I’m not an outdoor girl. I’ve said it before, but I could live happily in a bunker, as long as I had space to jump around. But after eight years in one of the most polluted cities in the world, I can’t get enough of our neighborhood because it’s just. so. beautiful. Here’s evidence:
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| See, this is a SWAMP and I’m excited |
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| Honestly I did not edit this |
One of my biggest fears in moving to Orlando was the gators. No, seriously. I pictured gators everywhere. In the lakes. Crawling out of drainage pipes. Eating my dog. We had friends who had a gator in their garage. They don’t even live near water. Basically I thought we were moving to an episode of Swamp People.
I was wary, the first few times I ran around our neighborhood. I tiptoed on the dock. I made wide berths around puddles and swampy looking water. I was suspicious of large bushes.
But six months passed and no sign of gators. I think I heard some in the reeds one night at the lake, if gators make a sound something like a pig. So either gators or water pigs was what I heard. But no sightings.
I started to get a little disappointed, nay, a lot disappointed. I was told there’d be gators. When I mentioned this gatorless existence on Facebook, people suggested I had not been leaving my house, and I simply needed to look harder.
So I’ve looked. I look at every body of water I pass. I squint into swampy places. It’s not that this area lacks wildlife. I’ve seen deer, armadillo, otters, sand cranes, and more vultures than I care to count. I had almost given up hope.
And then today, I’m pretty sure I saw one. It was on the left side of the road, probably 50 feet from the street, sunning itself on the side of a lake (I use the term lake generously). Finally! I think I was starting to get a complex, an “everyone’s seen a gator but me what am I doing wrong?” complex. No more! I now believe there are gators in Orlando.
How long will it be until I am no longer excited to see gators? Probably when I see one in my garage. Definitely if they eat my dog.
What do you do with desire?
I’m not talking about “I desire bacon” or, “I desire a tropical vacation.”
I’m talking about deep heart desires, like the desire to be loved, respected, needed, safe, important, powerful, competent, noticed. If I don’t get bacon on any given day, I’m not going to be hurt. I’m not even going to be hurt if I don’t get chocolate, though maybe a little disappointed. But if my desire to be loved goes unmet, there is potential for deep ache. So what do I do?
Most people would agree there are two main directions we sway. One is to demand that desire is met. This often looks like anger and contempt. My kids disobey, and I insist that they change. I yell and put my foot down and demand that they do what I ask. Why? Because that’s what parents should do? No – there are other ways to obedience. I do it because at a deep heart level, I don’t feel respected by them, and I hate that. Their disobedience feels unloving, and I want to be loved and respected.
So I could go another route. I could deaden my desire. This feels like the more “Christian” option. I can tell myself that I don’t care. I deny. I kill the desire. I tell myself that I am selfish for wanting it, foolish for looking to children to satisfy a desire. This is nothing more than shaming ourselves for having a legitimate desire. The collateral damage of this is that we begin to shame others for their desires as well.
Is there a middle ground? I believe so. It’s what a friend of ours last night called, “liminal space.” It’s the place where you acknowledge the desire and you sit with it. I believe it’s a place where you honor the desire. You say, “This is a true desire, a God-given desire.” The difficulty of this in between place is that there is no guarantee that the desire will be met. In fact, often it’s not. So we sit with the ache.
Why on earth would we do that? Why would we intentionally put ourselves in such a place of vulnerability? Personally, I think it’s because that’s what God does. God desires. He desires relationship with us. He desires our love, our respect, our worship, our attention. He doesn’t demand it. He never says He doesn’t care anymore whether or not we respond to Him. He sits in the ache, longing for us. Like the father in the story of the prodigal son, He waits every day, bearing the disappointment, in the hopes that something good will come. What He desires will happen.
So I believe that the liminal space is the place where God wants us to live because He lives there too. He wants us to develop hearts like His, hearts that are alive and full of desire. Hearts that are soft and vulnerable and honest. He wants us to honor the desires He has created in us.
What do you desire? And what are you doing with it?
Thoughts going through my mind as we try to organize our belongings into a home:
I’d like to ___________ (hang the shower curtain, assemble the bed, dry my hair, etc) if only I could find ______________(curtain rings, the set of screws, my hair dryer, etc.)
Hey look – that fits perfectly there!
Where are my indoor shoes?
Hmm . . . where on earth are we going to put this piece of furniture?
Hey! That thing!
Wow. Our master bedroom is stinkin’ huge.
Where are my indoor shoes?
It’s amazing how fast our dog can run when given the chance.
I love Target.
Where did all this stuff come from?
I still need my indoor shoes.
They’re in here somewhere.
The garbage disposal in my parents’ kitchen clogged two nights ago. This was inconvenient on a number of levels, such as: my parents were gone, my husband was gone, I am not good with tools, and oh yeah, after 13 years overseas I lack certain skills most people have gained by this point. In other words, I haven’t interacted with a garbage disposal since I was a teenager.
Spending most of my adult life outside of the States has left me strangely imbalanced in my abilities. Sure, I can help you bargain for something in Chinese and get the local price, but I did not know that potato peels shouldn’t go in a garbage disposal (but for the record, that wasn’t what caused the clogging). I may have mad chopstick skillz, but I don’t have a clue how to unclog a disposal, or when or how to call a plumber.
To make it more fun and challenging, one of the pipes below the bathroom simultaneously began dripping in the basement, and both dogs decided the moment needed to be punctuated by excessive barking. “This is exciting! It’s a big mess! You’re clueless!” I think is how it translated.
So I called some family friends, and was immediately cheered by their voices, especially the one that said, “Why don’t I come over and check on it?”
Half an hour, a messy kitchen floor and an unintentionally wet friend later (there was a lot of water trapped in there!) I had a working disposal again. Not only that, but I think if it happened again I might be able to fix it myself. We’re all going to pray it doesn’t come to that, but it encouraged me to think, “I might be sorely lacking in some basic adult skills for life in America, but they are not unlearnable.”
Which is good, because last night I got to practice, “What to do when your mini-fridge was set too cold and caused a can of soda to explode, bursting the door open.” Opportunities to be an adult abound!
I had hoped that having left China, we would have also left behind goofy conversations about our dog. What was I thinking? Of course we’ll have goofy conversations about our little foreign pup. We’ll just have them in English now!
Case in point – here’s the conversation I had this morning with a sweet little old lady while her dog jumped around like a maniac at her feet:
Woman: Oh look, you have two! What kind are they?
Me: Well, this one is a cocker spaniel, and this one is from China. We don’t know what she is. They didn’t even know over there.
Woman: China China?
Me: Yep. China. The country.
Woman (looking directly at Scout): I bet you have a story to tell about how you got here!
Me: Yes, a long, complicated and expensive tale. But she was only $9 to begin with so . . .
Woman (still speaking to Scout): DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?
Me, laughing: Yes, she does.
Woman: Did she come on an airplane?
Me: Uh . . . yep. She did.
Woman: Well, she’s beautiful! Have a blessed day!
Me: You too!
Ah yes. We have a weird dog. She goes well with our weird lives.
Did you know that Minnesota means “Land of Sky Blue Waters?” Actually, I think the original Native Americans meant it more like “cloudy waters” but we like to ignore the cloud part and just focus on the awesome blue skies. Minnesotans are positive that way.
When most people think of Minnesota, they think things like, “Where is Minnesota? Why would anyone want to live there? Doesn’t it snow most of the year? Isn’t that in Canada? Is that even a state?”
All valid questions. Sure, the winters here last about 5 months and they can get so cold your nose hairs freeze together, but the rest of the year makes up for it, and that’s what we get to enjoy right now.
And enjoy it we are! I’m not an outdoor girl. Honestly, I could live in a bunker and it wouldn’t affect me much as long as I had enough room to run around. But there’s something about Minnesota in the fall that does a soul good.
The mornings here are cool – this morning I could see my breath at 7 am. The days are temperate and sunny, you can smell fall in the air, the leaves are changing. The pace of life here is slower, people you don’t know wave at you from the other side of the road or greet you as you pass by. When shopkeepers tell you to have a nice day, they actually sound like they mean it.
And look at this picture, taken while visiting some friends who have a cabin near our cabin. This is a picture of the pond in front of the lake where their cabin is. This is their view, and what a lovely view it is.
All of this restores my soul, as it says in Psalm 23. God is using Minnesota to re-stock my soul with life-giving things.
God knew He was making a good thing when He made the land of sky blue waters.
One of the most frequent questions I have heard throughout our transition is, “Are you going to homeschool in America?” On the one hand, the thought of homeschooling in America sounds SO much easier than doing it in China, so why not? Hello libraries! Hello fast internet! Hello Amazon Prime that comes to my door in two days! Hello even more people who homeschool! Wow – that looks like I’m really excited, and also, quite friendly.
On the other hand, there are schools here. Schools that don’t ask me to decide between sending my child to 5th grade or her freshman year of college for tuition. Schools where our kids could learn things I don’t teach them, where they could have experiences they don’t get at home.
I’ve never been a hard core homeschool mom. Our decision to homeschool was more out of necessity than choice. That said, I don’t regret doing it; I see only good things that have come from it.
But as we look to Orlando, we’re considering the options. Florida itself is not known for its stellar education system (#48 out of 50?!?) but there are other choices besides public schools (and even those we haven’t ruled out). When we head down there in a few weeks, I hope to look at one of them in particular. I had previously written it off, but it’s run by someone we know and our dear friends’ kids go there, so our kids are all for it.
For now, we have three baskets full of books, binders and curriculum in the kids’ bedrooms. They mostly work at the desks in their rooms or on their beds. So far so good, but who knows how much longer we’ll have this view?
America is novel to me right now.
This morning I watched a line of 5 cars creeping along behind a truck on a quiet road. The road was wide enough for three cars, and I thought, “In China, all of those cars would have gone around him, even if there had been oncoming traffic.”
Last night I threw a melatonin pill in my mouth and immediately realized it was not the kind you suck. Ack! Ack! What to do? And then I realized – I can drink this tap water. I have to say it wasn’t the best tasting water seeing as it was in the bathroom, but people, it was tap water. I walked around feeling weird about that for a little while.
Did you know that they make peanut butter Cheerios? And vanilla nut? Or something like that. I feel a little badly for regular Cheerios, like they aren’t good enough.
They have Crystal Light single packets that come in mixed drink flavors now like margarita, because nothing says, “Soccer mom who’d rather be at happy hour” like fake alcohol in your water bottle.
The grapes are big but there are no seeds, and the skins don’t feel like something you need to cut through with a knife!
America really knows how to do paper products. I feel like I’m wiping my nose with a blanket.
The internet is crazy fast here!
Yeah, I’m enjoying it all.
Here is our last month in China, in pictures. I missed a few because of all the moving craziness, but I caught a lot of our last moments.
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| Cool gate along a country road |
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| Guyaju cave dwellings |
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| Longqing Gorge |
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| Fruit vendor |
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| relief on a hot day |
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| Taking a bath |
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| Scout Court of Honor |
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| Hutong door |
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| Old hutong |
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| Ancient woman in the hutong |
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| Piggyback |
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| This is MY toy |
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| To do list |
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| packing |
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| Garage sale |
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| Our door |
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| mowing the grass with a weed wacker |
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| Someone’s collecting branches |
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| A game of cards |
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| Reading the news |
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| Sunset |
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| Lunchtime |
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| Waiting to be taken |
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| A last bag of my favorite snack |
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| Where the white boards were |
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| This is how boys say goodbye |
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| Scout looking forlorn as she heads across the ocean |
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| Nope, I didn’t take this but it was worthy of inclusion |
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| Last photos with friends |