One of my children received the affectionate nickname “lao pengyou” (old friend) from the emergency room staff at the Tianjin Children’s Hospital. His early years seemed to be quite accident-prone.

The second time he broke his arm, as an active five-year-old, I had just instructed him to stop pretending to fish off his bedroom windowsill that opened onto the balcony. Moments later I heard a horrible thump, and my heart dropped as I found him crumpled on the linoleum floor with a badly disfigured arm.

Single-parenting that weekend, I needed immediate help. I grabbed my phone and called a friend who I knew was with mutual friends. Three of them, not waiting for their dinner to arrive, jumped in a taxi and arrived at our apartment within 15 minutes. One of them stayed behind with my other kids while two taxied to the hospital with my broken-armed son and me.

X-rays showed not one but two significant fractures, so my friends advised me to travel to Beijing United Hospital where my son would be given anesthesia before setting his arm and putting it in a cast. From past experience, let’s just say I knew that he would not do well without anesthesia, so it was not a difficult decision to make. My friends then secured a driver to get us safely to Beijing.

Through my friends’ intervention, my son received the best treatment available for his broken arm to heal, and through my friends’ care, I experienced my own healing within the Body.

They showed me that even though I sometimes feel that I am, I am never alone.

In Healing What’s Within, Chuck DeGroat writes, “You can’t acquire or earn what’s already yours, but you can realize, at your core, you are the beloved and that worth, belonging, and purpose are your inheritance as an image bearer…To realize this, however, you and I need communities of redemptive remembering, where we’re invited to recall the story of God, where our own stories are welcomed in all their complexity, and we’re invited to remember who we are. We need communities where our wounds are welcomed, where our long-and-winding journeys Home are stewarded, and where we’re known and loved.”

In a foreign land, my friends helped remind me of my worth and my belovedness. Through them, not only my son’s wounds but my own were welcomed. I was seen, known and loved in the messy middle of my long-and-winding journey Home.

“Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up.” (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10)