Month: March 2022

Two Years In

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On March 29, 2022

In Re-Entry to America, Third Culture Kids

I’ve been thinking that I would welcome a lock-down about now. It sounds lovely to imagine no soccer practice, no activities taking my teens in all different directions, and plenty of time for meandering family walks around the neighborhood. I wonder how different things would have been for us if the pandemic had hit in 2022 instead of 2020.

Of course, when I daydream, I only imagine the good parts. And I often fail to remember how the real-life bad parts have contributed to the real-life good parts I have today.  

The pandemic, as awful as it was for us, is what brought us to Redlands. If we hadn’t left Tanzania early, Gil wouldn’t have been available to take the substitute job that led to his current job. I’m happy in 2022, but we wouldn’t have gotten here without 2020, even though I wish I could erase it.

Two years in, I can genuinely say that I love where God has planted me. 

Walk beyond my neighborhood, and I find acres of orange groves. In the winter the brilliant oranges stand out against lush green leaves like California Christmas ornaments. Now that it’s spring, I open my windows, and in wafts the heady scent of orange blossoms. 

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Two Years Back

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On March 16, 2022

In Leaving Tanzania

I had never seen so many pets at the airport.

On March 25, 2020, no one was panicking at the Dar es Salaam airport. But all those pets, restless in their hard plastic crates, added to the air of foreboding. People traveling for business or tourism don’t take their pets on international flights. But they do when running away.

Ironically, it was also the first time I had been at that airport. For two decades, we had flown out of the tiny Dar airport – only six gates, despite the thousands who passed through it every week. The new, large, modern airport had opened in late 2019, complete with towering, echoing ceilings, a Pizza Hut, and a polite British voice that announced every five minutes, Attention travelers: It is not permissible to bring plastic bags into Tanzania.

We stood in line in that shiny new airport in the quiet, tense air and wondered if our plane was even there and if the airport in Qatar was even open and if they were even going to let Johnny on that flight. And when they let us through, I was relieved but also devastated because part of my heart hoped that they would turn us away and we would be forced to stay in Tanzania, even though we had already sold our beds.

The memories are vivid: the pets at the airport. How Johnny almost couldn’t board until the woman from the embassy just happened to be in line next to us and advocated on our behalf. How our kids were excited to get soft-serve ice cream at Pizza Hut, but I was nauseous and everything tasted like dust in my mouth. How it felt like we were running away from home. 

Five days after we arrived in California, I wrote my account of that experience. I don’t need to read it to remember the details forever lodged in my brain. But two years later, different things stand out. Mostly, I think of the people who loved us that week. 

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This American High

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On March 7, 2022

In Eternity, Fear, Living Like a Missionary in America

When I was a girl, my most prized possession was my sticker collection. Around age 10, Mom took me to a craft boutique, and I clearly remember the moment I laid my eyes on the most perfect sticker book ever: A photo album with a pink hand-sewn cover, hearts embroidered on top. 

My Gram snuck stickers into birthday cards. I peeled every sticker off A+ quizzes. “Trading stickers” was my favorite friend activity, and I relished carefully placing each sticker in that perfect album, gazing upon their colorful, sublime wonder over and over again.

I lay in bed, worrying about fires and thieves and tidal waves, and knew confidently what item I would save first: that sticker book.

A couple of weeks ago, my parents dug out my boxes of childhood treasures from the depths of their garage and brought them to my house. Lo and behold, there was my sticker book.

I look disdainfully at the object of my childhood adoration and see it for what it really is: a book of sticky paper, now browning around the edges. Thirty-five years offer a great deal of perspective.

Last week journalist Mindy Belz tweeted, “Pentecostal leader in Moldova writes of daughter and her family vacating their apartment and moving in with him so Ukrainian refugees can live in her place.”

Would I be willing to do that?

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