My, my, my, what a busy couple of months (and particularly the past few weeks) this has been! Being archaic and old-fashioned, it is my hope and good intention eventually to start sending out an annual Christmas letter (as in, actual paper-and-ink, requiring a stamp, lick-the-envelope, etc.) However, since we do not at present have everyone’s address (and because we probably don’t have money for stamps), and because Christmas for this year is already past, I think that for the moment, I will settle for the digital counterfeit of a Christmas letter: a Superbowl Sunday update email.

First things first: the job hunt. In December, after six frustrating months of job hunting for positions ranging from translation to teaching to furniture moving, with no offers (save my one-hour-a-day job teaching Spanish to elementary school kids and a part-time under-the-table offer to process recreational marijuana which, though legal under state law, Jenn prudently advised me to turn down), I was offered a job teaching high school Spanish (levels I and II) at Bellevue Christian School. Although it is a part-time position, I am hoping to be able to stay and expand to full time, as well as to get my Washington state certification while working there. I’ve been there about a month, with some minor interruptions [see below]. So far, I’ve been shadowing the outgoing teacher, as well as helping with administrative work such as grading tests, administering quizzes, etc; however, come Monday, I’m flying solo. I’m definitely nervous, but mostly really excited. It feels like a tremendous opportunity to try to get students excited about something that I love, and it feels like an immense relief, not only to have a job, but to have a job that (for the first time in my life) feels like a step in the direction of a true career. We’ll see how this new-teacher idealism and excitement are tempered by the actual experiences of grading, cheating, and student apathy, but regardless, I am immensely excited to rise and meet these challenges.

Speaking of challenges, there’s big news number two: adventures in the Emergency Room. Shortly after returning to Seattle after the holidays, and one day after starting at Bellevue Christian, I woke up in the middle of the night with a severe headache and vomiting. Since I had experienced this once before, my parents and I had a fairly good idea of what was going on: my shunt (which I had placed when I was eight years old to control hydrocephalus, or “water on the brain”) had broken. Jenn drove me to Virginia Mason around four in the morning, and once there, I was admitted immediately, hooked up to an IV (after which my already-hazy memories fade altogether), and woke up several hours later with a new piece of hardware in my head.

For having undergone emergency brain surgery only three weeks ago, I feel fantastic. I was home two days after operation. My parents drove up to spend the weekend with me and Jenn and help her with the housekeeping/invalid care. By the time that they left, I was up and moving around (although needing long recovery rests). The week after, I started back at work. This past week, I’ve been pretty much completely back to normal—with a few more scars, a few pounds less, a new haircut, but except for being out of shape, none the worse for wear (at least, until the medical bills start to arrive…that might necessitate an emergency heart surgery to go along with the brain surgery). Interestingly, Jenn has been the one who has had more difficulty recovering; while in the hospital, she caught the lingering bronchitis that apparently has infected half of the city of Seattle, and almost a month later, she’s still coughing. Both of us are feeling like invalids right now, and looking forward to being back to normal.

Still, oddly enough, my first reaction to the events of the past few weeks has been gratitude. With the final resolution of the seemingly interminable job hunt, I suppose that gratitude is only natural; as one of the speakers at YWAM told me five years ago, God’s timing “always seems late in the natural,” but nonetheless, when it does come, exceeds “all that we can ask or imagine.” So it was with finding Jenn a little over a year ago. So it was with this job as well. Though I felt immensely frustrated getting constantly turned down for the (mostly administrative/secretarial) positions that I had been applying for, I can now appreciate that if I had been offered one of these jobs, it would have been a paycheck, but little more. It would have been more of a distraction than a step forward on the road to a vocation. Although I don’t know how this job plays into the overall larger picture (and, for that matter, I have no idea what the “overall larger picture” is), it is exciting to have the chance to step forward into something that I am passionate about, and the long wait has given me time to affirm that this is indeed something that I am passionate about.

It surprised me a bit, however, to feel overwhelmed with gratitude for a medical emergency. On further reflection, I realized that this has reaffirmed a sense of God’s providential care for me. The first way I was reminded of God’s care the overwhelming care and love of people. Jenn was absolutely amazing throughout the entire time, and cared for me so well that I honestly never had occasion to worry about myself. My parents were able to come up and spend several days with us. I received emails, phone calls, visits, cards, and flowers from aunts, uncles, brothers, sister, and friends, several of whom made it a point to check in daily with Jenn to see how I was doing, or to bring meals. On Saturday night—the day that my parents arrived—I remember lying in our bedroom. Through our small apartment, I could hear the sound of mom, dad, and Jenn talking and laughing through the kitchen. It was one of the more powerful experiences of peace that I have yet encountered: not the absence of trouble, or fear, or uncertainty, but the experimental realization that you are loved and cared for even in trouble or uncertainty, and this love chases fear away. It was wonderful to be surrounded by people I loved, and to realize that they loved each other, too.

The second reason is the circumstances in which this crisis happened. Jenn was with me to help, to drive me to the hospital, and to call all the necessary parties while I was unconscious and/or incapacitated. I had excellent insurance (by American standards, at least) through Jenn’s work. I had friends, family, and excellent medical facilities close by. I had just been offered a job, so I didn’t have to worry about trying to schedule or re-schedule any interviews, and my former employment had already scouted out replacements to take the classes that I missed when I was in the hospital. This leads to reason number three for gratitude: the circumstances in which it did not happen. I was not in Mexico or Ghana. I was not uninsured, or insured with a “catastrophic” policy that would have been effectively worthless. I was not alone. The contrast between this emergency and my shunt scare while I was in Mexico reinforces for me how different things could have been. Consequently, although this has been a frightening reminder of just how fragile life is—of how we are all just one slip, or broken piece of plastic, or blocked artery away from the hospital or worse—it has also been a reassuring reminder that there is a larger plan, and that these crises fit within it, and do not negate it.

I know, I know: to a skeptic, nothing here will seem particularly miraculous. But then, what is a miracle? I remember in college thinking just how silly the miracle accounts of the Gospel seemed—not because I thought they couldn’t happen, but because I couldn’t see the point. So what if the sea was suddenly calm, and the disciples, who thought that they were about to go to a watery grave, returned to dry land that day? They would all go to their deaths in turn: crucified, stoned, beheaded, flogged, impaled, any one of which seems, in terms of raw suffering, far more fearful than drowning. So what if loaves and fishes were multiplied, and twelve baskets were left over? The next day, the leftover bread would be stale, and those formerly sated followers would just be hungry again. Those who had been healed would fall sick again; those who had been raised would die again. Why bother?

Then, when learning Greek, I noticed something interesting. The word most commonly used to describe these events is σημεῖα: in English, “signs.” It seems to me that the reason these events are not so much believed to be significant in and of themselves because of their supernatural origin, but for what they signified. They were not cures for all that ailed the people of first-century Palestine, or even that tiny minority that followed Jesus bar-Joseph around the Galilean countryside. They were reminders that through it all—through sickness, hunger, pain, rejection, even death—there was a God who was powerful enough, and loving enough, to “work all things together for the good of those who love him.” They were brief glimpses of the transcendent beyond the shadow of momentary circumstance and reminders (in the eloquent words of Martin Luther King, Jr.) that the “arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”