How Refreshing!

I admit, I have shamefully neglected this blog throughout the holidays. But it's a new year, so I shall strive to be more timely in posting....well, whatever pops into my head to post. And after an Irish Christmas, a Bristol New Year, and my first English birthday, it is time to return.
For those of you who are not aware, two of the chief conspirators in getting Mark and I together, were Brooke and Daniel Newman. The epic history of the Wilson and Garfield families could take a rather long time to relate, but suffice it to say that I knew Brooke from the time she was born. (You may gather from this that I am older. I shall not reveal the gap. :)) Her family moved to Virginia while she was still small, but then moved back to Moscow where Brooke went to New St. Andrews College and eventually moved to England, where she lived with her cousin's family and helped teach their children. I did not know Brooke all that well, but when she was visiting Moscow during this time, we would take to chatting with each other at church. I was teaching in Spokane at this point, and was in Moscow on the weekends very frequently. We found we both enjoyed travel, great books, and things British.
Daniel met Brooke when she came to Oxford and you can ask them sometime about their love story. Go ahead. Ask them. Suffice it to say here, that they got engaged and naturally began plotting ways to get numerous people around them engaged as well. (Have you noticed that this is a common trend in engaged people? :)) One of the first subjects of this focus was Daniel's best friend Mark Wilson and.... you get the picture.
And so--as the stories say-- the two American girls went to live in England happily ever after. Well, none of us can say where God will have us living eventually, but we are certainly living happily in England right now. However, as anyone living abroad will tell you, adjusting to another country will take some time. There are days when things seem very friendly and lovely and just so BRITISH and we can smile and think of P.G. Wodehouse stories or find various corners of England that MUST have inspired parts of Lewis's Narnia. But there are other days when one may understand how a Roman soldier would have felt when he was told he was posted, not to sunny Italy or Spain, but to the grey little island way up north in the empire. Days when people seem positively unfriendly and no one smiles at you on the street and there just seem to be puddles and wet cigarette butts everywhere. It is on days such as those, that one would give just about ANYTHING to hear an American voice and get American customer service (yes, I'm afraid we are MUCH better at that :)).
Well, God knew that those days would happen and thus, I have an American voice just a phone call away and in the same time zone! Brooke and I talk at least once a week, and we have had the pleasure of seeing each other in person four times now. As Brooke and Dan live in Cambridge on one side of the country, and we live in Bristol on the other side (a WHOPPING four hours!! :)) it is more difficult to see them more often. But we appreciate when we do and recently Mark and I were blessed to have them in our home for a few days to celebrate the New Year.
I have never fully appreciated what a common cultural background can do toward creating good friendships. I have often informed my students that travelling abroad really makes you appreciate home and it can often draw your little group closer together. But common culture also creates this aura that one immediately can relax into. And with these friends, our commonality does not end with being American or being British.
Brooke and I were both raised (largely) in Moscow and we share the same pastor there (he's her uncle), many of the same friends, some of the same memories,  and MANY of the same beliefs about how we should live as Christians. Our cultural 'language' goes far beyond English. After all, we share that with the dear mother country in which we now live. Because you see, our husbands share this as well and they are English and Irish respectively. They also share memories, and the same pastor in Oxford, but they also share with us a distinctive Christian view of life and how we should be growing, maturing and raising our families in Christ. It is this sort of cultural background that has drawn us together and grown our friendship, far more than just living in the same country.
England has a long way to go in recovering her great Christian heritage. There are very encouraging signs that this is happening, both in Bristol and Cambridge. But there are times when Brooke, Dan, Mark and I can feel a bit 'parched' for deep, life giving, worldview thinking. And that is what I wanted to share in this post. We are so grateful for the refreshment we get whenever we're together. This was something we four discussed while Brooke and Dan were here recently and Mark and I have commented on it every time we see them. It's not just that we appreciate some good friends. We are refreshed and rejuvenated when we see them and talk with them. It is a tall, cool glass of water. (Perhaps in the case of our husbands it's a tall, somewhat cool, pint of beer, but I digress) We are encouraged in our faith and in perseverance as we seek growth in our own lives and in our church.
This is not to say that we don't have some lovely English friends here. We do! But our relationship with the Newmans is a unique one and we look forward to seeing just what will happen in the next chapters of our lives. There are certain patterns of story in our family backgrounds you see, and Brooke and I wonder if some of those patterns will be repeated here. God does indeed have a sense of humor so it shouldn't shock anyone if a small classical and Christian school started in England.....


We'll let you know if it does. :)