Category: Re-Entry to America Page 1 of 6

My Cup Runs Over

On June 3, 2024

In Leaving Tanzania, Re-Entry to America

A week ago we held an Open House to celebrate Grace’s graduation and I was expecting 30 people or so–family, our Home Group, some teachers. But unbeknownst to me, when I told my gregarious oldest child that she could include “a few friends,” she interpreted that as, oh, say, 50 or so. In my last post, when I said that my girl loves people, well, there’s the proof.

So when 75 souls–more than half of them teenagers–paraded through my house over the course of three hours, well, let’s just say there wasn’t any salami or cheese left by 5 pm.

I was exhausted, yes. But I also stood back and marveled: we’ve come so far in four years. I think of my sweet lost girl four years ago, torn from the only home and country and school she’d ever known, starting her freshman year sitting masked at a computer in the school library while her teachers taught in empty classrooms. I remember her telling me of the shy girl who sat next to her, never saying a word. “Grace Medina,” I chided her. “You go in there and win that girl over. Do your magic. That’s what God created you for.”

So she did.

I think of Gil, one of those teachers in an empty classroom, struggling with new curriculum and new students and hating every moment he had to talk into a computer instead of real faces. He came home miserable every day, reminding himself that the only reason he took this job was so that we could put our kids in a great school. Yet– last year, he was chosen by the seniors to be their commencement speaker, and this year he was chosen as Teacher of the Year. At Baccalaureate, two of the five student speakers talked about how his Worldviews class changed their lives.

His life has changed too.

I think of my own days sitting at my computer in my beige apartment, entering a church and a school community at a time when no one knew what the social rules were anymore so everyone gave up trying to be social. Emptiness gnawed my insides, reminding me moment by moment of what I had lost, who I had lost, myself that was lost. Sadness hung around me, limp and raggedy, all of the time.

My life is still quieter than it used to be, but I love what I do. My work introduces me to the most interesting and wonderful people whom God is calling to do interesting and wonderful things, and I get to have a part in their stories. My life is full and my garden is growing and I had 75 people in my house last week, which is one of my most favorite things of all.

Not all the loss is replaced. I don’t think it’s ever supposed to, completely. If it were, then it would somehow demean what you left behind. I started out wanting to replicate the richness and meaning of my life in Tanzania, and because it could never look like that, I wasn’t sure if I would ever be happy again. Yet, here I am, living a life of contentment with pockets of joy, which is just about all one can hope for on this side of heaven.

So, it feels like perfect timing that God is giving all six of us Medinas the chance to visit Tanzania again this month. And even sweeter, a team of people who represent our lives from school and church are joining us. We get the unusual and poignant opportunity to collide our worlds. My two big kids each have one of their besties on this trip–which means that for the first time in their lives, they get a chance to see their old world through the eyes of someone in their new world. I’m praying that they return back to their new home standing a little straighter in who they are and where they came from.

Planning the logistics for this trip, alongside the many activities of the end of the school year and Grace’s graduation, is the reason why you haven’t seen me in this space very much in the last few weeks. And it’s the reason why you still won’t see me for a few weeks more. But I’ve got lots to say, all stored up, and I’ve even got an exciting writing project to tell you about. So please don’t stop coming around. You all are the best, and you keep me writing.

Lockdown Story

By Amy Medina

On March 13, 2024

In Re-Entry to America

Where were you in the spring of 2020?

The Medina family arrived at San Francisco airport on March 26, 2020. It was evening, and as we got to the baggage area and met my parents, I burst into tears as I hugged my mom. I’ve written in detail about the previous week’s events that got us to the States, but I haven’t yet told much of the story of what happened next. I didn’t want to think about those months. It’s not a time I want to go back to.

Because we had been traveling internationally, we weren’t supposed to leave the house for two weeks. At that moment, quarantine was one of the biggest blessings to me. My soul was so overwhelmed with tension and confusion and loss that I hadn’t even begun to process – I was just surviving. Seeing only my husband, children, and parents was all I could handle.

We moved into my parents’ house – Gil and me in my old bedroom, the boys in the office, the girls in the living room. Vevette brought us over homemade pizza the next night. Gracey brought us homemade masks. I waved from the doorway, put on a pretend smile, and yelled out my thank-yous. I was grateful, of course. Just too bottled up with sorrow to really smile.

The kids got stir crazy quickly so my ever-creative husband got to work. He ordered a used XBox and Kinect (like a Wii) on eBay, and the kids, especially Johnny, spent many hours jumping and running in place through imaginary obstacle courses. We printed out a note: We’re wanting to buy a basketball hoop. It looks like you have one that hasn’t been used in a while. Interested in selling it? And left it on several neighborhood front porches. The very next day, a woman down the block called us. You can have mine for free, she said. And we wheeled it down the street.

Lament For What is Unremembered

By Amy Medina

On February 5, 2024

In Re-Entry to America, Third Culture Kids

There they sat on the shelf of my local international food store: Nutro wafer cookies. My lungs stopped working for a moment, and it felt like one of those movie montages where the actor is suddenly flooded with a million memories.

Lest you think these cookies are something amazing, they’re not. Imported from the United Arab Emirates and dirt cheap, they taste right around the decent level. But since most store-bought cookies in Tanzania were absurdly expensive or styrofoam-tasting, Nutros were often the best option. They showed up at every birthday party, every school Christmas feast, and in many a school lunch.

I brought home the package of cookies, set it on the table, and watched my kids’ responses. The sharp inhale, the sudden memories of a long-ago life – they felt it too.

Leaving Tanzania brought us many losses, and we have not missed these cookies. But what is missing are the reminders of their childhoods. Like Nutro wafers.

I recently chanced upon a digital photo album that instantly made me homesick. The pictures were nothing fancy, everything ordinary: Grace, Josiah, and Lily in Tanzania, playing soccer in our yard with Gil – a weekly, sometimes daily occurrence. The kids would pull on shin guards and cleats and run outside to our mostly un-landscaped, gigantic yard. Gil would set up goals under the eucalyptus tree, and the four of them would hoot and holler (and let’s be real, sometimes scream and cry) while the sky turned their profiles golden. A kingfisher, stray chicken, or a hedgehog might interrupt and necessitate investigation. They would play until I called them in for dinner or until the mosquitoes started biting, a little dirtier, a lot sweatier.

Perhaps everyone is nostalgic for childhood – their own or their children’s. But what makes me most sad is that my children now have no reminders of it.

Enduring Death to Taste Resurrection

By Amy Medina

On May 27, 2023

In Re-Entry to America, What I'm Learning

What does it mean to live out the resurrection of Jesus every day?

In the spring of 2020, I stepped out every morning under the East African sun onto a piece of heaven called Haven of Peace Academy. Palm trees framed the sunrise over the Indian Ocean, as newly hatched white butterflies decorated the 17-acre campus that was my home for almost 20 years. As elementary principal, I was surrounded by children; everywhere I turned, there was someone to talk to – a parent, a teacher, a toothless, dancing first grader. I ate lunch with friends from Denmark, India and Zimbabwe; every conversation was alive with culture and rich diversity and perspective. My days were full of problems to solve, music, laughter and light.

Six months later, I woke up every morning in my small Southern California apartment with beige walls and beige carpet and drove the kids to school. Then I sat on the brown couch we bought for fifty dollars and was bombarded by silence. My new job was remote, so I faced the computer all day; my only interactions with other people were through that screen.

I sat at my tiny kitchen table and ate lunch with a magazine. I went to the grocery store, to church, to pick up my kids again and never recognized anyone. Six feet and masks barred me from getting acquainted. I was alone and I was unknown. 

A season of suffering and grief

The deaths in my life in 2020 lined up like tombstones. The death of my self-respect: being forced to leave Tanzania three months early engulfed my head in shame. The death of feeling competent, knowledgeable, relevant: starting a new job was like becoming a toddler again. The death of being known: the wealth of my relationships in Tanzania took 20 years to build.

Some of these losses would have come regardless of how we transitioned, but the pandemic compounded the grief. And inside was a yawning emptiness.

I was starting my life over from scratch. I lifted my weary eyes to climb that mountain again, and it felt insurmountable. I was restless, anxious to jump ahead, to skip the hard parts.

But it was there, in the emptiness, where a new facet flashed on the gospel’s diamond. In the descent into shame and loss, I found a deeper identification with Christ. 

Read the rest at the EFCA blog.

I Coped Well in Transition…Until I Didn’t

By Amy Medina

On April 14, 2023

In A Life Overseas, Leaving Tanzania, Re-Entry to America, Thoughts on Missions

This post was first published at A Life Overseas.

I remember all the dogs at the Dar es Salaam airport. Usually people don’t travel internationally with their pets, but in the spring of 2020, nothing was normal. The dogs were restless in their cages, but the rest of us stood unusually still, tense, our faces strained from lack of sleep, frantic packing, a thousand unknowns.

I remember the recorded British voice that politely reminded everyone every five minutes: It is not permissible to bring plastic bags into Tanzania. In a dark humor, I thought, How about infectious diseases?

Just a few days earlier, we got a call in the middle of the night telling us to book a flight as soon as possible. Many in our community were making the same decision, but it was even more significant for us. We had planned a year earlier to relocate to the States in the summer of 2020. So this early, frenzied departure meant leaving a life of sixteen years with no closure, no dignity, no RAFT.

The memories of these moments in March 2020 are sharp and vivid, as if they happened three days ago, not three years.

In the five days before our departure, I can picture myself lining up my kids’ baby shoes, carefully saved for so many years, and taking pictures of them before handing them off to a friend. I remember making broccoli beef for my last meal in the crock pot I’d owned for 12 years. I remember how our feet echoed on the empty marble floors of the Ramada hotel restaurant on the night before we left.

I could list thousands of tiny, minuscule details of those five days. My focus was razor-sharp. My emotions were not.

Other than a couple of bursts of despair or panic, I went numb during those five days. And then during the long, unpredictable journey to California. And then during the next three months when we lived like vagabonds, trying to hold together our jobs in Tanzania while applying for new ones in the States.

If you had asked me how I was doing, I would have told you I was okay. I wasn’t happy, and sometimes I was decidedly unhappy, but I didn’t fall into a depression. I got out of bed every morning. I wasn’t crying all of the time. I wasn’t having panic attacks. I wasn’t having nightmares. Well, not many.

I am task-oriented. I did what I needed to do. And big feelings were not on the agenda.

But I was not okay, and that fragility manifested in unexpected ways. Suddenly, I had an aversion to anyone outside my immediate family. I didn’t want to see anyone. I didn’t want to talk to anyone, even people I normally would have been thrilled to be with. (Pandemic restrictions made this easy.)

Another A Life Overseas writer asked me to be on a podcast of people who were evacuated because of the pandemic. A little voice in my head said, “You like things like this.” But a bigger, louder voice said, “No. No. NO. Not even an option.” The big voice didn’t give me a reason. It just bullied me into saying no.

I stopped writing. I went months where my mind was mostly devoid of anything to write about, even though it was usually the best way to process my feelings. It was like my emotions froze, and I became a robot.

I was trying to adapt to a new life, and I was restless and impatient. I wanted to feel productive and meaningful again. But I had no energy, no creativity, no mental space. I could only focus on what was directly in front of me. I was frustrated that I couldn’t do more, and I didn’t understand why I couldn’t. I thought I was fine. I knew I was sad, but I thought I was handling our transition well.

I wasn’t. Not really.

About a year and a half after our arrival, my brain and body decided to shut down, and I stopped sleeping for ten days. I finally got help. I told the urgent care doctor, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I know what anxiety feels like, but this is different. It’s like I’m on overload and can’t get my pulse to slow down.” That admission was the beginning of feeling better.

I’ve been back three years, and it’s taken me that long to figure out what was happening inside me during that first year and a half. I only see it now in hindsight.

There are times in life you know you’re a mess; the pain or the fear is big and consuming. Every moment of every day feels like a fight. (I’ve had seasons like that, and this wasn’t one of them.)

But other times, you don’t realize you’re in a fog. You are coping quite well. You are doing what you need to do. You don’t realize your soul is actually withering. Then one day, the sun breaks through the clouds and triggers a distant memory: Oh yes! This is what warmth feels like.

This is what it feels like to be creative, my mind brimming with ideas.
This is what it’s like to live without a constant sense of being overwhelmed.
This is what it feels like to be happy.

I didn’t recognize that I wasn’t doing well until I started to feel better, and to remember what it feels like to be fully alive.

Today, I love being with friends and meeting new ones. I’m doing seminars for small and large groups. I was a guest on a podcast. My brain comes up with way more things to write about than I have time to get them out.

I don’t think I anticipated the jarring effect the transition would have on my body, mind, and soul. Or that it would last as long as it did. Seeing this in myself has given me empathy for others around me who are in transition: the new parents, new empty-nesters, the immigrant. How can I show them grace? How can I help to bring light into their fog? How can I walk alongside them for as long as it takes, knowing it will probably take longer than anyone anticipated?

But also, I want to remember to give myself grace the next time. To be more patient with myself. To remember that some of the hardest parts of life must simply be faced a day at a time until they get better.

This morning at church, a song unearthed a sweet memory of Tanzania, and I cried. For what I left. For what I’ve missed. For what I’ve gained. For how far I’ve come.