transition

A Year of Thanks

This Friday will mark one year of us being in Florida. One year since that caravan of 2 mini-vans, 9 people, three dogs and a trailer made their way cross-country to this far corner of Orlando. It’s been a good year. So good in fact that I thought I would take this opportunity to give thanks for the many blessings we’ve had, so here goes:

my Friday group – ladies, thank you for being one of the first places here where I could be myself and feel truly loved

our kids’ school – honestly, I can’t imagine a better situation

MK2MK – this is the group where Ethan has found those kids who say, “You too? I thought it was just me” and it has breathed life into him

Old friends – some of our favorite people already lived here in Orlando and I don’t know what I would have done without them (Katie and Jenny – I’m looking at you!)

Our neighborhood – who knew we could find a place here that makes us feel like we continually live at a cabin in northern Minnesota?

soccer – Megan’s passion finally realized, and along with it fun new relationships for all of us

family connections – I am still not completely used to the idea that I can simply pick up the phone and call family members without considering the time zone, but when I do remember I love that it’s true. Even better, visits are much easier too!

libraries – seriously, is there anything greater for a book lover than libraries that deliver to your home?

the work we do – it is humbling to be used by God to do what we love in a way that blesses others

sunsets and sunrises – I gotta say I think Orlando has the corner on these. Un. Real.

our continued Asian connections – people we work with who also lived there, friends visiting from across the ocean, our kids taking up Chinese again

the struggles – the times of disappointment, frustration, anxiety, and grief have brought us together as a family and pushed us closer to the One who loves us

God – I always want to be able to say, year after year, “I know Him better now. I am closer to Him. I trust Him more.” This is definitely true for me in 2013.

Yeah, it’s been a good year.

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Growing Roots

We’re coming up on one year of living in Orlando. The first time we came down last year to see the house as a family was in October, when we observed that our neighbors down the street decorated extensively for Halloween. We’ve since learned they go all out for most holidays. About a month ago, their Halloween decor went up again, bloody sheets and all. It seems like this should make us feel like we’re gaining longevity here, but I’m still stuck on the fact that they have “No trespassing: will be shot” signs on their fence. We’re not trick or treating there.

But yesterday held another reminder that we are slowly settling in here. It was grandparent’s day at our kids’ school. They had one in the spring too, and Erik’s parents happened to be here for it which was fantastic. This time the commute was a bit too long. I attended though, and while some of the moms were setting up and taking down, a couple of the new ones had questions about what to do. I realized that I knew what had happened last time, and while that made me far from an expert, I had something to offer. On top of that, the night before when the kids were making lunches, they said, “Hey, tomorrow’s grandparent’s day. We don’t have to bring as much lunch!” Yes, let’s fill up on donut holes and cheese instead. We know how to do grandparent’s day.

It’s a funny victory to claim, because it wasn’t really anything we did – it was just recognizing that we’re getting there. Life will soon have more traditions and “this is how we do” moments. Each year our confederate neighbors will put up their excessive holiday decor and will remind us that this is home. It feels like roots. Little ones, but roots.

What are you calling victory today?

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Feeling at Home

It was just over 13 months ago that I wrote this post about the nebulous feeling of home. I did not know then how long it would take for this house to feel like home.

I remember the first time our place overseas felt like home. We had been in the States for a summer, and when we returned overseas, we walked in the door and both felt like we had come home. I think that was after the first three years.

So it was with great joy, and a sense of victory over the process of transition, that I walked into my house yesterday (through the front door, no less – had to get the library books that had been left near it) and I was home. Do you know that feeling? It’s that moment when your heart just relaxes because this is the place. Home.

What are you calling victory today?

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Third Culture Kids

We just returned from watching the movie Gravity and I am convinced of two things:

1) Astronaut has always been low in my career ranking, but after seeing that it’s just not even in the running anymore, and . . .

2) My victory today is our kids.

See, I was reflecting, on the drive home, about the re-entry astronauts have to endure when coming back to earth, which got me thinking about the whole re-entry into American culture, and I thought, “Wow. Our kids are pretty amazing.”

It’s not easy as an adult to mentally and emotionally adjust back to the States after 13 years away, but for our kids it’s literally a foreign country that they’re trying to learn to call home. And they’re kids also going through all the normal stuff kids have to figure out. Yet they’re pressing on every day, making friends, learning how to do school, embracing what comes. I’m crazy proud of them and how they’ve endured. That’s no small victory.

What are you calling victory today?

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Progress

I went on a school field trip today. This is the second trip I’ve attended with my daughter’s class. The first one inspired this post about feeling weird. Not one of my finer days.

Today’s victory, when looking back on that first field trip, is progress. Transition progress, that is. That first day, standing in the group of moms who were also learning about the early settlers of Florida and their fort building ways, I wanted to crawl in a hole with my weird stories about my former life. Some of the moms kindly introduced themselves to me. Some of them looked at me like maybe I was lost. I was, just not in the way they thought. I had no excess relational energy to squander on filling them in as to who I was.

I have not become an extrovert in the interim, but I can say that it was the easiest thing today to hang with the other moms. Some of them I was seeing for the second time, the first being the previous trip where we said not two words to one another. I rectified that. I even threw in a few weird China stories – hey, they’re part of the package. It was fun.

It’s encouraging to feel like my heart has simmered down enough where I can step out of my comfort zone and actually walk away energized by it. Definitely doing the victory dance today.

What are you calling victory?

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Sinking In

It wasn’t until three months into our life overseas that I realized I lived there.

Up until then, we had lived in one room in a foreign student dormitory, our two twin beds shoved together, the five suitcases we brought stacked up to the ceiling. We washed dishes in the bathtub. We turned away the maids who came to “clean” everyday (which consisted of sweeping the floor and then hosing down the entire bathroom). It felt like a long vacation in a cheap hotel.

But once it was legal for students to live off campus, we found an apartment and moved in. The first night I tried to collapse into bed (which is difficult to do on a traditional Asian bed because they have the give of a sidewalk) and I thought, “What have we done? We live in Asia.”

I had the same realization when we picked up my brother from the airport that Christmas. As I oriented him on our drive home, I was aware that I hadn’t been lying to my family all that time when I told them I’d moved overseas. Here was proof!

It’s surprising what brings those realizations to light. Getting the Florida driver’s license. Seeing hurricane alternative plans on our kids’ school schedules. Writing our address. It happened again for me yesterday as we sat next to the intracoastal waterway, looking at palm trees and boats, and I said, “Erik? We live in Orlando.”

Ethan’s been struggling with this fact slowly sinking in. Going back to school, getting involved in activities – each thing cements the truth that we live here and not there anymore. It’s an interesting part of transition, this forming of a new home, defining our new lives. It feels like each realization makes a deeper impression in the ground, marks our territory, while forcing us to let go of part of what was true before. We’re here now.

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Waves

We’re not accustomed to this new normal, when leaving this house doesn’t mean enduring 24 hours of traveling hurtling through the air in a pressurized metal tube and landing on the other side of the ocean. Now it means enduring 24 hours in a car and ending up at “home.”

On the packing and shopping side, this is a relief, even if it means my “I can pack this suitcase to within 1-2 pounds of 50 without using a scale out of sheer practice” skills will go to waste. But last night, Ethan reminded me that it’s not just on the surface level that this requires some adjustment.

Right before bed, Ethan tends to evaluate how he’s feeling and give me an update (he is currently vying for “most emotionally cognizant and articulate teenage boy on the planet”). Generally, he finds he’s feeling some anxiety about the upcoming school year. This time he became aware that part of his anxiety stems from the fact that all this packing and preparing makes him feel like he really IS getting ready for that long haul to China, and it’s sad that we aren’t. I’m sad too.

Grief. It comes in waves, like you’re standing at the edge of the ocean and you don’t know when the water will come up and cover your toes, or when it will surprise you by washing up to your knees. You could stand there all day and not have it touch you, and then in a moment it soaks you.

But I feel like the tide is going out. The waves are smaller. We sometimes see them coming. They don’t knock us down anymore, just get us a little wet.

So that’s how we’re feeling as we prepare again to head back. I’m off to make one more trip to Walmart. Until we get to Florida, that is.

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The Real Me

It happened yesterday at the dentist. I was myself. I mean, really truly, like just how I would be if I were with someone I’d known forever. I was chatty. I made witty comments. They laughed. It felt comfortable, and normal, and I thought, “Hey, I’m being me! With people I just met!” This is progress.

You’d think I’d always be me – isn’t everyone? – but I’m still getting there. A friend of mine here reminded me lately that when someone has gone through a major transition, you should assume for the first year that you don’t really know the real them.

Ah, how true.

It was good to hear that again because I know that my traditional transition stress reaction is withdrawal. I usually don’t realize I’m doing it until people make comments like, “Gosh, I thought you were so reserved and quiet, but . . . ” (It’s ok, go ahead and finish that thought, “but you’re actually kind of goofy and don’t stop talking.”)

The first time I did it was when I got married, and everything in my world changed – new city, new job, new home, new roommate, new church, new friends. I met one of my good friends that year, and she thought I didn’t like her the whole year. Meanwhile I was saying to my husband, “I really like her! I hope she’ll be my friend!” Sigh. I had no idea.

Since then I’m at least aware of it (the first step is admitting you have a problem). I think I am doing better here, but I think it’s partly because there are people I am myself with because they already know me. Or people who are just so inviting they make me want to show up all at once. There are others though who still think I’m the quiet type. Just wait, I want to say. A person who has just gone through transition is a bit like a new house plant. You can give it the best environment, but it’s probably going to wilt a little at first. Give it time. It’ll perk up. Pretty soon the real Gina will show up and the “I just played Dizzy Lizzy* with my life and I can’t walk quite straight” Gina will fade away. I’m still just a little shell shocked and not so sure of myself here so I shut down the non-essentials and just focus on getting through. I’m triaging. But as we say in the middle kingdom, “yue lai yue” – it’s coming gradually.

Like at the dentist. The prospect of major dental work somehow drew me out. Who knew?

*Dizzy Lizzy, for the uninitiated, is a game in which you place your head on the top of a baseball bat, spin around several times while maintaining contact with the bat, and then attempt to walk toward a destination in the distance. It seems like it should be so easy but it is hard. Very, very hard. Like, “walk sideways until you fall down while your friends laugh hysterically” hard. But oh so fun.

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You Got That Kid Americanized Yet?

I had to explain juice from concentrate to our kids today. I guess it just wasn’t high on my priority list, while we lived overseas, to introduce frozen juice to them. Actually, it probably just wasn’t available. It’s one of many gaps they have in their “American education.” I knew they’d be there; I just didn’t know where. They’re learning about frozen juice and soccer games and commercials and all sorts of things they didn’t have in Asia. If only that were enough.

If only it were enough to “Americanize” them. Someone honestly asked me that question the other night, “You got that kid Americanized yet?” My response was, “He will never be American.”

No, I realize our kids DO have American passports. Yes, they are American. But please understand that our kids, and any kids who have spent significant parts of their childhood outside of the U.S. will never see it the way we do, and it does a disservice to them not to recognize it.

Imagine if your parents were German, but you were born here in the U.S. Then one day, your parents pick you up and take you to Germany and say, “You’re home.” Would you feel at home? Even if you knew the language and looked German, you wouldn’t feel it the same way.

Over time, our kids will learn how to “be” American, but keep in mind that kids who have had the blessing and the challenge of spending formative years in another culture are forever changed by that experience. They see things differently.

I guess what I’m hoping for is that people don’t expect that our kids basically “get over it.” That they leave behind their expat upbringing and become like everyone else. That won’t happen, and I don’t want it to happen. After all, aren’t we who are Christians citizens of another kingdom? This world is not our home. Why try hard to make it feel that way?

Continue ReadingYou Got That Kid Americanized Yet?

Keeping in Step

 

“How have we kept in step with the Spirit during this transition?” That was the question we were supposed to answer in a brief sharing time at a Cru day of prayer.

I’ll be honest, my first response was, “The phrase, ‘keeping in step with the Spirit’ has not crossed my mind at all during this transition. Does that mean I haven’t? And how would it go down if I just got up there and threw that out as my opening line?”

And to be more honest, I was a little afraid. Afraid that if I got up there and shared how much I’ve struggled with holding fast to God in this transition, I would be the odd man out.

But I wasn’t. We were the last to share that day, and the encouraging thing was that everyone who got up front talked about how they struggle to keep in step with God. By the time I got up there, I knew I was among friends.

Even better news is that I DO see how I’ve been trying to keep in step with the Spirit during this transition. For me, it’s meant learning to slow down, stop trying to figure things out on my own, waiting for His direction, and responding in obedience.

But the thing that encouraged me the most that day was something from one of the other speakers. He talked about being expectant. I have been in the habit recently of starting my day by saying, “Ok God, it’s you and me. In it together. I know you’re at work. Show me what to do, and I’ll do it.” All good. Good stuff. Good way to start the day. But I realized that I can do that, and yet not really expect God to do anything. Or maybe just expect not much. So I’ve been trying to do that this last week, to go beyond, “I’m willing” to “I’m expectant.”

What are you expecting Him to do today?

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