I have been married for 6 weeks!  

As we say in Arabic, thousands of congratulations to us!!! 

الف الف الف مبروك !!!!!!!  

Five days before the wedding, I was struck down with gastro and subsequently had a panic attack, ‘How will I cope? How will I look after our overseas guests? How will I enjoy this?’. I had prayed for a joyful wedding, for guests to taste the kingdom and for community to be built. But how could I pull this off? Then the night before the wedding I cried, because I felt anxious, inadequate about being a good hostess and unsure if I ‘deserved’ this gift of marriage? But through the comfort of tears, friends and prayer, Jesus invited me to turn up and receive his good gifts. 

The bus lurches forward in traffic and the standing passengers jostle for space.  The commuters in front of me keep bumping against my feet and I am not sure who feels more uncomfortable.  Dangling my legs out into the central aisle of the bus is clearly not working.  I pull my feet up into my chest and I receive a grateful smile from a woman in front of me.  Sitting in the luggage rack of the bus, I concede that I have chosen an unusual seat.  However, now that I have discovered this hidden-in-plain-sight option, it has proved quite useful on my travels across this new city.

Two months ago, I arrived in a new country with my new husband.  With heavy suitcases in tow, we landed at midnight in Argentina, the country that my husband calls home.  A purple beanie was promptly put on my head by one of our friendly welcomers and in the blur of fatigue, jet lag and the bracing cold of a winter’s night, we were ushered to a waiting car.

For me, the new is always so… uncomfortably new. Like someone turning the light on when you are fast asleep and you awake in a confused fog and not a little bit grumpy. There are of course those who exuberantly embrace their new environment like rolling down a grassy hill.  When they reach the bottom, they jump up ready to do it again, laughing off the grass stains across their clothes.  Of course, they probably don’t have a pollen allergy either.