Hard is Still Beautiful

This trip is amazing. Ella is amazing. We are so grateful for every part of this. None of this is a surprise. We knew it would be really hard. It’s hard to be in a foreign country away from your people. It’s hard to travel in a pandemic. It’s exhausting to have this new, precious little person need you constantly. I can’t even go into the bathroom without intense screaming. The crying is hard but even harder knowing why she’s crying— the fear, the loss, the panic that a two year old should never know. She doesn’t just cry because we are new to her, but because she has experienced pain and trauma at the hands of other people. When there are snacks around, she grabs them all and wants to hold them all at one time, because she’s known what it’s like to not have food. She’s had to fight to have food.

Today she saw the doctor and it was rough. She wouldn’t keep a mask or a shield on. I tried to hold her as far away from people as possible, which you can imagine, in india is rough. She wanted me to stand and hold her the whole two hours. It took three of us to hold her down for her quick exam and bloodwork.

This is just a glimpse of what’s hard. There will be more hard days to come, no doubt. But even the hard doesn’t lessen the beauty.