Category: Home

Seasons, Expectations and Reality

Seasons come and seasons go and with each, new challenges and opportunities arise.  My family and I are in a season of transition now, of visiting family and friends and of sleeping on floors, in spare rooms and hopefully, for a few nights at least, under the stars.

Mostly this season of transition has been really good.  After four years in Turkey, it is wonderful to spend time with family, to watch the cousins play for hours on end and to catch up with old friends. It has also been a time to sleep in a bit more, to read my mom’s collection of Outside Magazines and to go to baseball games, the lake or to grandmas for a few hours of conversation.

It hasn’t been a time for growing my fledgling business however.  That’s been on maintenance mode, doing just enough to keep it going and leaving me at times wondering if I should be doing more.

But it’s a season, a season I’m working to embrace and enjoy.  To do that, it seems important to bring my expectations in line with reality.  When expectations are higher than reality allows, the pain of disappointment can be great.

I once saw a demonstration that helped me understand the power of expectations to negatively affect life when they are not in line with reality.  A volunteer was called to the front of our group and a large, three feet in diameter rubber band was placed around him.  The presenter then proceeded to stretch the rubber band away from this now fear filled volunteer.  Letting go of the rubber band would have resulted in quite a painful snap.  “Our expectations,” the instructor explained, “are a lot like the rubber band. The further they are from reality, the more painful the pop is when our expectations are not met.”

Not that I’ve thrown expectations out the door, but I have realized that this season will be limited in terms of the amount of time and energy that I’ll be able to focus on my online business and on writing more.

And that’s okay.

It’s okay because this season has a shelf life.  In a few weeks, our time on the road will have ended. We will be settling into the routine of life in South Dakota.  If I can keep that idea in front of me, it allows me to be more present now, to enjoy this time and focus on the relationships that are the gift of this time.  A gift I do not want to miss.

That is my desire.

Have you been able to keep your expectations in line with reality?

13 Years of Wonder

An anniversary breakfast in the garden.

Today marks Consuelo and my 13th wedding anniversary.  Back in South Dakota, we were able to return to the backyard flower garden that hosted our wedding reception and enjoy an anniversary breakfast served by our kids.

It was wonderful.

The kids, with much help from grandma, laid out a fantastic little garden retreat; a small table and two chairs, the fine china, our favorite music playing (Andrew Peterson, Gungor, U2, Sandra McCracken to name a few) and a fun little meal of homemade apple muffins, a blueberry sauce to die for, and . . . bacon.  Mmmm.  The gateway meat!

Consuelo began crafting this little garden back in high school and she, and now we, have worked at caring for it and cultivating it ever since.  It has seen two weddings and one (our) wedding reception and is a little sanctuary of peace and a place to work out life’s stress.  In our absence, Consuelo’s mom has done wonders to keep it up and it looks great even if the hedges need their yearly trim.

But thirteen years!  Thirteen wonderful years.  Marriage has been the joyous dance of friendship and faith, personality and passion, love and loyalty all wound around the rhythms of joy and pain and life.  I could never have imagined marrying so well, having such an amazing friend and partner in life.  My sights were set far too low, my hopes dim and dreary compared to the reality of life as I know it now.  My imaginings as a 22-year-old of what a life a marriage would and could be like were dull and morose compared to what I’ve received.

I guess I feel blessed.  Blessed that through the good and the bad, things have turned out far better than I could ever have even imagined.  I just didn’t know.  I had glimpses of course in the relationship of my own mom and dad, but much of deep love and friendship lies below the surface and out of the public eye.

It’s as it should be.

Here are a few more pictures from our anniversary breakfast.

Enjoying some quiet conversation under the watchful eye of our wonderful little waitress.
Enjoying the many flowers of the garden.
The living entry to our breakfast.
Turkish Tea!
My beautiful bride.

Home?

The living room of our “home” of the last four years.

Last night we flew into Sioux Falls for the final leg of our return journey back to the U.S.  We’ve spent the last four and a half years in Turkey and now begin a new adventure which we hope will bridge that season in life and the season to come.

In it all and in reflection of my kids’s response to our move, I’ve been thinking about what ‘Home’ means.

My son Malachi seems to equate home with a location.  Home is the apartment in the neighborhood in Cekmekoy in Istanbul in Turkey.  It has a location.  So strong is this sense in him that on our first flight yesterday, he asked if we would stay in Freeman when we returned rather than out on the farm.  Freeman was the small town we lived in before moving to Turkey.  Freeman is still home, even though he was three and a half when we moved from there.

My daughter Sonora on the other hand seems to equate home with a sense of belonging and peace rather than place.  Over the last few weeks – rather emotional weeks – whenever things went wrong, she would cry and say, “I want to go home. I want to go to America.”  I think she was feeling the reality that the next place she would have her sense settledness, it would be in America. Turkey was topsy-turvy and in transition.  Home for her is a place where mom and dad are and where she has her space.  When we got back to the farm, she immediately claimed “her room” set to making it her room and became protective of that space.

Both kids have been absolute heroes over the last few months. They have given the majority of their things away. They’ve left friends behind.  They waded through weeks of transition and done it well.  We are proud of them.

And they have forced me to think about what it means to be home.  Is America my home?  Turkey?  Is home a place or a feeling?

I’m learning that it is more than any of that and is different for everyone.  And I am not even sure what home means to me.  I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately but still haven’t nailed it down.

How about you?  What does “home” mean to you?

Stuff

Mental Energy: Take? Sell? Store? Give Away? Trash?

“Americans used to be ‘citizens.’ Now we are ‘consumers.”
― Vicki Robin

My wife is upstairs now trying to find the right recipe for getting our “stuff” back to America when we return on the 20th of this month.

We have already sent a number of bags back with friends but now are in those last stages of sorting, pitching, packing and generally trying to do the best job to get most of what we need and some of what we want back to South Dakota.  We’ll be leaving a lot behind.

You could look at this problem in one of two ways.  Either:

  1. The airlines have cut the number of bags you can check on international flights to one bag per person – that would be four bags for our family.  You can purchase more bags if you wish.  Or –
  2. We have too much stuff.

Consuelo and I actually like this part of the process of moving.  We like the purging that happens, the returning to our senses and to the essentials.  We have talked a lot about this move and desire to make our return to the U.S. a modest one.

I have a theory that we are in some way slaves to the things we own.  This isn’t always a bad thing, but it is a reality.  If I own something, it in some way owns me.  It requires my time, my care, and my mental and emotional energy.

Again, this isn’t always a bad thing.  Often times the payback is well worth the exchange.  Our buying a car here in Istanbul was one of those that was well worth the time, energy and money to own.  I only wish now I’d bought it sooner.

But the things we own will make demands on us. They will take our time.  Our money.  Our emotional energy and our mental focus.

And other things will need to be sacrificed.

“If you live for having it all, what you have is never enough.”
― Vicki Robin

As we return to the states, we want to be intentional about being slow to acquire more stuff. We’ll need beds of course and a bit of furniture, but really, we NEED far less than we think.

Most of our neighbors here in our apartment eat as a family seated on a blanket spread out on the living room floor.  We call it village style and it is the way Turks have eaten for centuries – like most cultures perhaps.

Consuelo and I were talking last night about all of this and remembered that less than 100 years ago, most Americans had a few pairs of work clothes, one set of “Sunday Best” clothes and little else.  It was enough.

Enough.

Enough seems to be a word long lost on the west and yet it would seem to be a pretty defining Biblical principle.  I certainly have my weaknesses, those things that I think I need, those purchases I make to meet an emotional need and those products I desire because I think they will make me cool.

But it is not really about the stuff.  It’s about the attitude, about the direction and leanings of the heart.  It is always a heart issue.  I am reminded of a story about John Wesley:

A distraught man frantically rode his horse up to John Wesley, shouting, “Mr. Wesley, Mr. Wesley, something terrible has happened. Your house has burned to the ground!” Weighing the news for a moment, Wesley replied, “No. The Lord’s house burned to the ground. That means one less responsibility for me.”

And so as we return to the states, I want to avoid filling my life with lots of stuff and simultaneously hold less tightly to the stuff I do own.

That way I’ll have more left over to focus on the things that truly matter.

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.