Tag: longing

When You Can’t Settle in the Place You Call Home

Published on by Marilyn

It just doesn't go away

A couple of years ago, an anonymous letter came to Communicating Across Boundaries. The letter began like this:

It just doesn’t go away….

The writer goes on to speak of an unsettled weariness and dissatisfaction, a boredom with life in one’s passport country. “I’m afraid I may have a chronic case of ennui. Most of the time the symptoms lie dormant but occasionally—when my routines are disturbed, when life is a little off kilter, when friends are traveling, —they flare up, these “feeling(s) of weariness and dissatisfaction: boredom.” 

The letter appeals to readers at Communicating Across Boundaries, asking for their help and advice. “Can you help me?” says the writer. Can you help me with this “…hard to shake thing that lingers inside me–this grief-adrenaline withdrawal-unsettled-restlessness at work in my soul.”

The answers to the letter were kind and thoughtful. Above all – they were wise. 

I’ve included some of those responses below in case there are others who just can’t shake that feeling of not settling in the places we are supposed to call home.

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“There is nothing that can replace the absence of someone (or some place) dear to us, and one should not attempt to do so.

One must simply hold out and endure it.

At first that sounds very hard, but at the same time it is also a great comfort.

For to the extent the emptiness truly remains unfilled one remains connected to the
other person through it.

It is wrong to say that God fills the emptiness. God in no way fills it but much more
leaves it precisely unfilled and thus helps us preserve – even in pain – the authentic
relationship.

Further more, the more beautiful and full the remembrances, the more difficult the
separation.

But gratitude transforms the torment of memory into silent joy. One bears what was lovely in the past not as a thorn but as a precious gift deep within, a hidden treasure of which one can always be certain.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer as offered by Bettie Addleton.

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“I can feel this thing she is talking about in my own heart as I read this letter. Sometimes it feels like a heavy, numbing complacency and sometimes like a boiling frustration, or a deep, dark pit of sadness. I call my own by many names: sometimes loss, sometimes darkness, sometimes just an unsettled spirit. I tell myself over and over to “be still”. But usually I accept it as an uncomfortable advantage that I know deep within me that this is not my home and that I long for something more, something so much more fulfilling, so much deeper, so much brighter, so much better, a real and honest home, a place to belong….I think I’ve just come to accept it and allow it to exist. Not let it take over, not let it pull me under (when I can). I just nod at it in the corner, acknowledge that it is there, and then take deep breaths, smile at someone, sometimes let some pressure out with tears, and keep moving forward knowing that one day it will not sit in that corner anymore.Art helps. Beauty helps. Poetry, paintings, sunsets, songs, laughter.” Maia Manchester 

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To me, this feeling is the result of the accumulation of all the places and people I gave my heart to in my childhood of travel, but which I either can’t see now, or can only visit very occasionally…it is a build-up of losses (even though they were all joys before)–some of which are permanent losses.

Those people have gone or the places have changed, some because of war and destruction. Also there is the simple fact that I cannot be in multiple places at the same time. And so every current happiness has a tinge of sadness. Il y quelque chose qui manque…a little bit of grief that gnaws away at every happiness. I also found it got strongest during the couple of years when I realized I had spent more time now in my “home” country than in any other place, and yet still did not feel at home. I wish I could say it is cured, but it does diminish a bit, as I make more connections here and as I lower my expectations of travel. Finding a friend who has somewhat the same background would be a great help I feel too. And finally, it is one of the reasons I hang onto “the hope of glory” because surely in heaven we will feel completely at home and we’ll be at once with so many loved ones too. – Mauareen

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The Portuguese word ‘Saudade’ also comes to mind along with ennui. I experience some of those same feelings. There is a longing in me to bring all the pieces of this mobile life tapestry together for a sense of wholeness, NOW, that is actually impossible in our time/space continuum. How often do I feel out of round? Too much for comfort. But the hope that there is more; completeness, integrality, lasting joy beyond the current fabric of our existence is a golden lifeline- an anchor for my soul.

to embrace the story of who I am and where I come from – which may mean digging into it,even in the dark corners and closed boxes

Growing up between US and Kenya and then living in US and Asia, I sometimes think of that dissatisfaction as a curse and sometimes as a gift. The curse is that it sneaks in to the best of times like family reunions with food, stories, laughter, play and unconditional acceptance. That ‘thick sadness’ lurks at the edges that ‘this will not last’ and it will hurt when we go our disparate ways. At other times the curse is to observe situations as a perpetual outsider, finding it difficult just to ‘enter in’. And then there is the sorrow over the losses. Even when the Acceptance target of grief processing has been seemingly been hit, ‘Mission accomplished, sir!’ I find that triggers can throw me back into the grief process. It hurts and saps energy.

The gift for me is knowing that life is full and there is a spectrum of Joy and Pain. No banality exists when I can fully feel. Another is that being discontent can launch me into caring for others. If I can feel it, I can empathize with you. And I am reminded that this world is not my final home- that seems clear as I observe my own brokenness and that of the world around me- if we are broken, there must be something better that we are longing for, else how would we even imagine that?

Some strategies as I look to ‘the best that is to come’ are working towards that better picture to the best of my abilities, to choose love over fear, faith over pride and hope over despair.

For me it is choosing:

  • to be grateful, daily
  • to serve others in their difficulties and challenges
  • to care as well as I can for myself- sleep, exercise, diet, reading, prayer etc. (I think TCK/global nomad types need to take depression seriously!)
  • to get help when I need it – the doctor, counselor, coach, listening friend (I hear my wife saying my theory is better than my practice but I’m improving, I think :)
  • to embrace the story of who I am and where I come from, (which may mean digging into it, even in the dark corners and closed boxes) and to find others who resonate with that story and then feel open to sharing theirs. – Mike Pollock

Readers – what would you add? What helps you? Thank you for sharing!

Refreshment on the Journey

Published on by Marilyn3 Comments

Pleasant inns

“The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment He has scattered broadcast.  We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy.  It is not hard to see why.  The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with friends, a bathe or a football match, have no such tendency.  Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.” CS Lewis The Problem of Pain

I read this quote earlier this week and I am struck by its truth. No matter what moments of pleasure are a part of our journey, they will never replace our deep desire for belonging, for “settled happiness and security.” That deep desire belongs to God alone, he is jealous for it. And though there are times when I may make the mistake of believing true ‘belonging’ is attainable outside of God, I am always brought back to the reality that it is in him alone where I rest.

As one of my readers commented “Everyone experiences loss and yearning, we are all travelers far from home.” 

More and more I see those who are aware of this longing as a gift in our world. Because this is what makes us human. This is what can connect us to each other. When we are fully at home and secure we are unaware of the journey of others. We can ignore the lonely, walk by the homeless without a thought, have no heart for the refugee, dismiss the one who is ‘other’.”* But when we are in tune with this human yearning, we can reach out to others with compassion and grace. We can be those who offer refreshment on the journey.

And so I continue learning every day what it is to live well in a place where I don’t truly belong – and, though I don’t want to admit it, that is a gift. Today I will enjoy the “pleasant inns” along the way, refreshment for the journey, and hope you do as well.

*from An Unappeased Yearning to Return

In Which We Talk About ‘Longing’

Published on by Marilyn6 Comments

One year ago I wrote a piece called “An Unappeased Yearning to Return.” The piece was based on the roots of the word ‘nostalgia.’

The responses were beautiful – thoughtful, poignant, true. They were your voices! You all expressed so much. It doesn’t mean that you aren’t happy, it doesn’t mean that you are maladjusted, it doesn’t mean that you pine daily in a back room, longing for the past. It just means that you loved a place and the people in that place and there are times when you need to express it.

So here are your voices from that post. Thank you for your words!

minarets-at-dusk quote

“...it isn’t really that we want the country we left behind. We just want all of the perfect things to be able to come together in one place. And the fact that they can’t is like putting together a puzzle that’s missing half of the pieces.” Bryana Joy

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“The yearning for me is for another time and another place. The hard thing is to know that even if I was to physically go back to Pakistan, those memories will not be present because buildings have changed, people have moved on. There’s a sense of loss in that those things can never be gone back to, never recaptured or re-experienced, even if other new and equally enjoyable things are in their place.” Sophie from Little Gumnut

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“Sometimes the longing is so strong, it takes my breath away. For the places, for the people, for the way things used to be. But, as you say, most of the time, it is under the surface and I tick along doing all the things I’m meant to do and being happy about them. The longing is an undercurrent, but we can’t let it pull us under. It can most certainly be a gift if it reminds us to reach out to others who may be in danger of drowning.” Stacy from Food Lust, People Love

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“Seems the roots of my Nostalgia always lead me to my Identity. And if I am no longer “there”, that place I can no longer BE, am I still who I thought I was?? Of course, the question is rhetorical – So I sit, perhaps at my computer at work, gazing past the grey earth, shorn of its snow-mantle, seeing beyond the un-born spring, into the past. The nostalgia emerges. A mist-covered lake. – I guess the difficult thing about identity is that those we love can never truly know who we are and from where we came. Because our journey is jut that. Our own. It can feel isolating. But I choose to nurture the compassion that thrives in nostalgic soil, allowing it to drive me to connect with others. To hear.

Their story. Their song.

All because there is One Who does know me. And because there will be a time when I will know, even as I am Known.” Sylvia

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“I have never admitted this, but I used to get the sick-in-the-pit-of-your-stomach homesickness until well into my 20’s. I don’t know why, but I do often feel the longing for what “no longer is”, and sometimes I feel a longing but I’m not even sure what for!” Hillary

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“The Orthodox understanding of the Fall in Genesis is more about yearning than about guilt – it is this sense that there IS somewhere we fully belong, but this is not quite it. And I think your point about embracing nostalgia as something that can connect us to others and make us more compassionate is so good. It is easy to feel that unusual experiences set one apart, but the truth is that EVERYONE experiences loss and yearning, we are ALL travelers far from home.” Thea Wallace

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“I have a longing to return to Pakistan or even India that I don’t see any way of fulfilling. In part I satisfied that longing by writing “Captives of Minara,” and in part when we make curry or have the family together and get samosas. Partly it eases when we go to an South Asian restaurant.” Eric Wright

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“Recently, I am experiencing this [longing] from the perspective of a mom whose sons have grown up and started their adult lives. Looking back at pictures of a time and a family (our family) to which there is no returning. The gift is in knowing what we shared…and the places and faces with which we shared our family times. And in the yearning for what we shared comes a prayer for what I hope lives on inside each of them to share with the friends and family they have join them on their journeys through life.” Delana

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“A dear friend, a sister in the faith, is dying. She is so ready to go HOME, home to be with Jesus. As I was dropping off to sleep last night, I felt tears rolling down my cheeks. I thought of her daughter who died years ago at 27, the 2 stillborn grandsons she never saw, of her husband gone for several years. Such a joyful reunion to be anticipating. Most of all I thought of her finally being face to face with Jesus, the Savior she has loved and served. So my tears were mixed, tears of joy for my sister, my friend and tears for the pain and loss of death.
Does this sound disconnected from this post on nostalgia, that pain of longing for some other place? I believe our longings, our nostalgia in this life are related to that deeper longing for a permanent place, a longing that God has put into our hearts.
“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men.” Ecclesiastes 3:11″ Polly Brown aka my mom

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“Just today I read a quote by Barbara Brown Taylor (Learning to Walk in the Dark) that goes along with this thought. ‘After so many years of trying to cobble together a way of thinking about God that makes sense so that I can safely settle down with it, it all turns to noda. There is no permanently safe place to settle. I will always be at sea, steering by stars. Yet as dark as this sounds, it provides relief, because it now sounds truer than anything that came before.’ Amen to Ecclesiastes 3:11.” Bettie Addleton

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“I particularly loved this line and paragraph, ‘But for more people it sits in the soul, under the surface, not affecting activities of daily living, but silently accompanying us wherever we go.’ – that’s so true, and I’m glad you reminded me that it’s ok to feel this. Thank you for reassuring me that I can feel that longing but still be present where I am, that they do not negate one another. Sometimes we forget that, so thank you for reminding me of this: ‘we can be content and well-adjusted to a place and yet still have a longing for the places we came from, the places where we will never return.'” Dounia from TCKNextStop

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So there you have it – your voices, your thoughts, written to encourage all of us. Thank you! 

Others – what would you add to the topic of nostalgia and longing? You can take a look at the original post here. 

The Gift of Saudade

Published on by Marilyn8 Comments

Saudade “A sense of home is, it seems, worth more than any other comfort. And one of the questions I want to answer now, for myself, is what makes a place feel like home. I know that it is not so simple as living where people speak your language and look like you and have lost what you have lost, but there is a kind of comfort in that, too” – Notes from No Man’s Land by Eula Biss page 128

As we returned to Cambridge yesterday after a long weekend away I felt a familiar longing. I turned to my husband and asked him if he felt like our home in Cambridge, was indeed ‘home’.

Because I don’t. Not always. Despite my work and church and friends and general life being here, the sense of ‘home’, of ‘belonging’ still seems to be just out of reach. I don’t feel this daily – I feel this when I return from being away. Because usually when I’ve been away, I realize no one knew I was gone.

Home is a place that when you return, people knew you were gone. They welcome you back. But in Cambridge, no one ever knows we’re gone. 

Almost two years ago I was introduced to the word ‘Saudade‘. I learned of the word from my husband, who in turn learned it from a Brazilian friend. I immediately came to love and rely on this word to express that peculiar longing that I never had words to express. I used it in writing. I used it in speaking. I particularly used it when connecting with immigrants and refugees through my job.

Saudade is described as “a vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist, for something other than the present, a turning towards the past or towards the future; not an active discontent or poignant sadness but an indolent dreaming wistfulness.” – In Portugal of 1912, A. F. G. Bell

This is what I felt yesterday as we returned. Once again I had saudade. 

Ute Limacher, in a beautiful piece written for the series Painting Pictures, says that we can have ‘saudade’ for people, for places, and for moments. I’ve felt all three of these, sometimes all at the same time. 

I have come to realize that this saudade, this ‘indolent wistfulness’ will never be completely gone, and I’ve also come to be okay with this. It is a longing that nothing on this earth will ever fully meet. I have my moments of feeling completely at home, feeling like I belong, even as I ache for what I can no longer have, places I can no longer live, people I will no longer see. In a beautiful piece called “Saudade – a Song for the Modern Soul” Rachel Pieh Jones writes: “There is a peace and joy in belonging and an ache for what is not, for what can no longer be.”

As a Christian, perhaps the biggest mistake I could ever make is being too at home in this world, all my longings met, wrapped up in the temporal.

For beyond the reminders of worlds and lives past, saudade is the reminder of another world, another longing not yet realized. A reminder of a world where there will be no more sadness,where tears will be wiped from our eyes, where a lion and a lamb, earthly enemies, will lie down in peace.

So I’m coming to delight in this saudade, to recognize it for the gift that it is. I don’t want to fill it with something false, a shadow comfort of what is real. I want to live each day, accepting the inevitable saudade that comes — sometimes forcefully, sometimes quietly. C.S. Lewis says that if we “find in [ourselves] desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that [we] were made for another world.”*

In saudade I recognize that I was made for another world.

Today is a new day. I am back to a routine and grateful for this routine. I feel at home in my skin and surroundings, and it is all the more precious because of saudade.

What about you? Do you find yourself with longings that will never be met in this world? 

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A bit after I was introduced to ‘Saudade’, I wrote a piece called “Saudade – A Word for the Third Culture Kid”. I wrote it quickly one night, hoping that at least a few would relate with the word. I was overwhelmed by the gracious response to the post. Along with the reads and shares of the piece, the post was also picked up by Among Worlds – a publication of Interaction International, an organization for third culture kids. I continue to get comments and emails about it, connecting me to people I would never have met. So many of us had a visceral response to the word. The comments themselves were gifts as they expressed longings for home and belonging that are not easily verbalized. If you’ve not seen the post, click on the link above to take a look – make sure to read through the comments – they are the best part.

*C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

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Always Another Season

Published on by Marilyn12 Comments

“I imagine folks in your part of the world are sad about the loss last night. My favorite part of sports, though, is that there is always another season to look forward to (the mantra that allowed me to grow up as a red sox fan without slumping into depression every October…)!”

 My nephew left this comment the other day on my post “Sports and the Narrative of Life”.  What deep wisdom he voiced in the phrase “Always another season…”All week I have thought about this phrase – There is always another season of sports. There is always another season of fashion. There is always another season for the ballet, for theatre, for Pottery Barn’s decor.

King Solomon, renowned throughout the ancient world for his wisdom, speaks to this in Ecclesiastes in the Bible. The old but well-known words “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted, A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh….” (Ecclesiastes 3:1-4) never fail to make me pause. Whenever I read them I feel a hope spring up – looking to a new season keeps hope alive. Even as the cold and grey of winter is heavy in February there is hope, always hope, in the spring that will follow.

I have no idea what season you are in. It could be a season of learning to love and looking forward to sharing a lifetime with someone. It could be a season of chaos with kids going 10 different directions and an inability to connect with your spouse, feeling like all the chaos has wreaked havoc on your relationship. It could be a season of grief where you are leaving a place you love, or grieving the life of someone you lost. It could be a season of healing, running from an addiction that in the past has claimed your life. Perhaps a season of longing – longing to get pregnant, longing to be healed, longing for someone to share your life with. It could be a season of anger and frustration; peace and security; aging or sickness. Whatever the season, recognizing that there is always another season symbolizes  hope.

One thing we know about hope – it is not a sickly sweet sentiment, but rather a hard-nosed determination. Václav Havel, a Czech writer says this: “Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”

So in the season you find yourself in may you have hope and the conviction that all will make sense.

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