Tell Me

"I'm a terrible sister." Our sweet girl told me this the other day, after a few days of too much time with her brother coupled with not enough activity in their days had resulted in unpleasant interactions between the two. 

I'm so glad she said it out loud. Too often those accusations from the enemy go unsaid in our hearts, and we continue to believe them. But spoken out, we can call them the lies they are. It's hard to do that alone, which is why I was glad I was there to remind her that it is not God who says those things to her. I could tell her what He would say - that He knows how hard it is to love, that He can and wants to help her, that He loves and has compassion on her. It was a good moment.

Lately I've been reminded how important it is to tell myself often, daily even, these things as well. I need to tell myself who I am in Christ, how He sees me, who He is. It's too easy to start listening to the voices of the world, to the voice of the enemy. 

But sometime it's hard. It's a hard battle to keep fighting day after day. Sometimes it feels like too much, and that's when we need others to stand with us. I wrote a poem years ago about this: 

Tell Me

Tell me the truth
about myself

Tell me things that free me
from the worry cage I've built

Tell me the upside-down things
that correct the world's twisted weavings

Tell me there are rocks to rest on
so I can come in from the storm

Tell me things that breathe new life
into this valley of dry bones

Tell me again to draw my sword
to cut through the enemy attacks on my soul

They say there are no easy answers
I know 
But there is One who answers still
Tell me what He would say
when I'm weak and lonely and tired

Tell me to listen to Him
Tell me
because sometimes I forget. 

What about you? Are you telling yourself the truth? Do you need others to help you?

The great table adventure

I have this idea that refinishing furniture isn't that hard, and also that I'm good at DIY projects. The first of these ideas I'm realizing isn't nearly as true as I want to believe. I'm still holding on to the second.

For awhile I've wanted to refinish our dining room table because the finish has dulled and there was some water damage. I should qualify this and all previous furniture refinishing attempts by stating that none of our Chinese made furniture was expensive. It was ridiculously not expensive, in fact, which is why I seem to willy nilly throw my amateur furniture skillz at it. I don't have much to lose.

I did decide though that it would be best to attempt only to redo the top part of our table. I'm ambitious, but I'm not dumb.

This is our table as it was:

 This was right when we bought. Before the dulling and the water damaging. But it was always a little darker than I wanted, which is what happens when you pay a guy $200 to custom build a table. It won't be exactly like that Pottery Barn table.

My first order of business was to strip it with my handy dandy Citristrip. It's this neon peach gel that takes most of the stain right off. Then I sanded it, and put down one coat of dark walnut. It looked really cool. I put down another coat. It looked even cooler. Erik said it was good. I thought it could be a little better, so I put down one more coat. Not cool.

 So it was back to this. Stripped it down again. Thank God for Citristrip! But it didn't seem to get the stain off quite as well as the first time.

 Consequently the stain didn't go down as evenly this time either. But I was happy to be able to see the grain of the wood, something I'd always wanted. This time I quit while I was ahead.

 Then came sealing it. A friend recommended using lacquer instead of polyurethane. I started with 2 cans. By the end I'd bought 10. It still continued to have this uneven shine. Argh.

So I sanded off the shine, and pulled out a can of finishing wax. I threw on two coats and called it good. It looks better in person, actually. But there it is. My great table adventure.

Keep Following

If you like to subscribe to my blog via Google Reader, you may be aware that it will shut down on July 1st. I am not going to be so presumptuous as to assume that mine is the only blog you follow - I'm guessing there are others and you'd like to keep following them as well.

I heard of this impending doom awhile ago and switched my blog reading over to a place called Feedly. It's a bit of a different format, but I got used to it after awhile. It even has a one click Google Reader import, so it's easy! It's one of many options you can use to keep following blogs.

So please keep following me - I'll still be blogging! 

The Great Outdoors

I'm not an outdoor girl. I've said it before, but I could live happily in a bunker, as long as I had space to jump around. But after eight years in one of the most polluted cities in the world, I can't get enough of our neighborhood because it's just. so. beautiful. Here's evidence:

See, this is a SWAMP and I'm excited

Honestly I did not edit this

Expectation Management

One of the best coping skills Erik and I learned in the early days of expat living was a simple phrase, "lower your standards!" When you read that, you have to imagine it with your best game show host voice, like you're inviting someone to an exciting opportunity behind door #1. It was all about expectations. If you expect that the bathroom you've been led to out the back door of a restaurant and down a dark alley will be a picture of cleanliness, you will be sorely disappointed. However, if you imagine that it will be a sufficient hole in the ground, you'll be satisfied. You get the idea.

It's called expectation management. The problem with expectations is that we are so often unaware of them. It doesn't occur to me that I would appreciate a toilet that flushes until I look up and see that the wall mounted reservoir in the back alley bathroom is partially missing and the frozen water within is still holding its shape. I can, apparently, flush in springtime.

I've been reminded lately how important it is to talk about our expectations.This is especially true with our kids. When we began summer vacation this year, they had an unspoken expectation that it would be like their three previous summers, when they spent all day, every day, outside with friends. Last summer I even had to call one mom and ask her if her kids could maybe not schedule the summer project involving my children quite as often because they weren't able to spend time with other kids. We were beating off the playdates with sticks.

This wasn't the case in Orlando. The kids they've met from school mostly live about an hour away, and others were preparing for long trips away. Within a few days we were all scratching hash marks on the walls. I finally realized we needed to have a talk about expectations with them, and we basically had to say, "lower your standards." It required a little more mourning of what they used to have, but within a day their "I'm bored" statements had reduced significantly. It's a process of looking at reality and making adjustments.

So often when I am frustrated with life it is because I expected it to be a certain way and it isn't. Many of my expectations are residual, left over from what I was accustomed to having in my "previous" life. It's helpful for me to take a hard look at the expectations I have and ask myself if they are realistic in this new season of life. Some of them might not be, and that's where I need to tell myself to "lower my standards." It doesn't mean I'm giving up hope. I think it means I'm choosing contentment.

The Real Me

It happened yesterday at the dentist. I was myself. I mean, really truly, like just how I would be if I were with someone I'd known forever. I was chatty. I made witty comments. They laughed. It felt comfortable, and normal, and I thought, "Hey, I'm being me! With people I just met!" This is progress.

You'd think I'd always be me - isn't everyone? - but I'm still getting there. A friend of mine here reminded me lately that when someone has gone through a major transition, you should assume for the first year that you don't really know the real them.

Ah, how true.

It was good to hear that again because I know that my traditional transition stress reaction is withdrawal. I usually don't realize I'm doing it until people make comments like, "Gosh, I thought you were so reserved and quiet, but . . . " (It's ok, go ahead and finish that thought, "but you're actually kind of goofy and don't stop talking.")

The first time I did it was when I got married, and everything in my world changed - new city, new job, new home, new roommate, new church, new friends. I met one of my good friends that year, and she thought I didn't like her the whole year. Meanwhile I was saying to my husband, "I really like her! I hope she'll be my friend!" Sigh. I had no idea.

Since then I'm at least aware of it (the first step is admitting you have a problem). I think I am doing better here, but I think it's partly because there are people I am myself with because they already know me. Or people who are just so inviting they make me want to show up all at once. There are others though who still think I'm the quiet type. Just wait, I want to say.

A person who has just gone through transition is a bit like a new house plant. You can give it the best environment, but it's probably going to wilt a little at first. Give it time. It'll perk up. Pretty soon the real Gina will show up and the "I just played Dizzy Lizzy* with my life and I can't walk quite straight" Gina will fade away. I'm still just a little shell shocked and not so sure of myself here so I shut down the non-essentials and just focus on getting through. I'm triaging. But as we say in the middle kingdom, "yue lai yue" - it's coming gradually.

Like at the dentist. The prospect of major dental work somehow drew me out. Who knew?

*Dizzy Lizzy, for the uninitiated, is a game in which you place your head on the top of a baseball bat, spin around several times while maintaining contact with the bat, and then attempt to walk toward a destination in the distance. It seems like it should be so easy but it is hard. Very, very hard. Like, "walk sideways until you fall down while your friends laugh hysterically" hard. But oh so fun.

Gators

One of my biggest fears in moving to Orlando was the gators. No, seriously. I pictured gators everywhere. In the lakes. Crawling out of drainage pipes. Eating my dog. We had friends who had a gator in their garage. They don't even live near water. Basically I thought we were moving to an episode of Swamp People.

I was wary, the first few times I ran around our neighborhood. I tiptoed on the dock. I made wide berths around puddles and swampy looking water. I was suspicious of large bushes.

But six months passed and no sign of gators. I think I heard some in the reeds one night at the lake, if gators make a sound something like a pig. So either gators or water pigs was what I heard. But no sightings.

I started to get a little disappointed, nay, a lot disappointed. I was told there'd be gators. When I mentioned this gatorless existence on Facebook, people suggested I had not been leaving my house, and I simply needed to look harder.

So I've looked. I look at every body of water I pass. I squint into swampy places. It's not that this area lacks wildlife. I've seen deer, armadillo, otters, sand cranes, and more vultures than I care to count. I had almost given up hope.

And then today, I'm pretty sure I saw one. It was on the left side of the road, probably 50 feet from the street, sunning itself on the side of a lake (I use the term lake generously). Finally! I think I was starting to get a complex, an "everyone's seen a gator but me what am I doing wrong?" complex. No more! I now believe there are gators in Orlando.

How long will it be until I am no longer excited to see gators? Probably when I see one in my garage. Definitely if they eat my dog.

An Acceptable Time

Psalm 69:13, "But as for me, my prayer is to you, O Lord. At an acceptable time, O God, in the abundance of your steadfast love answer me in your saving faithfulness."

An acceptable time. I read this verse this morning and this phrase has kept running through my mind all day. An acceptable time. This is when God will answer. He'll answer out of his abundant and steadfast love. He'll answer in his saving faithfulness. He'll answer at just the right time. 

That phrase just makes me stop, take a deep breath, and exhale. All those prayers I throw up to Him - some so fleeting I am barely conscious I do it, others through sweat and tears - they will be answered at just the right time. There is unspeakable comfort in this today.

Abundant. Steadfast. Faithful. Loving. Perfectly timed. That's how He answers.

Making Room

I went to an elementary school where we had a great deal of freedom in our desk space. I don't know if this was true in other places, but we regularly moved our desks around and formed little groups of 3-4. It was fun, but a bit of a social nightmare. I mean, what better way to shun someone than to not invite them to be part of the new configuration? I remember my friend Jenny and I moving our two desks off by ourselves once. We felt conspiratorial. I can't imagine how hard it would have been for a new kid to walk into that classroom.

Moving to a new place feels a little bit like that, minus the intentional shunning (which is a huge bonus). Every time I've moved somewhere, even when I moved back to China from Singapore, to relationships with people I already knew, there was the question, "Is there room for me?"

Because I get it - people are busy, relational energy is limited, the space I used to fill has been filled with other things. It can be hard to make room for someone new, no matter how much you enjoy them.

There's an energy in me that gets stirred up, maybe more than in other people, by situations like this. I want to be picked. I want to be worth someone shifting their desks around to make space for me. And once I get there, that energy will push me to prove to you that you made a good choice.

I know that to develop friendships here I will most likely need to take the initiative. I don't mind much - I am an initiative taker in general. Also, being an introvert, I'm not looking for a lot of people. But at times initiating wars with that energy in me. I know I could ask to be in your desk cluster. But it feels SO much better to be asked.

Last Friday I came home from my morning group feeling a little raw - a good kind of raw, because I was able to share with them some of the recent transition grief I've been feeling (ladies, you know who you are and you ROCK). I started contemplating the weekend, the long 3 day weekend with two kids and no daddy buffer, and I thought, "Lord Almighty, if I have to initiate to be with people this weekend I think it might just do me in. I mean, no seriously, God, I do not think I can do it."

And lo and behold, when I got home there was an email inviting us to join many others at the beach on Saturday. God loves me.

It may seem like a small thing, but for those of us who are new in town, it's big. I know that over time, we will find our desk space. Thank you to those who are making room for us!

Settled

One of the most frequent questions I get here is, "So do you feel settled?" Honestly, I'm not sure what being settled means. Does it mean we aren't eating off lawn furniture anymore? That everything's up on the walls? That it feels like home?

When people see our house, they are usually a little amazed that it does look settled. In fact, we usually get comments about how quickly we've done it, how they haven't finished painting the house they've been living in for 10 years, etc.

It never occurred to us not to do it this way, so we started talking about why. When Erik and I move into a new place, we unpack and settle in like we're gunning for a new HGTV show called "Instant House." When people share that they still have boxes unpacked after years of living somewhere, I am baffled. Don't you need that stuff? Usually within a week we've unpacked 90% of our boxes or more. That's just how we roll.

But we do it because we know that feeling settled in our hearts is connected to where we live. When you've moved as many times as we have (seven so far in 16 years), your sense of home gets fuzzy. It's become important to us to create the space around us that says, "You're welcome here. This is known."

Many of my expat friends embrace an opposite view - why bother settling in when you're likely to have to move in 2 years? (FYI we are not planning on moving in 2 years). It does feel like a lot of unnecessary work. But if we had lived by that mentality, we would have spent the last 13 years without ever feeling like our house was our home. No thank you.

I find it spills over into relationships as well. It's SO easy, when you've lived the transient lifestyle of an expat, to learn to guard your heart in relationships. Our kids learned it quickly. After just two years in Singapore, where life was a revolving door, I introduced Ethan to a new boy. His question to me was, "How long is he going to be here?" It can begin to feel safer, better, to choose not to settle in to relationships when the end point seems so close.

Home. Relationships. These are places where we need to settle our hearts, even if it means that just around the corner the roots will be pulled and the emotional dirt will fly. We're learning to be all in, to dive in deep, to make the most of whatever time we get wherever, with whomever.

Are we settled? We're trying to be, just as fast as we can.