Tender Mercies - Hannah

Monday was a rough day. I'll spare the details, but let's just say that tantrums were had. Our family home evening song, "Families can be together forever," was accompanied by screaming and fighting. To make it worse, I had a lot of itchy bites--they might have been mosquito bites, but I'm guessing some of them were spider bites. Many of them were swollen and they hurt.

It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

That night I didn't sleep well. It was the first night that I was too warm, and I was still itchy. So I got up in the middle of the night, searched online for ideas on how to save my family, and then went back to bed. In the morning I was tired and still itchy.

Some days are like that, even in Costa Rica.

That morning I went with Jonah to school. I helped in a class that was not Jonah's class. I was told that Jonah is more "tranquilo" when I'm not there. And then as I was sitting near the kids at lunch, I probably could have burst into tears. But when you can't tell anyone what's wrong, it's fairly pointless, so I held back the deluge.

At that moment, one of the children came over and gave me a piece of her cookie. Then another girl came over and gave me one of her green grapes. It was so sweet. Their teacher, Patricia, gave me a smile.

Later that afternoon, it didn't rain. Apparently the rainy season is coming to an end, and the sun shone all afternoon. Michael was able to get the kids involved in a pick-up game of soccer. A couple children and our neighbor, Renzo, joined in. I sat and watched with Renzo's mom, Eva, and wife, Gretel. As I sat with them, I was able to understand and say more Spanish than I usually can.

After the sun went down, we went in and ate Arroz con pollo, a new recipe that turned out tasty. We cleaned up, I took a benadryl, played a game of Uno with the family, fell asleep before everyone else, and had a good night's sleep.

Things are looking up.