Thriving With Beauty and Grace

Don't you just love the term Global Nomad?  Usually we hear it in reference to third culture kids, but it's also an appropriate picture of what it means to be a “woman of the harvest.”  A nomad moves around a lot rather than settling in one place.  Does this describe your life?

    

You do your best to bloom where you’re planted only to be uprooted AGAIN.  This is a recurring theme for many global workers.  How do we make a “place where we temporarily reside” into a home, knowing that we might have to pull up stakes at a moment’s notice?

In my first year of marriage we lived in a mobile home before moving to an apartment that we managed in exchange for free rent.  The second year we were at Jungle Camp (six weeks at base camp in Texas and six weeks in Mexico, or something like that), then in Ohio at dmil’s condo for five months, and then to Antigua where we lived with a Guatemalan family during language school until we moved to missionary housing in Guatemala City.   

Count them: five moves in one year.  I'm not sure we ever fully unpacked suitcases that whole time.

The next several years we averaged one move every nine or ten months until finally relocating to Oaxaca, where we persuaded our landlords to sell us the house they would no longer need for themselves.  What a blessing to call a place our own, to fix up the yard, put in a swing set, add a bedroom and second bathroom, and periodically throw out some seeds and hope for a garden.

I say this not to make you envious, but to hopefully demonstrate that I’ve been on both ends – of uncertainty and being settled.

Looking back I often wonder what I might have done differently to make those temporary dwellings feel more like home.  What could I suggest to help women quickly and inexpensively bloom where they are planted?  Then I decided I would open it up to the WOTH forum of readers here.  Some of you can answer with a lot more authority since you are living this out currently, not looking back twenty years through rose colored glasses.

You know how it goes.   You rent a house, fix it up, and the landlord either raises the rent where you can't afford it, or he decides to let his son and daughter-in-law live there.  You have weeks to pack up and move out.  Or you move into a flat, get curtains made, put a few pictures on the wall, and your visas are denied and you have to leave the country for an indefinite period of time.  The possible scenarios are endless and varied, but the result is always the same – you have to leave much sooner than expected or hoped.

What do you do differently the next time around?  Is it worth putting any time, effort, or money into landscaping or beautifying a place you can’t call your own?  Is it possible to make a rental property home even though you might get evicted on short notice? 

Again, it's always comforting to know that we are strangers and aliens and that our true home is in heaven, but in the here and now we still need some practical suggestions on surviving and thriving with beauty and grace.

IRL* I'm looking forward to hearing what advice you might offer each other. Please leave your comments below.

The In-Between

One of my most memorable prayer letters started out with the shocking announcement that Jim and I were splitting up and leaving the children at the orphanage.  The truth is that while I was going to Canada for a son’s graduation, Jim was making a trip to South America, and a friend in Mexico was keeping the youngest kids for a few nights in the children’s home where she worked.

This summer is sort of like that.  The family is split up and all over the place.  I’m getting a small preview of the empty nest, which has its benefits to be sure, but it feels so unnatural.  The girls have been visiting their niece and older siblings for a few weeks, and Jonny, our youngest son, has been working with an older brother in another state.  We are all over the place geographically.

Meanwhile I am spending four consecutive weekends in four different states during this whirlwind summer tour – slash- “home assignment.”  Jim and I welcome the simplicity of traveling together, just the two of us, but it still just feels odd.  When I think of it, nothing feels right any more.

Next week is our designated time to have all the kids “home” again, although we aren’t really going to be home, but in at our temporary home base in Ohio.  Even having all our adult kids back together isn’t exactly natural.  I trust it will be wonderfully fun, but it’s just not the norm any more.

After that I will be in Dallas for a long weekend visiting with my mom and siblings in the house where we grow up.  We can’t wait to be together again like old times, but nothing about it will seem normal either.

A side of me just wants to fast forward and be home, at my own house in Mexico, looking at photos of the summer, sorting it all out in quiet devotional times.  Right now I am getting weary of too much food, too little exercise, too many thoughts and too little solitude.  Summer trips to the U.S. are like that. 

My heart cries out for normal, but as my international friends keep reminding me, “Normal is just a setting on the dryer, and most of us don’t even have a dryer.”  There is no such thing as normal.  Not until much, much later.

What I am experiencing this summer is sort of the in-between phase between big family and empty nest.  What I am living here on earth is this unnatural in-between thing between earth and heaven.  I feel it strongly.  My heart yearns for a normal that doesn’t exist outside of heaven.  For now I only get glimpses every now and then.

Scripture says that all nations will hear the good news, “… and then finally the end will come.”  I’m clinging to that truth.  That’s what keeps me going when the kids are scattered all over the globe and home doesn’t feel like home any more.  That’s what gives me strength to be so far away from my precious grandbaby and aging mom and dmil.

Like you, I desperately long for the end to come, but at the same time, I want our loved ones overseas to hear the good news before He returns.  Until then, I keep striving ahead, muddling through the unnatural junctures of life, and embracing the reality that I am doing something worthwhile.

One lie saying I keep hearing this summer is “It’s all good.”  It’s not true yet, but it will be someday.  No one can convince me that “it’s all good” to be so far away from so many loved ones.

IRL*My diet this summer is like my life, it’s not all good, and it’s not all normal or natural, but it’s all for a good purpose.

My Old Restless Companion

In the early years our visas only lasted six months at a stretch. We made the dreaded border runs twice a year to renew them. The absurd thing is I actually enjoyed those journeys, especially the trips to Texas, which allowed me a visit to Stuff-Mart* to restock on things we needed and frivolous items we simply preferred.

On our last official “border run,” we were bummed to only receive sixty days instead of the usual six months on our visas. No way could we pack up however-many-kids-we-had-at-the-time and run back to the Rio Grande every eight weeks, even if the children managed to outgrow their clothes that fast! We finally switched over to more permanent resident status.

That’s when I noticed that my coping mechanisms seemed to only last about five months; after that, I became antsy and ready to plan a trip of some sort.

In fact, I would hit a downright slump twice a year right on schedule. I would wake up in a funk with no logical explanation. Once I figured it out, I just laughed over it, and then went on with living cross-culturally with no escape in sight.

Today, things are different once again. The three remaining children at home are Mexican-born, and therefore need no visas. That’s nice. I’ve learned to cope with Mexican living, the good with the bad, year-round. More or less. Some days I still get overwhelmed with the noise and stench interesting smells.

I was doing fine, pondering our lovely summer in the States—a time of blissful invisibility while some wounds healed over. I was enjoying our first week of home schooling, hosting a young teacher while she looks for housing, and honestly feeling content. Then one morning I woke up with my old restless companion, and I felt a funk coming on. This is way too soon to start feeling that again.

All I can say is that life has become too routine, too predictable. My old norm (especially when there were seven children living at home) was high-stress, crazy, and anything BUT predictable. I had no time to even think about contentment or lack of it. Now I find myself on auto pilot. Life seems too easy somehow. I’m not sure I like it this way.

How ungrateful can I be? God has blessed me with every good and perfect gift, and I am momentarily discontented. After what I said (and thought) last week in my blog post about “those” kinds of missionaries, I can honestly see the potential to become a snarky, bored missionary if I’m not careful. Yikes. Pardon me while I run back to the true Source of all contentment.

IRL*Striving to restore my old sense of adventure, minus my old restless companion.