| Speaking Love |
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Last year at this time, I wrote about our family's wonderful experience hosting a British exchange student. Laura gave us an opportunity to see, and appreciate, our town, through the eyes of a foreign visitor. We discovered the "absolutely brilliant" in what we'd come to take completely for granted. In turn, when Mo traveled to England in the summer to stay with Laura's family, she marveled at the little different details of daily British life as much as at the Tower of London and Big Ben. Our hearts grew bigger as our view of the world became clearer and brighter. This year, we just said goodbye to our second exchange student, and I was struck by the lesson we learned by hosting Eva. Eva came to us from Belfort, France. Like Laura, she is Mo's age and, like Laura, she was a completely delightful guest. Here was the difference: Eva spoke barely a word of English. Among the two current French students (Mo and Evan) and one French student from the Mesozoic era (moi), we could cobble together enough French to ask her simple questions and discuss uncomplicated concepts. One day the French students on the exchange all took a bus trip to Lancaster. On the way home that night, I racked my brain thinking of how to converse about the Amish, and completely gave up. When in doubt, I tended to say "oui" a lot and hope Eva had not just asked if I'd ever been convicted of a crime. So how did we communicate? With gestures, with smiles, with charades. With notes (we learned our written and read French was better than our spoken, and that Eva could read and write some English, too). We watched a few movies together (English with French subtitles, French with English subtitles). We exchanged gifts. But I often wondered what Eva thought of this big, fast-talking family -- if she was overwhelmed and exhausted by the language barrier, and longed to return to the place she literally understood. On Eva's last day, we were surprised to see her suddenly in tears. We all were repeatedly hugged and kissed, and then our tears began to flow as well. We were so afraid we had not been able to communicate, because we are so used to the ease of a common language. Eva taught us that we did speak the same language after all. This sweet girl had come to love our family, the places she'd seen, and the people she'd met, and we loved her. I'm brushing up my French these days, and Mo is looking forward to traveling to France next year. We are eager to push beyond the limits of speaking only English in a world filled with such wonderful and different words. We hope that Eva will return, and that this time we will be able to easily converse. We hope we remember what we learned this time around: love is the language the world can already speak fluently. Just imagine the power of everyone speaking love in this world. Happy Easter! |
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