Tag: America

Good bye

My thoughts are not from “afar” anymore. I realize this as I think about picking up blogging again. I also realize that the breathtaking whirl and now the steady plod of my life isn’t conducive to consistent writing.

J and I are thinking of starting a garden. I’ve never gardened before in my life unless you count the times as a child that Mom coaxed us out of bed to weed the garden before the summer sun got too hot. Oh, and I did manage to keep a pot of spinach alive for a few months when I lived in Spain.

As I write, I can see the rectangular plot of brown from the office window. Brown, spotted with yellow dandelions and a general air of forsakenness. These are the moments that I realize I’ve romanticized gardening. Imagine: me slipping out the kitchen door to pluck two ripe tomatoes, a cucumber, and some fresh cilantro for supper.

Yep. I forget that we must select, then plant, and wait, and weed, and water, and wait, and wait.

Likewise, I’ve romanticized my time and ability to keep up a blog. One must be attentive. Attentive I have not been. Attentive I will not be.

This is to say that my blog will continue in its general air of forsakenness until it closes down in April of 2026. It has served its purpose of giving me the space I needed to process my life overseas. Now, that is done.

Life here is every bit as interesting as my life was overseas. I’m basking in the white blossoms of springtime, learning the nooks and crannies of a new area, spending every possible moment with my companionable husband, and starting that long and beautiful process of cultivating relationships in a welcoming community.

But blog, I will not.

So, this is my goodbye. And my thank you for investing time and energy into reading my ramblings week after week.

Moving

I’m leaving Spain in a few days. Not just leaving, I guess, but moving. My mind hasn’t fully soaked that in yet.

Some days I’m oh so ready. I would love to skip over the lasts: wondering if I’ve said all I need to say or done all I need to do or packed the right things. But those hassles of leaving are also what are preparing me to be gone.

I know that.

That’s why some days I’m not ready at all. I want to soak in every last memory and moment, letting myself bump up and down through the feelings in order to fully experience everything that life brings my way.

Well, ready or not, I leave on Tuesday afternoon.

Until then, I will continue packing, clearing out my cupboards, giving away things, and saying those sweet and dreaded goodbyes.

I’ll be back on my blog sometime after my feet are on U.S. soil and the fog of jetlag has dissipated.

See some of you in less than a week!

My landlady, chocolate, and Ecclesiastes

My landlady is coming in a few minutes, and I’m dreading her visit. She wants to “see” what things she left in the apartment. “A whole wardrobe full and then some.” I want to say, “Please don’t buy anything else. I think your apartment can be considered ‘beyond furnished’ already.”

But I will try to smile as she pokes through my drawers and makes loud, unfiltered remarks. Maybe I will soothe my shattered calm with chocolate once she is gone.

The other day, I had a thought: Would it work best to be mentally present in only one world at a time? My feet are inevitably in two worlds right now, but does my mind have to be?

Yesterday, I was mentally in the States, shopping online for wedding paraphernalia, acting on a few decisions, buying a wedding gift for a friend, laughing with my bridesmaids about imaginary wedding disasters, and the like. When I needed a break from the screen, I returned to Spain, chatting with a shopkeeper, going for a walk, etc.

Today, I stayed in Spain, bouncing along on the bus to a meeting, setting up final healthcare appointments, and whatnot.

Now I am waiting for my landlady to come peer in my cabinets. Once she leaves, I have a handful of other projects I’d like to get to… after my chocolate, of course.

I’m not feeling particularly inspired to write on my blog. I asked J if he had any inspiration for me. He suggested that I write about Ecclesiastes, but only because he’s preaching through Ecclesiastes right now and that’s what’s on his brain.

I don’t have anything “ecclesiastical” to enlighten you with, but I remembered a poem I wrote many years ago. You may read it if you promise not to analyze it much; I think the only value I had in mind when I wrote it was face value. 

"Vanity"
The sun races across the sky
Another day; another try.
The wind circles as it blows
Terrific sound; nowhere to go.
All day trickling streams will stray
To oceans same as yesterday.
What’s the purpose to be me
In light of so much vanity?

…

Well, since I copied and pasted this poem, my landlady swept in, summer dress billowing behind her. She snooped in the cupboards, teetered on a stool while trying to fix a blind that was broken long before I moved in, told me her moderately-unrealistic dreams for the apartment, and took the last payment of rent that I will give her.

I’m glad that’s done. I found that her presence eerily echoed the words of my poem. I could unpack that a little more, but right now, I feel depleted in a way that not even chocolate will alleviate.

J&T: A piece of our story

Besides a detailed account of our few weeks together, I haven’t written much about my relationship with J. It’s not because he has been pushed to the periphery of my life–he has been invading every nook and cranny! But I guess those were the nooks and crannies I once used to write on my blog.

Months ago, a reader asked me to tell our story. So here it is from my perspective…

We met at a wedding, our siblings’ wedding, to be exact. My older brother and J’s younger sister married each other in the summer of 2018. 

You’d think that we both would have had romance on the brain in such a setting. Yet, he was based in China and I had just moved to Spain. Our minds were on our respective work, not romance. When I think hard enough, I remember things about him from that weekend–like when I tripped on my too-long skirt and he tried to blame my clumsiness on himself–but I can’t remember what he was wearing the first time I saw him or anything of the sort. He remembers even less than I do.

At the Sunday potluck, we chatted with each other. Our conversation was enthusiastic because, as overseas workers, we could connect in ways that we couldn’t connect with just anybody. He asked to be added to my newsletter mailing list. 

I went back to Spain. He finished school and returned to China. I contacted him once about an article I was writing and he sent me some information. That was our only personal contact for five years.

His church became one of my supporting churches for two years. I was delighted because I already knew some of the congregation. I also knew his family. (When our siblings were dating back in 2017, I had made a point to travel to Ohio. Twice. And J was in China both of those times.)

In 2019, he returned to Ohio to finish his Master of Science with the intention of moving back to China. And then the pandemic happened, and he found himself planted Stateside indefinitely. Over the next several years, he made trips to Illinois to visit his sister, my brother, and our mutual nephews. I returned to Illinois as well, for a vacation or a home assignment, but our paths didn’t cross, and neither of us considered that they didn’t.

Then while I was on home assignment summer of 2023, I gave a talk at his church. J and I chatted a little that Wednesday evening, but I did a little chatting with a lot of people and nothing felt unusual. I was at the beginning of a long trip and was dealing with ongoing health symptoms I had become an expert at suppressing. Had I been a little more in tune with my surroundings that evening, perhaps I would have seen that quiet question mark above J’s head. But I continued my trip, clueless.

Still, he said nothing. Not that I was expecting him to have anything to say. In retrospect, it was as if, in my mind, he was married to China and therefore ineligible. 

Toward the end of my time in the States that summer, he and his parents came to Illinois to visit his sister… the same day I left for Indiana. 

It seemed that God was keeping us apart. And I think, in a sense, He was.

While in Indiana, I found a name for the symptoms I’d had for more than a dozen years, the symptoms that were getting progressively harder to suppress.

I started treatment after returning to Spain. Within a month, I recorded in my journal that I was beginning to feel better. I knew I wasn’t completely healed, but I was on my way. I had lots to be thankful for that Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving was also the time that J, who had been praying for me in the meantime, sensed that the time was right. He emailed me that weekend.

I woke up at 5 a.m. to take the day’s first dose of treatment. As I crawled back into bed that Sunday morning, I saw I had an email from J. I immediately assumed that he was writing to say he was moving back to China and could I please take him off my newsletter list?

Or.

I didn’t stop to ponder; I just tapped the notification and opened the email that would change my life. Stunned, I lay in bed, lost in thought until my alarm went off. 

He didn’t get an answer right away; I had a lot to think through. The truth is, as older singles, we both valued our respective single lives. Could this really be God’s next step for us? I knew I would need to mourn that first layer of loss before I responded to his email. Finally, with both trepidation and excitement, I wrote back, mostly with questions he had given me permission to ask: What about China? How did he feel about singleness?

Our initial emails were full of questions as we tried to sort out if forward were the best direction for us.

Deep down, I had a sense our relationship would work out, which was based on what I knew about him, his family, and his church. At its core, that inner sense was: “Of course. Why didn’t we think of this before?”

We wrote back and forth for a bit and then were ready to make our relationship more official around Christmas. Our families were shocked and excited. Our friends were shocked and excited. At last, these two “permanent singles” were dating!

Starting a relationship while 4,000 miles apart wasn’t for the faint of heart, but I’ll skip over those layers for now. One month after our first official phone date and just when I was admitting to myself how much I liked him, J was nominated to become a pastor in his home church. The next Sunday, one man would be chosen by lot and ordained. 

He wrote to me on Monday morning, and all I could do was fall on my knees. 

We both had lots of feelings that week. We tried phone calls but found we didn’t have a lot of words. Tears came at unexpected moments. I wasn’t mourning; I was overwhelmed. How could I support him when I was feeling so weak myself? What exactly was the new girlfriend’s role? 

The events of that week drew us together in ways neither of us could have anticipated. Our relationship deepened to a level we would have said we weren’t ready for. We learned to trust each other. 

I watched the ordination over WhatsApp, tears flowing as J was chosen to serve as a pastor in his home church.

Then we picked up and kept going, in both praise and uncertainty.

He came to visit Spain in May. We had 19 whole days on the same continent. During that time, we finished falling in love and seriously talked about a future together.

Three months later, I spent three weeks Stateside, in my home community and his. Right in the middle of our time together, J asked me to marry him. Even though I had known it was coming soon, he managed to surprise me. (Well, he surprised both of us, but that’s another story. 😉 )

Then came the whirlwind of excited decision-making in the week before I returned to Spain. Spain is where I am now. The whirlwind hasn’t stopped and likely won’t as I close down my life here, move back to the States, and plan a wedding.

But I’m surprised to find how much joy is in the whirlwind too.

This message has been approved by J. 😉

I’m packing my bags

I’m packing my bags. Well, to be honest, I’ve been packing for a while now, trying to make every kilo count down to the last gram.

Mom told me the Amazon packages she’s piling on my desk in Illinois make her think of Mr. Grabbit. Toothbrushes, shoes, supplements, etc. Things I won’t have to bring with me.

I’m planning to wear multiple outfits to give myself several sets of clothes for the trip. “I might look homeless when you pick me up at the airport,” I tell J. The layers of clothing, the bulging pockets I stitched to the inside of my jacket, and the supermarket bag I’m planning to use as a carry-on might make me a key candidate for surveillance. Especially since I’m clambering into Chicago the weekend before the Democratic National Convention.

Time is winding down. Less than two more days now. My to-do list is moderate, all things considered. I put “mop the floor” at the top. The dirt on the bottoms of my feet comes off in rolls when I rub my feet together.

Below are a few snippets of summer life here that happen through the giddiness of preparing to see my family, friends, and J…

I love the extra wiggle room of a summer schedule. While most people choose not to cook or bake this time of year, I’ve tried North African bread, North African lentils, brownies with peanut butter and almond flour, and crackers with ground sunflower seeds. I’ve also attempted couscous twice and decided that “moderately close” is as good as it’s going to get for now. Puttering in my kitchen is delightful without the breath of a dozen other tasks at my neck.

I’ve been studying language at the local library. The walk across town in the afternoon sunshine is oppressive, but it doesn’t eclipse the joy of descending to the cool library basement. The summer crowd is sparse and the quiet is so thick it almost hurts until the ink chamber inside a pen rattles as someone write a note or careful feet tick down the stairs. I don’t use the library resources other than the air conditioning and the atmosphere, but it’s always worth it.

Summer has also been a good time to meet up with the friends who remain in Spain, to spend time in their worlds or let them be a part of mine. Maybe it’s English class or breakfast together. Or my little neighbor boys come up for a visit with their mommy to play with Legos, make the floor sticky with melon juice, and watch cookies bake with great anticipation.

While the cookies are still in the oven, I give them a drink of water which they drink with too-long straws. “Do you want one?” I ask the oldest boy, offering a container of dates I have on the counter. 

“No,” he says. “I want chocolate cookies.” And he returns to watch them through the oven door, content to wait.

There have been meetings, appointments, and the like. This week is also my week to work ahead on office manager responsibilities in an attempt to keep my absence from being too obvious.

I guess you might say that I’m planning to be distracted for the next few weeks. 😉 Until another day, then…

A life of perpetual humiliation

I just finished reading Anthony Doerr’s Four Seasons in Rome. Someone discarded it, and I picked it up, curious. This isn’t a book recommendation unless you happen to know that you like Anthony Doerr, but Doerr’s descriptions of life on the outside of a culture cut me wide open. I didn’t know there were words for these “in but not of” feelings.

Apartness and perpetual humiliation are part of daily life for those living overseas. Sometimes we talk about it too much. Often we don’t even acknowledge it but let our frustration become part of the existing barrier, like a thick moss growing over a wall we’re trying to ignore.

We are outsiders, always outsiders, chipping at the barrier that stands between us. And there are successes! Moments when a chunk of the wall falls away and we glimpse the other side…only to find razor wire. 

“To be a nonfluent foreigner is to pass through one gate only to find yourself outside two more,” writes Doerr (p. 46). “We are humbled over and over–humility hangs over our heads like a sledgehammer… Oh, you think you’ve been here long enough to barter at the street markets? Guess what, you just spent €8 on three plastic clothes hangers” (p. 76).

After nine months in Rome, Doerr walks into a grocery store and makes an order without messing up a single syllable. “What happens?” he writes. “I get my groceries. No streamers drop from the ceiling, no strobe lights start flashing. The grocer doesn’t reach across the counter and take my face in her hands and kiss me on the forehead.” Instead, the grocer asks about his boys and speaks so quickly he can’t keep up. “…I miss 80 percent of it and sheepishly, stepping down from my throne of fluency, have to ask, ‘I’m sorry, more slowly, please?’” (p. 168)

For some, eventually the barriers do not loom so large or feel so insurmountable. But for many? “I know nothing… I never made it through the gates between myself and the Italians. I cannot claim to have become, in even the smallest manner, Roman” (p. 201).

True. Despite my efforts to integrate into the culture around me, my North American worldview remains mostly intact, placing me decidedly on the outside. 

But if we let it, doesn’t living on the outside help us accept who we are? After all, like it or not, we cannot cease being a part of something. Not being a part of the culture we’re living in is because we’re part of another, or even several. Being on the outside can help us identify our own “inside.”

Apartness and perpetual humiliation are hard, but they are also opportunities to learn and grow.* And we need these opportunities to understand ourselves.

So I will try to be grateful. Even as my neighbor gives me a list of what is wrong with my couscous. Next time, it will be better. I can promise.

Doerr, Anthony. Four Seasons in Rome. Scribner, 2007. 

*Thank you, J, for your positive spin on life to remind me to keep on growing!

Part four: Tanneries and street food

Click to read: Part one: A palace and a hostel, Part two: A stolen sandwich and art, and Part three: Relationship advice and edible puzzles

I had never used the BlaBlaCar app before. Surely a carpooling app couldn’t be as pain-free as it looked. But it was! J and I arrived at the Málaga Costa del Sol airport in plenty of time. We checked in and zipped through security and border control before parking ourselves just inside of the international gate area to people-watch.

We were some of the last passengers to board our flight. Why rush to constrain yourself to a seat that’s already reserved for you? Our 15 euro flight got us to North Africa safely. After we landed, J and I stayed in our seats rather than smashing ourselves against the other passengers in the aisle. We didn’t even stand up, necks bent at unnatural angles under the overhead bins. (Why do we do this?!)

A man who had been watching us announced to the other passengers: “These are the most intelligent people on here! They waited to get on the plane until the last and they are waiting to get off the plane too!”

As we waited in the customs line, I couldn’t wait and asked J, “What do you think of North Africa so far?” Wisely, he returned that he wasn’t sure if his first impressions were accurate and that he’d rather wait to give them.

We stepped out of the airport and were spat into North African culture where overly helpful taxi drivers swarmed. After hemming and hawing, we agreed to a ride for 150 dirham, 50 dirham less than the initial asking price.

Once we had been deposited in our friends’ neighborhood, I asked the neighborhood guard where the Americans lived. He pointed me to a black gate and told me how many stories up. Americans in that part of the world don’t have much anonymity, and that is what I had been counting on. 

We joined the family, catching up on life, hanging out with the children, and feasting on a giant stir-fry for supper. 

The next day was our day to tour the city. It was my chance to show J the world that had been mine for 16 months. We passed my old language school and I recalled the hours I had spent exhausting my sweat and tears while learning Arabic. We dropped by my old neighborhood too, even popping in at the little store around the corner to say hello and buy a Snicker bar just because. (We also forgot about that Snicker bar until it became a squished pile in the bottom of our warm and sweaty backpack.) 

From there, we snagged a taxi to the old city. I could already feel myself shriveling into a prune. The weather was hotter than I had expected and much drier than either of us were used to. We couldn’t keep up with our water intake. 

We descended into the heart of the old city to the renowned tanneries, avoiding anyone who was too helpful. In fact, over the course of the day we managed to disappoint a lot of hopeful shopkeepers, browsing rather than buying. At the tanneries, we stood at the lookout and peered down on all of the action. There was so much to watch at once. J shooed away an over-eager tour guide, preferring to figure things out on his own.

colorful tannery vats

We hunted for a hole-in-the-wall restaurant, but the only one I remembered wasn’t serving lunch yet. So we bought street food instead: neems (fried spring rolls), briouats (a triangular, chicken filled pastry), kalinte (chickpea flan) sprinkled with cumin and red pepper, and olives with lemon and parsley. 

We looked for a place to eat our collection, and finally found a sunny spot along the ledge of a fence. But first on our menu was activated charcoal. Three pills before and three after a meal. With street food on a warm day, I got pretty bossy about following the instructions. We took our time, munching and tossing olive pits at the trunk of a scrawny tree in the sidewalk. Even there in that scorching African sunbeam, our repast was delicious.

street food cart

From my time of living in the city, I had fond memories of climbing up the side of a hill to a set of ancient tombs that overlooked the city. But how to get there? We stopped to ask directions. The shopkeeper gave us some of his life story for free as well as detailed directions, which I promptly forgot by trying to retain everything he said. No matter. We still had Google maps and what was left of my memory. We wound our way up the hill, admired the tombs and the view and then parked ourselves in the shade until my fantasy about a tall glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice overpowered the lure of a shady spot. 

We spent a chunk of the afternoon perched on a restaurant’s third story, sipping orange juice, eating tagine, and watching people swirling in and out of the city gate below. Once we had cooled off, we meandered back to our friends’ house, with one last stop to buy an ear of roasted street corn.

Street corn vendor

The next morning, we envisioned ourselves arriving at the international church on time. Instead, with all of the careful packing that went into the morning–the gifts for a friend’s family, the trusty charcoal, and the Imodium, just in case–I managed to forget my wallet. My wallet which held our only local currency.

“I’m sorry. We don’t have money,” I told the taxi driver. “Take us back to the house.” Obligingly, he made a loop at the next roundabout and waited outside while I dashed up the flights of stairs to retrieve my wallet. Any dreams of arriving at church on time were crushed. 

Although the fellowship had changed since I had been there last, it was still charged with a buzzing energy of brothers and sisters in Christ uniting after a long week. After the service, I was able to reconnect with a few acquaintances before we were on our way to visit Chaimae and her family.

I was surprised by how Chaimae’s family remained unchanged. Throughout the day, most of the family dropped by, delighted to meet J and practice their English. They fed us breakfast and then fed us several courses of lunch a few hours later. That afternoon, J got a very long look into North African culture.

North African breakfast spread

Our time in the city was drawing to a close. The next morning we breakfasted on eggs and khlea, a cured beef that tastes like a barn. I hung out in the egg section, but J preferred the barny beef. The guy has an inexcusably tolerant palate. 

As we left the city, I looked out the bus window, wondering if I was saying goodbye forever. I felt nostalgic but realized I no longer had a lingering sense of belonging.

Much blessings

This morning, a friend sent a voice message that ended with “Much blessings!”

Her non-native English made me smile; I love the way she talks. “Many blessings” is grammatically correct–my work email even signs off with that–because blessings are individual and countable. Or are they? We count our blessings, the many ways which we are thankful for what God has given us, but can we really count them all?

I’m pondering this on after saying goodbye to visitors who celebrated life with me. We toured an Arab fortress, a cathedral, and a greenhouse. We strolled the beach, picnicked by mountain springs, housecleaned, marketed, and tasted lots of foods. And my favorite parts were the conversations, prayers, and laughter woven through all of it. My friends brought gifts and letters from home. On the board above my desk, hang two letters from a nephew and a niece who are big enough to write in beautiful cursive and sign their letters, “Yours truly” and “Love.”

And this week, I have another visitor–one I’ve been looking forward to seeing since… well, since a long time.

With all of the extra activity infused with normal life and work, I sometimes struggle to keep up. Yet, I am filled, sandwiched here between the goodness that was and the goodness that is to come.

“Much blessings” describes this perfectly, I think.

“Savor” to “survive” and back again

Last year, I succumbed to the pressure of choosing a word for the year. Many find this practice useful, helping them to reestablish their life’s purpose and set achievable goals and the like. I, however, have never found it particularly helpful, typically forgetting my chosen word by mid-February at the latest. 

But, like I said, last year I succumbed again. After sorting through a list of candidates, I selected “savor.” My choice came from a desperate attempt to hang on to the shreds that life was offering me. 

Ironically, I didn’t forget my word last year. But I watched as it morphed from “savor” to “survive.” That change stung because it didn’t even feel like a choice.

I survived the coming summer heat, physical exhaustion, the hours upon hours of traveling, coordination, public speaking, and the other things I don’t typically enjoy. I smiled as I networked and made new connections and friends and caught up with dear old friends. I was glad…but savor? No. I felt like I was clutching at the precious moments as they passed by.

So here I am at the beginning of a new year, analyzing the last one and seeing that, in its own way, last year was indeed something I could savor. The moments still slipped by too quickly, but their accumulation brought healing. That frantic juggling of a schedule allowed me to see a doctor and finally get some answers. Those times with friends squeezed into my trips and around my trips gave me the input and support I desperately needed. And the list goes on.

So I look back on 2023 and savor the memories because I am a little more mature, a little more like Jesus because of the stories of last year. 

That said, I think I’ll refrain from choosing a word for 2024; it’s too much pressure!

What about you? Have you chosen a word for this year?