Amy Medina | Amy Medina

Two Stones In My Pocket

On May 6, 2022

It’s practically a miracle that I got married.

As a young person, I was colder than Elsa to guys my age. I avoided talking to them at all costs, and when I was forced to, I used sarcasm. In high school, one guy told me that I made him cry and another rebuked me for being mean. These interactions have been embedded in my memory for 30 years because I remember how stunned I was to hear them. In my head, I was a nice person. I never set out to be a jerk.

My harshness was not for lack of attraction; I had as many crushes as the boy-crazy flirt. I was simply terrified of people. I was not timid; I loved being on stage and performing when I had a script telling me exactly what to say at exactly the right moment. Real life gave me no such script.

I gained confidence in college, though even Gil remembers that my first interaction with him was intentionally distant. So it is pretty miraculous that I figured out how to be friendly enough for him to fall in love with me.

I now recognize that my reticence was very much connected to insecurity. Around people my age, I was easily intimidated, and I felt young and insignificant. I was too proud to be nervous and groveling, so it was easier to be cold and sarcastic.

G.K. Chesterton wrote, “It is always the secure who are humble.” My insecurity made me unkind, anxious, unfriendly. As I’ve aged, I see in myself the link between growing more secure and how well I love others.

It’s the Week Before You Move Overseas. What Are You Feeling?

By Amy Medina

On April 14, 2022

In A Life Overseas

This was written for A Life Overseas.

It’s the week before you move overseas. What are you feeling?

Everything. You are feeling everything.

Excitement: This is finally happening!

Fear: What was I thinking? I can’t do this!

Guilt: Every time my mom looks at me, she starts crying. How can I do this to her?

Focused: If I put more books in my carry-on, I can squeeze in an extra five pounds of chocolate chips. Let’s do this.

Worried: What if I oversleep and am late to the airport? What if I lose my passport? What if my bags are too heavy at the airport and they make me rearrange everything? What if I throw up? I really might throw up.

Stressed: Fourteen friends stopped by today to say goodbye, but all I can think about is that I need to buy my daughter one more pair of sandals in the next size. Oh, and this suitcase is hovering at 52 pounds. Something’s got to come out, and it might send me over the edge.

Peaceful: I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life. I’m fulfilling my calling!

Sad: Every time I look at my mom, I start crying. How can I say goodbye for two years?

Grumpy: My children keep asking for lunch. Don’t they know I have to find room for these chocolate chips?

Exhausted: I woke up at 5 this morning with a racing heart. After I fell asleep at midnight with a racing heart.

Overwhelmed: That’s an understatement.

When that country was but a dream in your head, when you went through the application process, raised support, even applied for a visa – it all was hypothetical. But when it gets down to those final weeks and days, this is when it really gets real.

You sell your house and move in with your parents. You put your life’s memories out on the lawn, and you watch strangers carry away your furniture and your wedding presents. You hand over your house key, your work key, your car key, until all you have left is an empty, lonely key ring. You read the church bulletin and realize that you won’t be participating in that upcoming women’s retreat, that prayer meeting, that picnic. Life will go on without you, and suddenly, you feel as empty and lonely as your key ring.

Two Years In

By Amy Medina

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.

Two Years Back

By Amy Medina

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.

This American High

By Amy Medina

On March 7, 2022

In Eternity, Fear, Living Like a Missionary

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?

Author: Amy Medina Page 15 of 231

Two Stones In My Pocket

It’s the Week Before You Move Overseas. What Are You Feeling?

Two Years In

Two Years Back

This American High