Transition

becky    Uncategorized    

It’s been a while since I wrote anything and have been mulling around various ideas. I’ve sat down multiple times to write and nothing that made sense or seemed interesting came out.  Toffer’s been doing this crazy thing called work, so while he has plenty to write about, especially his trip to Nepal, his brain is a little taxed right now.  So, I’ve decided I’ll write another post about something we spent some amount of time talking about at training and that is a very common topic of conversation in our house-transition!

Many transitions exist in life and some are walked through much quicker and easier than others.  For us, we’re going through one of the most difficult transitions possible-a long-term cross-cultural move.  We’ve mentioned transition a lot, but I thought it might be helpful to write a bit more specifically about it.  In any transition there are five stages-settled, unsettling, chaos, resettling, and settled.  In our situation unsettling also brought a lot of loss, which brings grief with it, so we’re also experiencing the five stages of grief intermixed with walking (stumbling?) through transition.

Settled means you are in a place where you have a sense of belonging, you have friends, a general routine, things feel normal and comfortable a lot of the time.  Unsettling (or uprooting if you go by plant terms) is when things begin to change in the process.  For us unsettling in some ways started when we initially said “yes” to HCJB Global, though the majority of it was the last few months we were in the US.  It’s when things become uncomfortable and the realization of the changes that are ahead become more real.  During the unsettling period we said lots of good-byes, sold off or gave away most of our worldly possessions, did many things for the last time before the big move, etc. After unsettling comes chaos-the stage when very few things feel settled, normal, or comfortable.  Then comes resettling-the time when a new normal is beginning to be established, friends are made, life has a little more order and sense to it.  And finally, we come back around to settled-a time with routine, a place where you are known and know others, a normalcy and things that are comfortable.

Right now I’d say we’re pretty much smack dab in the middle of chaos. Chaos is the point when life is just about survival mode, few things seem settled or normal.  It’s mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually draining.  It makes our brains fuzzy and our bodies worn.  We ask each other questions and literally cannot come up with answers.  We aren’t doing anything wrong nor is chaos a spiritual attack, it’s simply part of the process in a transition and one that can come up even years later for those of us who live overseas.  In some ways transition is never fully complete for us because so many variables exist in our lives.

We’ve been told that we came to the field under some of the highest stress conditions possible-two toddlers, expecting another baby, right before my birthday and the holiday season.  The only thing that would have made it more stressful is if we’d not had family and dear friends to walk us through our last days literally to the security line at the airport and if we’d not had lovely team mates who have done everything from feed us for a week when we first arrived to house hunting with us to making sure we got Christmas shopping for the boys and each other done.

Life for us at this point is very much day by day and very often hour by hour.  Some days are easier than others.  Some days we feel more confident about living here and figuring things out, other days we all go to bed just wishing we could go home.  The great thing is that it’s okay to feel anything and everything we’re feeling.  And everything we’re walking through, experiencing, feeling is typical and normal.  We’re very much over any honeymoon stage (though the aforementioned stressors made our honeymoon period fairly short).

We’ve had a few people ask us if we’re adjusted, the kids are adjusted, we’re feeling at home, etc. No, we’re not and it would be completely unreasonable for us to think that after less than three months that we would be.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again now-it will take us 12-18 months to adjust, which means we’re maybe a quarter of the way through the process.  We think that by the holiday season this year (yes, months away from now) we’ll probably be feeling fairly settled here. We’ll have our household well established, we’ll be involved with a church, we’ll have made friends, we’ll know where and how to get most things we use, and we’ll have found our new normal.  The added transition of a new baby thrown in the mix does not make the process any easier and could lengthen the entire process for us, though we also won’t know how to do it any other way and it might not make as much of a difference as I think it could.  It’s also possible that this being the only home Tadpole knows might help us feel a little more at home ourselves.  We’ll see when s/he arrives how that impacts our current state.

We knew going into this that we were signing up for a difficult life.  The thing about it is that I’ve not found anything in scripture that says following God and His plan for our lives is supposed to be easy-full of financial stability, good health,low stress, and happiness.  Look at the life Paul led.  If he had believed that following God and taking His love to the nations would result in life, love, and the pursuit of happiness then he would have been sorely disappointed with the way his life turned out.  He probably would have been a lot angrier with God about the whole shipwrecked, beaten, imprisoned thing had he believed that the path he was on would be an easy one because it’s the one God put  him on.

Transition is difficult. I’m not going to sugar coat our experience and make it seem like we’re tra, la, la-ing through it all, which I feel like maybe I have at times.  We have had times of happiness and fun while we’ve been here. We’ve seen God provide in some really amazing ways and I don’t want to discount that at all.  I keep feeling like because we are what we are that we should have all these huge “ah-ha” God moments.  We honestly haven’t. What we’ve had is this steady presence day in and day out and something happen at least once a day when we can say “That can only be explained by the hand of God” (i.e.-meerkats at the zoo we visited in a neighboring country-a bigger God moment than you can imagine).

We’re going to continue walking this walk, following this path.  One day it will get easier to live here, we’ll be more settled and more established.  We’ll miss things from home a little less-hopefully not the people, though.  We’ll keep doing “thank you God for…” with the boys at the end of the day to remember that God is always worthy of thanks and praise no matter our circumstances.  And we won’t try to rush the process of transition because of other people’s expectations or our own desire to feel less chaotic and out of sorts.  We’ll continue taking life a day at a time and as time goes this will feel more and more like home and things we do will feel more and more normal. Until then, we’ll give ourselves and each lots of grace and do the amazing work God has called us to.

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