Warm Soup and Love

Her chubby hands held the pencil with strength and precision. She looked down on her piece of artwork with such concentration as would be a grown adult. The flower was long stemmed and stout in its petals that it seemed too tall for the bloom but it still looked beautiful.There is something so innocent in the drawings of a child. the clouds, the sun, the uneven grass all portray an ideal world through the eyes of innocence. The butterfly with its unrealistically round wings flew in the air of the parchment and made me smile. She created a beautiful and childlike world that gave me peace and I stared in wonder as she created it before me

Once she was done she folded the sheet of paper in half and handed it to me, "It's for you!" she said. She was so proud. I gleamed with excitement, "Really?! It's beautiful! thank you Winni." Her chubby cheeks produced two little dimples as her bright eyes smiled up at me. She turned to her sister and said something in Mandarin. Her sister came and they began to play games with the crayons. This is a small world in which I can find peace and solace from the world. In this place I felt safe from all the hurts the world created. It is in the innocence of her drawings, the laughing and foreign language in the background and the delicious food to fill my stomach that I feel a surrogate sense of a family. Sometimes it is in the small warm touch of a child's fingers clinging to my own that give me peace. It's the love behind the act. It is the intent of the heart. I love the warmth of this families heart.

My day was pretty bad. I went to my favorite restaurant to escape and I was graced with the presence of a Chinese family that I visit entirely TO much! But they don't mind :) The kids sat around me coloring, laughing and cutting bats out preparing for Halloween as I ate dinner. Their mom came to the table with their snack which was a red bean soup that tasted sweet with a fungus in it called tremella fuciformis that lent the sweet flavor. She asked me if I wanted some and of course I said yes! It definitely is not a dish that would be on the menu. haha! She brought it to me and it was 2 things.

1. It was delicious!
2. It was definitely different

I knew in that moment as I sat with the children as their parents worked back in the kitchen and we ate the soup that I was home. It doesn't make sense, and I suppose it isn't meant to be. However, as I sat there reflecting on my life and the incidents there of I knew that God had sent me a gift. He sent me a family that I could cuddle up next to and laugh with, play games with and eat a foreign food with. I was comforted and after a long hard day, I felt warmer and willing to leave the restaurant to face life again head on.