, inviting friendship, and food.  But the soft singing of Christmas carols, rather than satisfying my lonely longing, was my undoing.

O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by;

Does God above see what a lousy Christmas this is? 

Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting Light;
The hopes and fears of all the years are met in Thee tonight.

I certainly identified with hopes and fears.  They called me to return to my vulnerable family that I should not have left alone.  Thanking the hostess, I slipped out into the dark streets, tearful, swallowing sobs of self-pity, longing for the everlasting Light.

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