How Are We Adjusting? A Year Later

This is always a complicated question. Let’s see if I can answer it in categories:

Kids: 

They are the main reason we returned, so I’ll start here. Our kids are doing remarkably well, considering everything they’ve been through this past year. They all like their new school; they all have lots of friends. I can’t express what a huge relief this is.

Grace and Josiah started the year online, but working from school (Grace in the library, Josiah in the gym). We jumped on this option because it gave them a chance to make friends–and it worked. Since Grace was at school every day (as a staff kid), and the other students rotated days, for a while she had her Monday friends, her Tuesday friends….you get the idea. So when everyone came back on campus, her friend group was huge! She has been in friend heaven. 

I was most concerned about Josiah, starting a new school and a new life as a seventh grade boy. But in God’s kindness, I think that starting the year off with just a few other kids in the gym was exactly what he needed. In fact, once all the kids were back in school full-time, Josiah told me, “Mom, I miss the gym. This was one of my best school years ever because of the months in the gym.” Well, what do you know? Thanks, COVID (and God’s providence), for that silver lining.

Around February, sports suddenly kicked into gear, as all of the sports seasons were crammed into the spring. Our schedule suddenly got very busy! Josiah enjoyed baseball but took the school team by storm when the soccer season started. He basically single-handedly brought his team to the league finals, scoring most of the goals for the season. He was then recruited for a club team, so we’ve now entered the world of club sports. 

Johnny joined an AYSO soccer team in April (with Gil as the coach) and took all of us by surprise (since he’s only ever been coached by Gil and Josiah) by blowing everyone out of the water with his soccer skills. He was aggressively recruited for a club team, which we resisted for a while (because two kids in club soccer = a form of insanity….), but finally relented to let him try it for a season. Apparently our kids have soccer in their blood. 

Grace played both soccer and basketball simultaneously this spring. Lily tried her hand at softball but her real love is still in crafting and baking. All four kids’ academics ranged from decent to excellent, which is fantastic considering it was a new schooling system, and a pandemic. It really has been a great school year. Of course, it wasn’t all wonderful–there were some bumps in there, including a suspension. I want to respect my kids’ privacy and not give the details, but I’m throwing that in there since so often we assume everyone’s lives are perfect except our own. That’s a lie.

Home:

I love our house. Love, love, love it. Every day I look around and can’t believe I get to live here. We’ve collected all of our needed furnishings and are starting to tackle the garage and the yard. The water heater died six weeks after we moved in, so we are starting to understand the frustrations of home ownership, but it’s still worth it. 

In Tanzania, labor was cheap, so we hired people to do everything–small and big maintenance jobs, yard work, house work. In America, labor is definitely not cheap, so we are learning a new way of living. Gil is figuring out how to fix stuff–he just spent most of yesterday watching YouTube videos and tweaking the sprinkler system. The kids are learning to do things like fold laundry and mop floors, and I am figuring out how to keep plants alive. But even with the extra work, life here still feels a whole lot easier than life in Tanzania. Just having consistent water and electricity feels incredibly luxurious. 

Food:

In Tanzania, I had literal dreams (at night, not just daydreams) about American grocery stores. But for the first several months we were back, they were so overwhelming that my thoughts were a big jumbled anxious mess every time I would go shopping. The second six months were much more blissful, but now the notoriety is wearing off. It’s dawned on me that a lot of the foods we would long for in Tanzania, if eaten on a regular basis, might kill us all before we are fifty. American food is better in smaller, more infrequent doses. 

Don’t get me wrong–I am thrilled by the no-rationing of butter and cheese, and the endless access to berries and nectarines is awesome, but I find I’m still cooking from scratch almost as much as I did in Tanzania. In Tanzania, our “fast food” was ordering home-cooked Indian meals from a friend or open-air-grilled chicken. After eating non-processed food for so long, fast food in America has absolutely no appeal anymore. Blech.

Driving:

Driving in America is 1,365 times less stressful than driving in Dar es Salaam. I do not miss driving at all.

Seasons:

I miss the rain in Tanzania. Rain in Southern California is like a miraculous phenomenon, whereas in Dar, it rained without reservation, all the time, sometimes every week. But in California, I love the seasons. Spring has always been my favorite season, and I would get homesick when my Dad sent me pictures of his garden. Last spring I was too traumatized and sad to enjoy spring, but this year it has awakened joy in me. I don’t want to spend the money on full grown plants so I’ve got all kinds of seeds and cuttings going in my backyard. I’m not very successful yet, but I’ll keep working on it. Gil bought me a wisteria vine for Mother’s Day, which is my favorite flower, but I’ve never had one of my own.

Jobs:

Gil hated distance teaching so he was relieved when at least some students started coming back into the classroom this semester. By the end of the year, he was back into his full-blown talented self, with parents making a point to come up and tell me how much their child was loving his class. This year he taught Bible and history classes but next year it will just be Bible, so he is thrilled about that. 

I am really enjoying my job too. Every day, I talk remotely with all sorts of interesting people–with my team in Minneapolis, pre-deployed missionaries all over the U.S., and team leaders around the world. I am taking on more responsibility and starting to help with interviews and make acceptance decisions. I look forward to the fall when hopefully I will be able to travel to Minneapolis and meet some of these people in person! 

I am incredibly grateful for the flexibility that this job gives me, but the hardest part about working remotely is loneliness. After being in such a rich work environment in Tanzania, the empty rooms in my house reflect the emptiness in my soul. Which is my final category….

Community:

By far, this has been the very hardest part of this transition for me. Our community in Tanzania was deep and wide, filled with people who understood my international life. I loved the ethnic diversity and how rich it made my conversations; I loved how relationships formed so quickly and so strongly. It really was remarkable. 

So starting life in a brand new community where we only knew one family (albeit, best friends, so that has been an incredible blessing) has felt like dangling off a cliff, with just the one rock to hold onto. Trying to find our footing in a new community during a pandemic has felt impossible, and because I left behind something so wonderful, I have felt the loss acutely. 

But we are set to host a Home Group in the fall through our church, and slowly, slowly we are finding opportunities to get connected. It’s taking much longer than I would have chosen, but as I’ve written before, there are lessons in the longing and the emptiness. 

And the happy news is–on Monday, I’ll get to hug that community again. Grace, Lily and I are leaving for Tanzania tomorrow (Saturday) and will be there for two weeks. After leaving so traumatically last year, I pray this trip helps us to re-write the ending. Such joy!