Day 89
Wow , can’t believe I am in my “80’s” on this trip. Seems like I just got here and like I have been living here my whole life all at the same time. Ok so its been a while since I’ve updated everyone reading this blog (all three of you people )…and I’ve had a great reason for not doing so…MY FAMILY CAME HERE FOR FALL BREAK!!!! AND I WENT TO VENICE AND ITALY (but first…fall break)
For those of you who don’t know, my family surprised me at the airport. This entire trip I knew that my mom was coming to see me during fall break, but my sister and dad were supposed to be at home still. For those of you who know me, you know that I am a bit analytical and tend to overthink things….in this situation my analytical nature kind of helped me out. As weeks flew by and the trip got closer and closer, I began to realize my mom was not telling me ANYTHING about our trip. I kept asking her if I could help book train tickets or hotels or tours or anything…and she kept saying she had it all under control. Weird. Then all of a sudden a few days before the trip Gracie’s facebook “disappeared” to me. She claimed it was some virus she had gotten and her friends had trouble seeing her facebook as well. Weird. So needless to say, by the time the trip was right around the corner…I knew something was up. And I was determined to get some kind of information out of them…I kept trying to make them spill the beans about what was going on, but no one budged.
And then the unthinkable happened. My mom texted me that morning and told me that Dad and Gracie had just dropped her off at the airport (ok, believable enough)….then Dad decides to Facetime me before he leaves for my Grandparents house…so then I got a little sad because I knew my Dad wasn’t coming. So we get on FaceTime, and all of a sudden Gracie walks into the frame, and my stomach dropped to the bottom of my feet. I guess Gracie wasn’t coming either, I guess I just read into everything too much and got my hopes up. I was pretty disappointed and I couldn’t hold it in from them…while still FaceTiming them I bursted into tears saying how I just thought there was some small chance I would see them…I had gotten my hopes up, and then seeing both of them on FaceTime made me realize how much I did miss both of them. I was still SOOO excited about seeing my mom, but my heart hurt because I knew that I wasn’t going to get to see them this next week, and it just hurt seeing them on the phone and knowing I had such high hopes for seeing them.
Let’s get a few things straight. I LOVE being here, I have not cried ONCE in two months (huge shock)…and all of a sudden I get on FaceTime and LOSE it…and all of a sudden my dad just kept talking about how they needed to leave to head to my grandparents house (which is only a two hour drive by car). I kept saying, “DAD! I haven’t been upset in two months, I haven’t cried this whole time…and I’m upset for once and you can’t stay on the phone with me for another ten minutes just to calm me down??” He just kept saying how he needed to leave right then so he could have enough time to help my Grandpa chop firewood this afternoon. I was a little confused and quite frankly, really upset and kind of pissed off. He wanted to chop firewood more than stay on the phone with me for ten more minutes to make sure I was ok. (I feel like that situation should have made some kind of alarm go off in my brain that something was off, because those of you who know my dad know that he would NEVER do that).
So there I was, sobbing on the phone and trying to pull it together and be happy that just mom was coming (which I really was excited about, but had stupidly gotten my hopes up for more)…and my dad kept saying things like how bad he felt that I was upset he wasn’t coming…he claimed he felt so bad but then kept telling me goodbye! So unlike my dad.
The rest of Friday night I hung out with my roommates who tried to make me feel better all night by telling me funny stories and painting our nails, etc. The next morning I got ready to go get my mom from the airport. Terry Hoggard (who is a local missionary here who has been connected to my home church WCAG for my whole life) picked me up that morning, and we chatted the whole time about how much fun me and my mom were going to have that week. So that confirmed my thoughts that it was just my mom…Even the missionary was telling me that it was just her! Missionaries wouldn’t lie. Or so I thought.
We got to the airport, and I stood patiently by the gate waiting to see my mom, which seemed like it was never going to happen. I remember as soon as she walked out that my heart almost skipped a beat, and I knew that everything was going to be ok. As soon as I hugged her, my eyes swelled with tears knowing how thankful I was for such an incredible woman in my life. I was in mid hug, reuniting with my mom when all of a sudden someone tapped my shoulder (someone very short I might add) and said….”Hey, can I come too?”
I looked down and there was my baby sister, Gracie. I don’t think any noises came out of my mouth, I was in utter shock. As soon as I looked up from Gracie, I saw my big strong Dad standing right behind her. It’s hard to describe how shocked, surprised and overjoyed I was to see both of them. I lost it. In the middle of the airport. Gracie says that I just kept saying “No, no ..noo…I can’t believe it…What are you doing here?????” I just remember crying so hard I couldn’t get any words out. I do remember one of the first thoughts that ran through my head was, “well I’m about to have the greatest week of my life”.
You never know how much you miss the people that are the most important to you until they are standing right in front of you again, holding you and making sure you are ok. I never knew I could love those people so much. My heart hurt so bad with such joy. Suddenly I realized how big that ocean really was separating us, and how good it was to finally have them here with me.
So then everyone finally got to tell me what in the world was going on. Mom was just sitting in the other room when dad and Gracie FaceTimed me, and they kept saying they had to leave because their ride to the airport was there! We were about to get in our rental car and roadtrip all across Belgium, Germany and a little bit of Austria. No wonder my mom didn’t want me to book train tickets.
We stayed at Terry and Ruthanne Hoggard’s (who I found out were in on the plan the whole time) house in Waterloo, Belgium just outside of Brussels for that weekend. Got to see my mom’s old apartment, which happens to be walking distance from where I live now. Got to go downtown and show Gracie the Grand Place (which she kept thinking was a single building until we got there), and got to show my parents where I work, where they got to meet a wonderful man who I have been blessed to get to know named Rudolf who is the same Rudolf that I had that incredible conversation about Jesus with a month or two ago. (see blog post from day 30)
After a hilarious drive home from downtown Saturday night (where our GPS kept wanting us to make a U-Turn and drive into a road that was blocked off), we got to go to Christian Centre Church Sunday. It was so neat showing my parents everything that I have experienced here, my work, my apartment, the church, the grand place, etc., etc. After a wonderful service, we all headed to this quaint Italian restaurant on a lake outside of Waterloo that was absolutely breathtaking. Lunch was wonderful and it was so great just to sit down and catch up. Rudolf joined us crazy Americans for church and lunch and it was really a perfect day…I’m still surprised he didn’t run away after lunch realizing how loud and crazy we all are. He's pretty amazing.
Monday morning we left on our European Vaca. I was still in awe that my entire family was with me and that we wer DRIVING through Europe. And by we I mean my Dad was driving through Europe. We first stopped at Monchau, a quaint little “Christmas” german town on our way to Schwangau to see Neuschwainstein castle. Do you know all the little German houses you see on Christmas decorations? Well they really exist…and they are in Monchau! We had a couple of hours in this town where did some sight seeing and ended up eating lunch.
Now lets talk about lunch with the Bollinger family. For those of you who don’t know…eating is kind of a big deal to my family (and most Americans)…we want it to be just right, just what we are looking for…and we want it now. Even if its at a sit down restaurant…we want it fast. My family and I walked into the first little German café we saw and sat down at an open table. A few minutes went by and a waitress ( God bless her soul) came to our table. She soon realized we couldn’t speak German and so we asked her to read us the menu in English. She went through each dish. EACH AND EVERY SINGLE DISH. And as we started ordering she told us that it would take 45 minutes to an hour to get all the food out. Not ok with a bunch of hungry Americans. So we left. This poor waitress who just spent most of her morning shift reading us the menu in English moved out of the way for us crazy Americans to find some “quick food”. By this time, my 14 year old sister is beside herself embarrassed. Next, we step into another quaint German cafe, we sit down….and wait for about five minutes….and no one shows up….another minute goes by and I quietly explain to my parents that basically this whole eating thing takes a lot longer here and is a full drawn out process. So what do we do? We leave. And Gracie is pretty humiliated and telling us to go as fast as we can out of the place so we don’t embarrass her anymore. Needless to say we were all giggling at this point that we had just left two different restaurants after being seated and handed menus. Thankfully there was a bratweurst, waffle, frite stand down the street that screamed “fast”.
That night we pulled into Schwangau (the small German town with the two famous castles in it) and realized that we could see both castles from the windows in our room! Felt like we were truly in a fairytale. Later that night, my Dad was trying to encourage us all to go to bed (because it was probably around 10PM which is way past his bedtime) …and he started telling us to go to “sleeperlagen” and quiet downhosen”. Basically he started adding german sounding words to the end of English sentences. And the rest of the trip things became “Germanish” constantly.
Newschwainstein was beautiful and it was so fun to experience these castles with my family. Check out the pictures on fb if you want to know more. Later that evening we headed out for Salzbourg, Austria.
When we got there we realized that we were staying in Old Towne Salzbourg which you can’t get to with a car. Our poor GPS told us way too many times that week to “please make a U-turn if possible”. Babs was her name…and Babs didn’t like us too much. Anyway…. My mom and I eventually got dropped off by Old Towne by my Dad and Gracie., and we went and found the hotel. After finding it, the nice hotel employee told us where we could park our car pretty close to Old Towne.. So we ventured out (withtout any working cell phones) to try and find my dad circling the city of Salzbourg looking for a place to park. Needless to say, I was a little overwhelmed. To my surprise, my mom and I turned the corner…and there was my Dad and Gracie driving down the middle of a VERY narrow street in Old Towne with our large BMW….and both grinning ear to ear like they just had broken the law. I guess they found some cop who let them into Old Towne in order to find our hotel. So my Dad weaved through the little shopping carts and stores…and drove on the cobblestone streets of Salzbourg that night. Crazy Americans.
The next day was one of the greatest days of my entire existence. We got to do the sound of music tour! It was a four hour long bus tour that took us to all the major sights of the movie (including the back of the Von Trapp home, the Mirabell Gardens, the I am 16 going on17 Gazeboo and the I have confidence road. At each stop the corresponding song from the movie was played and everyone sung along. And by everyone I mean…the lady leading the tour walked up and down the aisle of the bus like a choir director waving her arms in the air making sure everyone was singing and having a good time. Even my poor father got into it. I can’t explain how fun it was to skip down the I have confidence road with my mom and sister just like Julie Andrews did in the movie, or dance in the Mirabell gardens just like the children did in the movie. Made me feel like a kid again. Made me feel so alive and so full of JOY.
Within the last three years, my joy has been stolen for me for a lot of diffenet reasons. Cancer. Grades. Boys. Anxiety. Worry. Fear. Friends. More Boys. More Anxiety. A lot of these different “joy stealers” were no one’s fault but my own as a result of the sinful world we live in…but if there is one thing that I have learned, it is that our God provides a way out of these pits. He provides a way out and joy along so many steps of the way. We just have to choose that joy. We have to choose to get out of the freakin pit. We have to choose to believe that Christ’s sacrifice WAS enough for us. We must openly decide and pronounce that His death and resurrection IS enough to give us FREDOM EVERY SINGLE DAY. One of my favorite hymns says that because He lives I can face tomorrow. And you know what…that is so true. Because He gave the ultimate sacrifice for me I GET TO CHOOSE TO HAVE A TOMORROW. Will everything be easy? No. Will there be days when I still have anxiety about things? Yes. Will people still hurt me? Yes. But does the unconditional love that my savior displayed for me on a cross 2000 years ago ever stop being enough?? NO.
As I have lived here, it has been such a gift to be able to look back on the past three years and see how I have grown. It has been a gift to see all the hard things I have gone through and how they are now serving a purpose in my life. I still have a long way to go (and always will) towards being the woman of God I know I am called to be, but it is really neat to look back and see the baby steps He is helping me take each and every day. The day that we got to skip around the Mirabell gardens and laugh while we sung every song of the Sound of Music as loud as we could WILL ALWAYS be a reminder to me that joy truly does come in the morning and there is a light at the end of the tunnel. You just have to choose to get yourself up and walk hand in hand with your Savior through each and every step of that tunnel.
The rest of the trip was also incredible. Filled with laughter and lots of historical sights (the concentration camp Dachau, parts of the ancient Roman city left in Trier, Germany, and a moving experience at an American military cemetery in Belgium). We ended the trip by heading back to Brussels, having a wonderful homecooked meal at the Hoggard’s house and then heading back to reality.
I remember crying as my Dad left and said good bye to me…not just because I was sad that he was leaving, but because I was so happy to see him in such a healthy place (physically, emotionally, spiritually). I cried such tears of joy throughout the week because of how far God has taken me and my family. It was truly a moment of celebration for us that I will always remember.
Mom Dad and Gracie…
Thank you so much for one of the greatest memories I will ever have. It was such a blessing to share a week with some of the people I care the most about. I will never forget getting lost in Waterloo, laughing as we exited those restaurants in Monchau, Dad eating lots and lots of Waffles, singing Do, Re Mi over and over, asking if the internet worked in so many differnet places, Mom asking for ice everywhere we went, and me badly imitating the accents of different foreigners thinking it would help them understand me (shows me that I really am my mothers daughter lol). I know you guys went to such lengths to surprise me and spend a week with me here…and I don’t know if I can ever repay you. It meant the world to me and I am so glad that we finally got to do something really fun after three years of stupid chemo. God is soo good and our hope really does endure!
Ps. When you know the notes to sing you can sing most anything.
Love,
Bailey
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