Author: aarongmyers

Missions mobilizer, writer, father, husband. “An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.” ― G.K. Chesterton

Transition

Life in the Kingdom is a life in transition.  The Kingdom has come and is yet to come.  We live in the interim, in the in-between, in the pain of the old world and the hope of the new.  We live as transients moving from birth to death to life again.

At times, this life in transition – that which is humanity’s reality – is more tangible than others.

My family is in transition these days.  We’ve spent four wonderfully hard and good  and full years in Turkey,  a place that has become a home for us.  We’ve learned the language, begun to understand the culture, and made new friends – good friends.  We’ve been shaped anew by this experience, changed immeasurably and can never go back to life as usual, as life was before Turkey.

But now we are in transition.  We’ve but twelve days left before our plane will carry us across the Atlantic and forward into our new life in a familiar world.  This in between life is difficult.

We are saying goodbye at the same time we are saying hello.  We are looking back even as we look forward.

Those we leave only say goodbye.  Those who will greet us upon our arrival will only say hello.  But we have to say both and say them simultaneously.

Oh that we could have taken a week long journey back on a ship as in the days of old.  Only time allows for processing all that we feel and in our ultra connected world, time is the one resource we have run out of.

And so we live in transition.

Physically we do not yet have a home to return to, nor a car to drive, nor a plan for our children’s education nor a clear picture for making enough money to live on.  Much is yet to be known.

Emotionally we are in transition as well.  We are mourning our leaving of Turkey.  It is in us.  It is a part of us and moving away is a not easy.  It is good and right, but not easy.  And while we are mourning our leaving we are truly excited about our new life and the adventures to come.

It is a strange place to be feeling both at the same time.  Actually, I never really feel them both at the same time.  They come at me in waves rather – first one then the other and then back again and I am sure our families will think us strange, mentally ill perhaps.  May they have grace with us and may we have grace with ourselves.

We received an email yesterday from a good friend back in the states.  It was an encouragement to us after a rather difficult day and struck at the heart of where we are and where we hope to remain, anchored steadfast even as our life transitions before us.

Here is what he shared with the words of another:

Living overseas is a form of fasting. Fasting from the comforts of a would-be heaven on earth. I want to know God deeply and I want him to be known so much that I fast from my beloved family and worldly comforts, and teach my children to engage with neighbors of differing faiths. But to live and fast like that, to raise my children like that, isn’t brave.  When I think about mothering my three children who love this steamy, desert nation, I don’t feel brave. I feel dependent. Helplessly, desperately, breathlessly, clingingly dependent.

It is this dependency that anchors us and that, I hope, will continue to anchor us.  For while many would say that we are “going back” to America, in reality, we are going forward to our new life in America.

A life of adventure, of exploring, of taking risks and continuing to grow in trust.

Wild Garlic

Our family went for a walk around the neighborhood last night with a quick foray into the woods.  We are working to breathe deep the sights and sounds and scents of our Turkish world as we enter our last two weeks here.

It was a typical walk.  The air was cool, the sky clear and the neighborhood alive with the sound of kids playing – ours included.

Walking down from the hill behind the block, we came across a new flower, one neither Consuelo nor I had seen here in Turkey.  We’ve seen a lot too – picking flowers is staple activity in our family.

Right away we thought it looked like an onion – long narrow stem with a bulb like ball of its unopened flower on top.  We picked one and sure enough it smelled an awful lot like onion but not quite.

Consuelo thought is smelled a bit more like garlic and so we pulled one up.  There at the bottom of the stem was an acorn sized bulb of garlic.  Breaking a clove off and biting into it, the taste was most certainly garlic, though much milder than its larger domestic cousins.

Our little discovery highlights what we have loved so much about our neighborhood here on the edge of Istanbul.  It also gets me excited for our return to the states.

Before moving to Turkey, we regularly had gardens that produced garlic and onions and potatoes and a whole assortment of good food that we ate all summer, into the fall and, in the case of potatoes, onions and garlic, clear through till spring.

I look forward to gardening again, to getting up early to spend an hour or so digging in the earth, planting, tending and harvesting.  I look forward to eating food that we have grown – not that Turkey doesn’t have the most amazing produce.

I guess that little garlic glove was a symbol perhaps of the life that is before us – filled with hope and flavor and the chance to grow.

A symbol for us all.

Stress

I am in general a pretty laid back guy.  I don’t get too uptight about things and don’t spend a lot of time worrying about the future or analyzing past choices.  I like to just live.

But sometimes, life catches up to you.

Sometimes you have to prepare for an international move.  You have to sell everything you own and pack what’s left into exactly six, fifty pound bags.

You have to sell your car – at the right time of course because there will be a lot of necessary running around in those final days, shutting off utilities, collecting deposits, closing bank accounts.  It’d be nice to have the car for this.  And the kids don’t necessarily want to ride a hot, crowded bus for their last week of school.

You have to live in the transition too.  Saying goodbye.  Looking ahead.  Living in between.

And the name of this blog is also reflects a major source of stress.  I am working to cobble together an income for our return, to get my online ventures off and running so that we don’t have to move into a van down by the river.  I have massive vision and am running on the wake of hundreds of encouraging words about what I am doing to help folks learn languages, but it doesn’t yet pay the bills.

It will one day, I have no doubt of that, but not yet.

And so stress has been creeping into my life.  I don’t always recognize it until it shows up physically – recurring upset stomach, sore back, inability to fall asleep.

But in one way, I enjoy the stress – well, not actually enjoy it, but appreciate it.  It forces me to stop, to slow down and identify what is most important and let the rest go.  The world won’t skid to a halt if everything on my plate doesn’t get accomplished.

But as a dad, I am the only dad my kids have.  My wife only has one husband.  The stress, while not easy, forces me to focus and to live more intentionally and to take more time to spend with them, to live well with them.

Stress offers the gift of perspective, drawing me back to all that is really important, forcing me to step away from my independence and whisper help to the only one who can.

For this I am thankful.

Tent Blogger’s New Blogging Starter Kit

For the past several months I have been reading a great blog called Tent Blogger.  John Saddington, the writer behind the blog has been a great source of both inspiration and great information as I try to grow my own online endeavors and turn my calling to help people learn languages over at The Everyday Language Learner into a profitable business in and of itself.

The post that first resonated with me was his explanation of the term ‘Tent Blogger’.  He combines the modern-day world of blogging with the Pauline idea of ‘tentmaking’ to create a hybrid for the future.  It is indeed an exciting idea and is one way that more people can be intentional about living intentionally – if that makes sense.

There have been a number of memorable posts over the last few months – John blogs daily so there have been many, but I wanted to share a few with you here:

As a fan of Tent Blogger and as someone who has benefited immensely from all the great content that John pumps out day after day, I was excited to see the release of the new Blogging Starter Kit.  I have not read it myself, but based on everything that John has written about on the blog, believe it will be a great resource for anyone wanting to get started with blogging.

The Blogging Starter Kit is around 90 pages long and comes as a pdf ebook. It has five chapters, covers everything from the basics of what exactly blogging is, all the way to chosing platforms, hosting and helping you understand the keys for long-term success.  It looks to be a great resource for new bloggers and based on John’s reputation for delivering amazing content, I am quite certain this ebook will offer fantastic value.

Click here if you would like to learn more or buy the Blogging Starter Kit

Disclosure:  The above links are what are known as affiliate links. I have been a fan of Tent Blogger for some time.  I enjoy John’s writing and have grown as a writer and as an entrepreneur because of his work.  It was natural then for me to want to give a bit back, to tell others about his new product and help it do well.  With the affiliate link, the price of the product does not change, but I’ll get a percentage of the sale if anyone should click on my link to buy his product.  It is one small way that I am working to make a living for myself, allows me to help out John by spreading the word and introduce my readers to a great new product – a triple win situation.

Cobbled Together

As I have contemplated our return to the states from over four years of expat life in Istanbul, Turkey, I have desired to return with intentionality.  Consuelo and I have had many late night conversations about what life will look like, what it could look like and what we would like it to look like.

Turkey has been an amazing experience of growing in faith and in learning to trust God, of learning a new language and to love a new culture, of stepping out of our comfort zone and of making a home here. We will miss our life in Turkey and the many friends – both Turkish and other expats – we have come to love.  Turkey’ stain is one that will not go easily – and for this we are grateful.

But in less than three weeks we will return to South Dakota.  It is there that we will begin to cobble together a life for ourselves.  The dictionary seems to put some emphasis on the hurried nature of the cobbled together project, but I want to focus on the idea that something is being put together from a bunch of various materials.  It is the story of my life after all.

My faith is in many ways, cobbled together.  I am the sum of over thirty years of interacting and exploring, of reading books and of studying the Bible, of conversations with friends and to listening to speakers, preachers, theologians and more.  I am not defined by any one denominational doctrine but am shaped by many.  I believe in the Apostle’s Creed and agree with Augustine when he said,

In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity.

It is in South Dakota as well where we will begin to cobble together an income for ourselves.  My online ventures and language coaching will supply part of our needs, but in the beginning at least, not all of them.  I hope that this site might generate at least a little income as well.  We’ll probably do some substitute teaching, help local farmers and will work to reduce costs by growing as much of our own food as time and energy allows.

I would also love to be able to cobble together a structure or two for a home office and guest house.  I’ve had a dream for sometime to build a straw bale house with as many recycled or handmade items as is possible and hope to be able to explore this dream in the coming  years.  A small home office will be a great place to ply my skills, master a few new ones and discover the feasibility of using recycled materials in “new construction”.

There are other areas of life as well: our kids education, continued work in Turkey, church life, living strategically, encouraging community and sharing our faith to name a few.  This and more is what I mean when I talk about living the cobbled together life.