Tag: Reentry

A Moment Between Worlds

Published on by Marilyn10 Comments

moving train quote

I’m sitting in a Pakistani Restaurant in Los Angeles, just two miles from the airport – because that’s what we do when we are global nomads. We find comfort foods and places wherever we go, places where we can kill the saudade.

I arrived just a couple of hours ago from New Zealand and knew I had too much time to stay at the airport, but too little time to go very far. So I looked up restaurants near the LA airport and found Bihar Halal, described as an authentic Pakistani restaurant a short ride away. It is indeed only a short ride from the airport and I walk into the smell of naan and curry. There are mostly Pakistanis in the restaurant, a sure sign of its authenticity. I sit down and order a chicken curry, raita, and tandoorki roti. No fancy Americanization of this delicious food – just authentic curry.

I eat with my fingers and soon my nose is running, the spicy taste delighting my palate and forcing me to wipe my nose. The TV is set to a station in Faisalabad, Pakistan. Periodically an advertisement comes on and the Pakistani National Anthem plays in the background. I hum along with it. My Urdu is challenged as I try to follow the plot line of a crime show.

Suddenly my situation strikes me as absurdly surreal – I just arrived from New Zealand, I’m sitting in a Pakistani restaurant, and I’m watching a crime show on Pakistani TV in the middle of Los Angeles. Just yesterday I was sitting in my friend’s garden in Christchurch, New Zealand eating breakfast. Sometimes my worlds change too fast and I am left spinning, like a top spun over and over again by a child who won’t give the toy a rest.

When my mom and dad first moved overseas they would travel by ship. Instead of frenzied airport arrivals and departures, they would wave from the balcony of a ship. They would wave until those they loved faded out of sight, and all that was left were tears on their faces and a wide ocean that would be their landscape for the next six weeks. They left slowly, and they entered slowly. Those long days and nights at sea prepared them for their next steps on land. It was a good way to travel. For six weeks you were literally between worlds, without expectations from either.

Sometimes I wish it were still that way. We move so quickly between countries that it is hard to breathe. Currency, language, food, and customs change in a short plane ride. The cultural lines get blurred and we have high expectations of how quickly we will adjust to whatever culture we find ourselves. No wonder we find ourselves exhausted, collapsed on beds with tears on our pillows. It’s all a bit much.

As light fades outside the restaurant, I realize I have been traveling hard and fast.  The crime show has finished and I am now watching recaps of the Pakistan/India cricket game. I am alone, but not lonely. Instead, I am content in this world I live in. In his book, The Art of Stillness, Pico Iyer says this: “In an age of movement, nothing is more critical than stillness. In an age of distraction, nothing can feel more luxurious than paying attention.” A busy restaurant may be an unlikely place of stillness, but for me that is just what it is.

I paid the bill a long time ago and it is the goodness of the restaurant owner that he has allowed me to rest without distraction. I sigh and pack up my things, reluctant to give up this moment between worlds.

But it is time for the next journey, one that will take me back to an apartment building in Cambridge.

The top is still spinning, but curry and naan have slowed it down and eased me into reentry. I am content.

At least for now.

___________

Note: Tomorrow I will be announcing the two winners of the Meditations coloring book! Stay tuned!

Also, please continue your thoughts and prayers for the people of Pakistan as the country mourns for those who died and hopes that those who are wounded will heal.

  • Evil in Not the Final Word ““Has not Pakistan suffered enough?” I shout the words inside, knowing that few would understand my reactions. Yet, the Pakistani flag lights up my newsfeed and I am grateful for friends who do understand, who know and love this place that so many of us called home.”
  • I am Pakistan? “Our humanity has constraints; limitation is after all a characteristic common to all people. We do not therefore have the emotional capacity to mourn all who die in this world and to scream at all the wickedness that weaves so deeply through every culture. But while  our tears are reserved for Western nations, the rest of the world is right to be suspicious of us.”
  • Keen Pain in Pakistan over “Lives Shattered into Pieces”  “Shock and grief enveloped Pakistan on Monday as the official death toll from the attack in Lahore a day earlier rose to at least 72, with 341 people reported wounded by officials.”

Dear Linda

Published on by Robynn Bliss10 Comments

rose-676760_1920In the middle of the night I got a message from my friend Linda that lives on the other side of the world. She is hurting. They left South Asia several years after we did. Her husband took a position that he finds fulfilling and satisfying. She however has struggled to find her place. She is lonely. The friendships she does have she holds onto tightly for fear that those friends will abandon her. She no longer knows who she is or what she has to offer.

It’s not the first such letter I’ve received. There was one eight or nine months ago from Lisa. Her family’s lease had been suddenly revoked. They were asked by their landlord to leave the acreage they (and others with them) had restored from a weed choked, overgrown plot of ruin to a luscious garden retreat space. Her heart was breaking too. How would she get passed the sense of loss? How would she find herself again…when so much of her was planted in the ground they had cultivated?

Still another email came in August. This particular friend, Susan, knows they are planning on leaving the city they’ve adopted as their own in Asia. All the signs are pointing in that direction but she is beginning to sense even now unintended sorrows and sadness. She wondered if there was a way to manage such a transition while mitigating some of the heartache. Is there a “how to” book for making such a earth-shaking, globe traversing change?

My heart connects so thoroughly with these women. They are my friends it’s true. But they are also travelling along some of the same roads that I’ve been on. I’ve walked down those pathways and they were not so easy. The journey from there to here is long and mostly uphill and it’s ever so painful. I want to protect them from the pain they are in or the pain they have yet to face. I want to make all their endings happy ones. I want to cocoon them with some mythical protective wrap that ensures they will get through the transitions without agony, with their souls intact, with their hearts unscarred.

I suspect Linda doesn’t just grieve for the place she left behind. She grieves for everything else that got left there too: her memories, her place in the community, the meaning-infused ministry she was a part of, her friendships –made deeper there by shared suffering over time. Her marriage looked different there. She parented differently there. Her children were younger then and responded differently to her. And while parenting and being a spouse have not changed–she is still a wife and a mother–it looks wildly different than it used to.

I’m guessing she also left huge pieces of her self somewhere in South Asia. Linda wasn’t being careless, she didn’t mean to forget to pack her personality and sense of self, but in all the chaos and change, she inadvertently forgot to bring Linda. At least that was my experience… When we returned I realized I had forgotten to bring me!

I know that sounds ridiculous! Of course I came back too….but really so much of me didn’t. Huge parts of my personality didn’t make the journey. There was no use for most of my knowledge or experience. It was no longer relevant. No one needs to know how long to pressure cook beans on this side of the ocean! And if that’s what I had to offer—suddenly I wasn’t offering much at all. The humour on that side, certain silly situations, daily living, prompted certain responses from me. With those prompts all gone or vastly changed I found myself responding in ways I didn’t recognize. I missed the old me. It took me awhile to get to know the new me.

Dear dear Linda (and Lisa and Susan too) –I want you to know that this time will end. There is a beginning, a middle and an end to every transition. I suspect, from what you’ve told me, that you are right smack in the middle. A kind lady, a momentary mentor of sorts, once told me that it would likely take me ten years to adjust to life here in the United States. My husband, Lowell, was shocked when he heard that! Ten years?! But for me it was very helpful. It would end. I would settle. I would get through this. And Linda, you will too. The heartache and the intense sadnesses will pass. You will find yourself again. The time of transition will end.

Time will generously give you new experiences. You are beginning to collect new memories and new stories. God is showing his new mercies for each new day.

Discovering who you are and what you have to offer in this ‘new’ place is perhaps the hardest part of this. It’s frightful and unsettling. I wasn’t brave enough to step out and try new things for a very long time. Even when I did I felt like I was mostly faking it. It didn’t feel right. It took a very long time to get past that. It’s only been the past year or so—and even the past few months—where I’ve begun to experience brief moments of a fully soul satisfied Robynn again.

Give yourself lots of time. Extend lots of grace to yourself. Cry when you need to cry. Drink lots of hot tea and bring to mind the presence of God. He is with you in this. He has not abandoned you. He knows who you are—there in that old life, and here in this new life. He’s not surprised by how you are doing. He’s not disappointed in you. His patience and tender care are enduring. He’s the only one that can fully relate to the amount of loss and change you’ve been through. God understands. He cares for you in your loneliness too. He is with you even in that place. When it feels terribly dark and you wonder if you really are going crazy–He brings a little bit of light and hope. Hold onto Jesus, sweet Linda. He has not changed.

You may always be a little lonely. That chapter in your life was rich with deep friendships and meaningful connections with your team, your international church, your community. Most friends now will likely not fully understand that. But God will give you others that, while not completely identifying with your past, will be able to meet you in your present. I suspect the ache for the “good ole’ days” will always be there but grief will be gently replaced with nostalgia. You will always miss the way it was, the way you were, but those longings will no longer paralyze you.

Linda, I’m so sorry. I wish I could make it better for you and easier. I will pray earnestly for restored joy, for the end to come when it needs to come (hopefully sooner rather than later), for new friends, for a new sense of purpose. All will be well….eventually….all manner of things shall be well.

Relearning Life

Published on by Marilyn4 Comments

relearning lifeMy friend Angie, one of the primary people behind A Life Overseas, recently moved to the United States after 15 years in Bolivia.

Watching her through this move was an emotional experience for me. I empathized so much that I hurt. I watched through social media as she told people, as she packed up, as she said goodbyes. I watched as they received a mini van from friends thousands of miles away, as they found out they had a place to live, as friends and family gathered things for their new home.

Angie says she is “relearning life.” There is no better description for the expat who moves back to their passport country than this. We relearn life. And it is difficult.

Angie describes being at the airport with her family in a post called “This is NOT Home!”:

We left Bolivia. To quote a friend, “It is not so weird that you left, what’s weird is that you are not coming back.” Oh the sting.

The impact of the separation has not yet hit me. I am sure the ones we left back in Bolivia are feeling it. I have been the one left behind, it is excruciating. I can see on the faces of some of my kids the sadness and loneliness. Others beam with relief and renewal. The colors of our emotional profile burn bright like a sunset on fire. Or is it the sunrise?

The transition material tells me that a new beginning starts with an ending. The rites of passage of ancient cultures teach us to face the end, embrace the grief, and move through to the new. Denial, slap a happy-face emoticon on it, fake-it-’til-you-make-it, just won’t do. Honest tears help wash the soul.

It hurts so much, though. And there are so many people so very happy to have us here. And we don’t want to disappoint people. But it is not fair to them if we are dishonest with our “glee” in the hopes to manage their emotions. No. This is not what we want to do. So we sit broken, together. Yet, there does exist happiness in all the grief. Sparks of hope of what will be flare up and our faces make genuine smiles. – See more at: http://www.angiewashington.com/#sthash.MIcolUsY.dpuf

I watched and I remembered. I remembered what it was like to do that. To leave with 27 suitcases that contained all our belongings, five kids, and a cat. I remembered coming to a bright red, mini van. How excited we were to step into that car. I remembered like it was yesterday, even though it was so long ago.

And I remembered how difficult it was, with no one to help us process, no one aware of the inner turmoil in our family.

Those who reenter their passport countries have to relearn life. It’s similar to what someone with a serious physical injury goes through – they have to relearn the basics, relearn what we call in health care “activities of daily living.” Or someone who has lost a person close to them — a spouse or a child. Even relearning life when all your children have left the nest you so carefully made for them all those years. Relearning life without the person you used to have around all the time, without the physical abilities you relied on, without the life you used to know.

“Relearn the activities of daily living.” It’s so technical, but sometimes it helps to make things technical.

The activities of daily living for the one who has reentered have completely changed. You no longer need to boil water or milk, and going to the market daily is unnecessary. You are now in the same time zone as your extended family, so arranging a time to talk when you’re both awake is not important. You have to consciously think about driving on the right side of the road, lest you head toward an oncoming car.

Relearning life – baby steps to adjustment. And celebrating milestones like the first time you go to the grocery store and don’t cry; the day you don’t tense up as you’re sending your kids out the door to public school; the evening that you fix dinner without an emotional break down.

Those are baby steps in the journey and baby steps need to be celebrated.

Relearning life takes courage and tenacity, it takes a sense of humor and humility. Most of all it takes leaning on God with every fiber of our being, accepting  that he is the author of this new chapter of life.

Angie continues to write from what she calls “transitory land.” She talks in this piece about what she used to be, contrasts it with what she needs to get used to and she ends with words I drink in like water, because whether I am reentering, or still living in a place where I have lived for awhile, they are truth. 

“Gratitude abounds in the midst of the many moods. The goodness God has poured out is undeniable and comforts me.” – See more at: http://www.angiewashington.com/2015/03/used-to/#sthash.xvEatFH1.dpuf

Are you relearning life after a move or death or injury? How do you relearn life? What practical, emotional, or spiritual tips can you offer other readers?

Photo credit: http://pixabay.com/en/light-dark-tunnel-black-path-495238/ word art by Marilyn

The Psalms: A Reentry Handbook

Published on by Marilyn4 Comments

walkway to mosque

The Psalms: A Reentry Handbook by Robynn

I remember hanging suspended upside down inside a squished cab of a pick up truck alongside the road. The ambulance arrived and 2 paramedics stuck their heads in from either side of the cab. They told us they would have us out in no time, they inquired as to how we were doing and then they asked if there was anyone they could call for us. We grimaced and glanced at each other. Ethel had grown up in Brazil, Denise’s parents were in Nigeria and mine remained obliviously out of reach in Pakistan. There was no one to call.

The summer before I had watched, with that horrible sinking feeling, my parents board the plane to return to Pakistan. I was of age. I had crossed that dreaded line that meant that I no longer went with them. I was stuck in Canada, far from them, far from my childhood, far from everything I had ever known. I was alone.

It wasn’t entirely true. I wasn’t technically alone. My parents had figured out a plan for that first summer without them. I had people to stay with, a church to attend and I knew where I would be going once summer was over. I had relatives that loved me. There were plenty of well-meaning people to look out for me and yet deep inside there was a place that shook with the reality that I was really on my own.

I cried a lot that summer. I grieved adulthood thrust upon me. I ached for my parents and the stability they brought. I missed Pakistan and the familiar, my boarding school and all my chums. My loneliness was so profound it nearly swallowed me whole. It was thick and tangible.

During this time Jesus reminded me again of the Psalms.  David often was separated from his family, his friends, his safety, his childhood, his familiar. He was often on the run, living out of a suitcase: a transient, a wanderer (a tck?). He was no stranger to separation and grief.  Many of his journal entries reflect that. He wrote things like: “Morning, noon, and night I cry out in my distress and the Lord hears my voice”(Ps 54:16), “You keep track of all my sorrows” (Ps 56:8), “Come with great power, O God and rescue me!…(Ps 54:1) “for you have seen my troubles and you care about the anguish of my soul” (Ps 31:7).

In the midst of David’s pain and uncertainty he knew that God was his fortress and his protector, his helper.  He understood that God loved him deeply and that God was with him in the midst of all the sadness. “The Lord directs the steps of the godly. He delights in every detail of their lives. Thou they stumble, they will never fall for the Lord holds them by the hand” (Ps 37:23). ”Unfailing love surrounds those who trust the Lord” (Ps 32:10). I found comfort and camaraderie in reading David’s poems, his songs, his journal. He seemed to understand. He seemed confident that God would be with me too. It became my life line. During those first 2 years back I read nothing from scripture except the Psalms! David mentored me through reentry. He taught me how to depend on God in the midst of suffering and separation.

One day I was driving my little car across the Canadian prairie. Suddenly and for no apparent reason (I mean I wasn’t out of gas and there did appear to be oil in the car!) it quit! I had no idea what to do. I pulled to the side of the road and thought about my dad. My dad would know what to do! My dad had probably told me what to do at some point but I couldn’t remember what that was. And to complicate what always seemed already like a complicated life, my dad was off in Pakistan! I opened the hood and stood over it. The tears started running down my face. I felt the separation that was such a reality. And then I did what my mentor David taught me to do: I cried out to God. God if you are the Good Shepherd –the Expert on Sheep, and the Great Physician – the Expert on me…surely you know something about cars. Will you please come to my rescue? Will you please fix this stupid car?? I closed the hood, got back in behind the steering wheel and turned the key. It worked! God had fixed my car. God had been my Heavenly Mechanic, my Nearby Holy Dad. He had stepped in and helped me.

The reality of His nearness waxed and waned during those early years. Often God through His tender Spirit eased the pain of the separation and He was my helper! Other times it was still so very hard and I missed my parents and their expertise on living very keenly.

“O Lord you alone are my hope. I’ve trusted you, O Lord, from childhood. Yes, you have been with me… My life is an example to many, because you have been my strength and protection…. O God don’t stay away. My God, please hurry to help me… I will keep on hoping for your help. I will praise you more and more…. O God you have taught me from my earliest childhood, and I constantly tell others about the wonderful things you do…. Let me proclaim your power to this new generation, your mighty miracles to all who come after me…”Ps 71: 5-18

(Previously published in Traveling without Baggage—a Christar Publication)

To Enter or to Reenter: That is the Question

Published on by Marilyn3 Comments

Readers – I miss you! I’ll be back tomorrow but for now I wanted to send you over to Next Stop: Musings from a Third Culture Kid. Dounia is a reader of Communicating Across Boundaries and it has been a joy to get to know her a bit through blogging and connecting in the comment section. She’s done a great job here on speaking to her journey of Entering. Enjoy this post called To Enter or Reenter: That is the Question.

Related articles

Next Stop

Recently I read a couple of blog posts written by an adult third culture kid about expats and reentry, and TCKs and entry. I thought the differentiation she made was very telling and made perfect sense to me. When you consider reentry, it means returning somewhere you’ve already been and that you can consider as home. For an expat who left his/her home country for a ‘mission’ elsewhere, coming back to their home base is indeed reentry. For a third culture kid however, moving to their passport country is not necessarily a reentry. They may have never lived in their passport country or only lived there as a child, or perhaps don’t return to the exact same location in that country. Some aspects of settling back in may be the same for reentry and entry, but the TCK often goes through more struggles to adapt.

Ever since I…

View original post 536 more words

To the Displaced and the Exiled

Published on by Marilyn17 Comments

Old city quote

To the Displaced and the Exile

I get it.

You sit in a crowd of people and you feel your mouth go dry, the bite you just took from your scone chokes your throat. How can you be this lonely in a crowd of people? How is it possible that your passport country feels so alien?

You were excited to return, there were many things you were sick of in your adopted country. You were tired of the dirt. You had had enough of the chaos. You had to boil water one time too many and you had forgotten to soak the vegetables in iodine solution resulting in a visiting guest getting dysentery.

Your household help, who you love, was complaining and asking for more money and you simultaneously felt angry and guilty. You have so much. She has so little. But it’s not that simple.

And you were feeling so alien in your other world. The last few weeks have been chaotic and hot. So many people to see, so many projects to finish, children to prepare, suitcases to pack. You read an article on burn out and knew that was you. You could hardly wait to go to a coffee shop and order coffee in your own language, not tripping over verbs and adjectives.

But as you look around , you let out a soul-deep sigh. You pictured all this so differently. You thought it would be so good, such a rest, such a time of peace.

But you had barely arrived when you realized that life had gone on in this, your passport country. You call your best friend. She squeals with delight and then says “I’m so sorry. Can’t talk now! Heading to a work party. Gotta get the kids ready for the baby sitter. And next week we’re swamped! Kids are getting ready for camp, we’ve got church stuff. Can’t wait to catch up”.

Oh.

And your siblings. Oh. Your. Siblings. You so want to be able to sit down with them, to share life. But two of your brother’s have wives that are not speaking to each other and the idea of a fun family dinner is just that – an idea.

So there you sit. All of this going through your mind. And you feel one hot tear trickle down your face. You brush it away impatiently. But there’s another. How can you escape and just let all the preceding weeks and the now fill up your tear ducts and fall freely, a red sniffley nose and all?

You are displaced. You feel you are in exile.

You’ve no home to go to. You’re not fully at home there, but neither are you here.

You make it to the car and sit. It’s begun to rain and the rain blocks the windows, sending streams of water down and hiding you from the world. It has been a long time since you’ve seen rain. Your tears fall like the heavy raindrops. You sob like you will never stop.

There is no one to hold you. There is no one to offer tangible, concrete comfort.

Slowly the sobs swallow you up. You begin to feel such relief, the relief that comes only from a cry so deep you can’t explain it.

And somehow you know that God is there. The God you cried to for weeks before making the move, late at night when all were sleeping so as to upset no one.The God who was with you when you held your 2-year-old in a steamy bathroom, far from good medical care, praying that the croup would go. The God who was with you when you first arrived on the soil of another country, looking out-of-place and oh so tired. The God who you prayed to when you went off the road in a car accident in the middle of nowhere and suddenly help was available.

The God of the Displaced and the Exiled is with you. Here and Now.

You recall the verse given to you by an older woman, one who knew what this nomadic life would hold – knew the good and knew the hard. You breathe. Slowly.

You say the verse aloud, your voice raspy,knowing you are at the end of your human strength. “Blessed are those whose strength is in you; whose hearts are set on pilgrimage. As they pass through the Valley of Baka, they make it a place of springs; the autumn rains also cover it with pools. They go from strength to strength, until each appears before God in Zion.*”

Softly you repeat the words “Strength to strength” and you start the car.

*Psalm 84:5-7

This article appears in the Goodbye section of Between Worlds: Essays on Culture and Belonging

Related articles