Yeah, we boarded a plane in our desert land to explore a country green and rainy with red roofed houses. The flight was long. Hours of playing airplane games, watching an airplane movie and a documentary, reading my fantasy novel, and attempting to sleep. And spying my boys as they shared words and ideas with a young German man telling them about his homeland, the one we were headed to. My middle son told him the history of Weimar and he told them about German culture. After nine hours of traveling in the stratosphere, we touched down to our adventure.

We traveled planes, trains, and automobiles to settle in our home away from home. That first night, we walked to the grocery store and found some good German beer and Italian wine. And learned that it is ok to just grab one beer or three eggs from a pack if that is all you need. After a snack, a few glasses, and hours of words broken and shared, we slept off our jetlag.

Traveling is a great excuse for a slow morning of coffee and breakfast. Then it was time to explore this land we chose to visit. Wondering the cobblestones through streets narrow with coloured houses lead us to an open and wide park. The lush green welcomed us desert creatures. Soft rain fell on our shoulders and puddled around our steps; we simply enjoyed the normal of another land.

So, we explored what isn’t found in our land. Buildings made by hands long given to the grave. Statues remembering times and events and people long silenced by the moments gone quiet. And stones crying out the names of those laying still underneath their space.

We were taken aback by the grave site. It was clearly Soviet. Communist Soviet. Here in a land that struggled through economic devastation and Nazism. The hammer and sickle were a strange sight and clearly caught our attention. 640 members of the Soviet armed forces who fought in World War II found their final resting place in a foreign land.

Our imagination ran wild with how this happened after all weren’t Germany and the Soviet Union enemies during World War II? How is it that there is this memorial to their enemies well maintained in their land? After some research, we learned that all these mostly young men were in a hospital nearby and succumbed to their wounds at the end of the war. Most dying in the years 1945 and 1946.

To think of this kindness in a war or even the aftermath, is almost unthinkable. War is the antithesis of kindness and yet, here is a cemetery respecting not only the dead, but the country they died for. It was a gem find, but isn’t kindness an unexpected gem find? In our own quiet way, each of us, my two sons and I, wondered around the names and the stones. Trying to hear their silent stories through the time and space that separates the living from the dead.

In this overcast land visiting this bit of history, it hit heavy on my heart. These young men were around my own sons’ age. Here in 2023, a hundred years after some of the dead were born, I’m taking my boys on a trip to explore new lands and new experiences. In the years between 1945 and 1949, these boys were dying in a hospital fighting for their life after fighting in new lands. Yeah, I was stung and humbled. This land become hollowed deeply. I stepped lightly.

The mothers of these long dead had no choice to give their sons adventures to explore and conversations to share at the end of the day. They only had a letter with a date and a place. And only memories to keep until they lay deep in the ground in their own country. I wonder what they would have given to hold their sons one last time.

Our first adventure turned into a heavy reminder of the brevity of life, made briefer by war. And a reminder that life is not without trials and tribulations and tempest. Yet, here in the garden of stones with the clouds mourning the long dead, I happened to spy my boys interacting as brothers do. Life is more than the heartaches we all endure. Life is full of curiosity, beauty, amazement. And my boys were filled with all three, full of life in this solemnly dead space.

I smile at this gift of kindness in a foreign land. My sons enjoying each other’s company and sharing life together. This country commemorating young men for their courage and sacrifice for a country they fought. The beauty of tears telling of the happy and harm we experience deepens these moments into the holy. I see these invisible waves that connect time and space from the cold stones with names written in Russian to the cobblestones we walk to the laughing we share as we move on to the old broken buildings not far from this still garden.

These broken buildings long lost to nature pique our interest. When were they built, what stories do they hold, what did it originally look like in this place? Were there moments of kindness among the inhabitants? Can walls really speak? If we are all silent, will they cry out?

The boys and I hold conversations about what the buildings could be used for, some were missing any context. Our imaginations ran wild. I found it intriguing that some buildings were left to the elements and time where entropy reigns. And some were repurposed for modern uses. Why one was reused and the other ignored, I’ll not know. Was it due somehow to the spirit of the places? Was it to remember someone influential that once visited that building?

We learned that Johann Goethe and Friedrich Schiller left an indelible mark on this city, and western culture. Some argue for good and others not so much. Johann Sebastian Bach spent many years in Weimar and we saw a place he visited frequently. We were almost late for our lunch meeting with some friends and, disappointingly, we never got back to see the influence Bach had on Weimar.

My boys had never met the friends we had lunch with. She is from East Germany, when that was a thing. He from Nebraska. And I know them because he is my brother-in-law’s wife’s brother. I love her family and hoped they would take a few moments to meet with us.

That they were willing to spend time with us was a kindness. The time and space that separated us diminished quickly as we sat down to lunch and enjoyed a three-hour conversation. Our words skipped over topics covering current events, the history of East and West Germany, our mutual love for our LORD and Saviour, and finding out how each of us found ourselves here in Weimar on this day. The time passed too quickly and yet the mutual affection was palpable. We have dear friends in Germany when we go back.

Our first day ended, full with moments of kindness flickering in and out of time. When the boys and I gathered for our evening discussion on the day, we recounted the garden of stones, the garden of eras, the garden of friends. And this garden of a momma and her sons exploring this life of holy and harm in a foreign land.

And gratitude galore at the wonder of life and the beauty of relationships.