A lot of you here know quite well that going to Mexico May31-Aug10 this summer was a big deal to me.  I rented a little house there to live in all summer that I planned to keep rented all year to retire to for good next year.  I grew up in Mexico, so retiring there completes the circle of life for me.

My best (platonic) friend of 37 years, Deb, and I traveled down there many times.  She retired first this year, I would next year, and we'd retire down there for good.  But she died on March 13 of COVID-19.  Then, to make matters worse, COVID-19 not only took my best friend and our dream together, it took away travel to Mexico at all with the closing of the border and pandemic travel ban.

You all have been really supporting me through my grief and disappointment, not to mention my having a fever myself this past weekend.  So I wanted to share with you a really cool thing that happened. 

The landlady that I rented my little house from this past March in Mexico happens to be the head of a convent.  I'm not Catholic, but I think that's really cool because I was hired as a Protestant hospital chaplain at a Catholic hospital in Chicago years ago and really enjoyed the folks I worked with.  My nun landlady is also a medical doctor, so we really hit it off even though we only met the day I signed the lease on the little house she had for rent on the grounds of her convent.  I've been paying her the rent wiring money to her monthly via Western Union since then.

I say all of that to make sure there is a context for how HAPPY I am that a few minutes ago my phone rang here in the USA.  Lo and behold, it was her--my Mexican doctor nun landlady!  It was so great to hear her voice and be reassured that I'm remembered there even though I can't go and Deb's not around to complain to about that.  Even though we've only met once and she's really my landlady, we had a chat like good friends, telling each other how COVID-19 quarantine is going here and how it's going there and so forth.  

I felt so blessed by this phone call from Mexico out of the blue that I wanted to thank you all for the many times in the past few weeks you've supported me in my grief over my loss (Deb) and my frustration over my thwarted plans (getting to Mexico).   I know international travel might seem like a real luxury to bemoan when we have so much trauma to recover from here. 

However, I find folks here do understand how returning there is a completing step in my PTSD recovery.  My trauma happened to me there as a missionary kid back when I lived in a Latin American war zone and my missionary family got violent in the home from the violence outside of the home.  My first visit back there was exposure therapy arranged for me by my PTSD therapist, a VA doc, and so my yearly returns there since then reinforced my healing from exposure therapy. 

Committing to that for good by renting that house to retire to for good next year was completing my commitment to my exposure therapy and PTSD recovery.  For the pandemic to take Deb and close the border were personal blows but also blows to how I saw my PTSD recovery continue.  This phone call out of the blue from my doctor nun landlady from Mexico today was a real validation of my PTSD recovery. 

I wanted to thank you for telling me to trust that such validation would come, even though it was hard to see how.  Who knew I would have a Mexican nun/doctor call me long distance out of the blue to encourage me?  I sure didn't.  Thanks for telling me hope would come out of somewhere new.  It sure did.