The Need

I love learning and exploring new cultures. In fact, I was on an airplane a couple years ago from India to Nepal, sitting next to a young Indian man who had just gotten married. He was very friendly and answered all of my curious questions about life in India and arranged marriage. I learned a lot on that short plane ride that day. After my line of interrogation, I asked him if he had any questions about life in America. What he said to me was so profound, I think of it often. He said, “I have heard that Americans don’t know their neighbors, that you build garages so you don’t ever see your neighbors, and that you don’t REALLY know each other, yet everyone is always ‘fine’ if you ask them.” He then asked me why we don’t need each other. He talked about how they do life together and that without one another, they wouldn’t survive.

I have thought so much about that conversation during these last six weeks of living in Nepal. It has been lived out in front of me daily. This dependence on one another. Each one offers something so important to everyone else. It is family. It is life.

And now, it is becoming life for our family. We all need one another. That concept is sometimes hard to see when we are going in all different directions back home. There’s something so unique and amazing about each person in our family, something that we need from each other. It is unfolding in real time here, and now we get to take it home.

It isn’t just in our family. On the morning we were leaving Lynchburg to start our Nepal adventure, a beautiful friend handed me a stack of envelopes. There was one for each day we would be gone, letters from several different friends. It is hard to describe the lifeline these letters have been for us here. On a day when we were tired, hot and discouraged, we opened up our letter for that day.

We read, “It’s a new week. How are you? You may be getting tired at this point. Praying you find strength in Him! No doubt you’ve had some tense moments already. Don’t stop saying yes. Keep pressing in.”

Yep, we needed that! And we have needed each one!

And the Facebook messages, texts, and emails from countless people encouraging us to keep going. We value each one.

We need people. We all do. We need each other in order to survive. We always talk about this idea of community. We need people who are the same and people who are different from us. Over these past six weeks, that idea has come to life. And now we get to take it home with us.

If this journey were a 50K race, we would be on the last leg, we would have less than 10K to go. We know the finish line is coming up. It has been an amazing race. Full of fun adventure, a gazillion mosquitos, rice, beautiful people, family, huge life lessons, sweat, laughter and emotion.

Now to figure out how to wrap it all up, say goodbye, help our kids transition back, and enjoy the process of coming back home.




If you would like to see pictures of our journey, please follow us on Instagram (SheaFoster or ToddFoster1970) or on Facebook (Shea Williams Foster or Todd Foster).