a healthy week

Well, I'm going to Europe in less than a week now, yikes. But aside from my mounting anxiety about _other_ continents, I've had a really healthy week. Not just a physically healthy week, which it was that, but an emotionally healthy week.

This week I've hung out with Josh a lot on Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday I went and ran before jujitsu with Fish and Gloria, and then went to class, so I wasn't lonely missing Josh at home again. Tonight I went over to Gloria and Rick's house for dinner. Gloria and I worked out too. In a sad little way, it reminded me of all those nights when I used to go over to Jeff and Deb's and have such a good time. My married people friends who let me be part of their family when Josh is off being busy... all those nights working out with Jeff and hanging out with Deb and watching them make their spinach and brown-rice chicken dinners. All gone.

Gloria is my friend from jujitsu. She's originally from Colombia, and originally Catholic. She's now quasi-American and quasi-Christian. It's a funny thing, whenever I hang out with Rick and Gloria they always ask me to pray for the food and they always want to talk to me about God and God's love and how they were hurt by the Church, but they still really love God. But as I was saying, Gloria is from Colombia. She's Spanish-speaking although is about the best English-as-a-second-language speaker that I've ever met. Rick, in all his fifteen years being with Gloria, has never learned Spanish, but he's been asking me to teach him.

So tonight I started teaching him. It was really sweet. I brought over a couple books that outline basic Spanish grammar and started going through them with him. Gloria sat on the couch and, for the most part, just listened. Having never been taught how to teach Spanish to a non-native speaker, all her attempts to teach Rick Spanish had ended up in fights and hurt. But when I laid out the basic ar, er, ir verbs to Rick he got them and flew with them. It was cool because Gloria listened quietly the whole time, every once in a while saying, "Oh, that's the difference between ser and estar. I always wondered why we used them differently." and making other comments about things that she'd never understood about her native language. The coolest, most heart-breakingly beautiful thing though, was to watch the look of love in her eyes as her husband finally started making sentences in her language, and to watch the manly determination of her husband as he struggled through the pronunciation and grammar. I could almost feel a deep click of a link being added onto the chain of reasons why she loves him and the expression of true love that he feels for her. It was such a neat thing to watch! There is nothing so great as to know that God used me to work out his will, and that's something that I got to do tonight. I got to be used to strengthen a marriage - and with Spanish of all lunatic things! It's one thing to teach high schoolers, knowing that God will someday use that knowledge for his good. It's another thing to get to see his good carried out right in front of my nose. Yup, Rick is getting some tonight! Go marriage!