Goodbye to Another Friend
A couple weekends ago, I went home for a funeral for my friend, Traci Valerio. When I graduated from high school I did a “gap year” in Israel. I worked as a volunteer at a hostel in Haifa, Israel from August 2000-May 2001. It was run by a missionary family from my home church, the Valerios. My parents have been friends with them from the young-married-no-kids stage and supported them as missionaries. I met with them at their house the summer of my senior year, to have dinner at their house with their 3 kids and get the rundown of what I was signing up for. Which didn’t really occur. There was no way to describe what I would experience. It was a rich year for me, full of new and helpful sights, sounds, smells, foods, languages, cultures and friends. My cousin (who had lived overseas) told me “It’s like you grew up in a world made of red and then suddenly move to a world of other colors. Not only do you learn all about blue and green and purple, but also you can better understand the color red.” Such a great analogy for the experience, as a girl from small-town Augusta, GA launched into the Middle East. I loved it and was absolutely sad to leave.
The Valerios lived in their own apartment at the hostel, so I saw them every day. Traci, having elementary school age kids, did a lot of managing their household, but she was around us volunteers when she could be. She would celebrate holidays and invite us into her home, often joined daily “coffee break” (coffee/tea and a snack at 10:30am on the covered porch overlooking the Mediterranean for the hostel workers) and sometimes joined daily pre-breakfast Bible reading time. In Israel, it was illegal to teach a religion to a child that is different to what the parents believe. She ran an after-school club called Bible Club at the hostel teaching stories and truths from the Bible once a week to around 50 children (whose parents were fine to send them). The children would learn about Jesus, do crafts, watch a skit, memorize scripture, and have an afternoon snack. Once in the spring, Paul and Traci took a 5ish day trip to Budapest, Hungary while I lived at their home, shuttling the kids to school, feeding them dinner, popping popcorn for eating while watching movies, tucking them into bed. It was one of many eye-opening experiences as an 18 year old. It was just one of the many ways that they lived in their “fishbowl” home, not hiding that stage of life from me but helping me view and understand them in their work as missionaries, disciplers, parents, and grownups.
I came home in May 2001 and started college that fall (my first day of class day was on 9/11), sad to have left Israel and missing a lot of people from Israel. Israel kicked the Valerios out of the country a couple years after I came back, and they bought a house in the Augusta area (where they still live). Since they’ve been back in the states, I’d periodically get to visit with them back “home” in Augusta, during college and through my married years. About 8 years ago Traci told me about her cancer journey. She visited me in Greenville when she came to town a few years later, and though she had recently had her right lung removed she acted like her normal self while we visited over coffee. She told me about a convo with her oncologist, the one from my church growing up. He is retired now, but is such a heart person, caring and kind and good at explaining things. One thing he said to her at an early point in her cancer journey while they discussed the likelihood of the cancer returning was “I can tell you the statistics. But you and I know and believe in the One who controls our lives. Really you have a 0% or a 100% chance of this returning.” So so true, and that statement has been a helpful reality to tell myself these past couple years. Statistics are helpful, but statistics aside, cancer is either going to take my life or it isn’t. I am not in control of that decision. I get so caught up in trying to predict which day or what symptom will make my body come crashing down that I miss the point. God is in control, not me. He has given me today, right now, not the next 6 months. And what a gift that He gives me Himself, community, and many simple gifts as I walk down this path. He loves me, is taking care of me and my family and I can trust in that again every morning. Every morning.
