Leaving Home To Go Home

Catapult Magazine have published a revised version of the Leaving... blog entry. I've really appreciated, and learnt a lot, through working with Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma, the Catapult editor. Its really focused the article, taking a lot of the "Christianese" out, and making it more approachable, and hopefully understandable, for those that haven't faced this kind of dilemma.

Thanks once again, Kirstin.

Two Views of Christmas ... or ... The Parent I Want To Be

With 2005 almost said and done, here are a couple of events from the past few days that have stuck in my mind.

1. The Parent I Don't Want To Be

Ok, so it's a couple of days to Christmas, and we're out as a family (mum, dad and two kids) at the local mall getting a few last minute things together. My wife desperately wants to get some prints done of digital photos, so we burn to a CD at home, and are now in front of one of those "self serve" print machines. You stick the CD in, make a few selections on the touch screen, and a take your order to the counter to pay.
Click the post title to read more...
We're in the middle of this process when a lady comes in with a shopping trolley full to the hilt, including a toddler in the front seat. She waves a memory stick up in the air and asks how to use the machine. From next to us a sales assistant tells her where to insert it, and then to follow the prompts. She seems happy enough, and gets on with her order.

By this time, we've finished making our selection and go to the counter to pay for the prints and find out when they'll be ready. We also need to pick up prints from a roll we'd put in earlier in the week.

So, we're standing there, looking at the prints, and the lady pushes her overloaded trolley round to the counter. "Where are the prints?", she asks the assistant. "Well, they'll take about five minutes. Can I have your order slip?" "Oh, no, sorry", she says, "I don't have time to wait five minutes. Just cancel the order. I thought they just came right out."

"Oh, they'll only be a few minutes."

"No, I don't have time to wait. Just cancel the order." And she shoves off.

I don't get it. Five minutes. That's all it would take. By the time she'd finished paying they'd be just about done. She must've spent at least that in making her selection, and arguing with the assistant.

What really gets me though, is this is what she was modeling to her kid. Impatience. Demands. Rudeness. If I don't have it my way, I'm not going to have it at all. That's definitely not the parent I want to be.

2. The Parent I Do Want To Be

Thankfully this view of Christmas is a much happier one. I'm out the front of our house, mowing the lawn. I'm feeling a little self conscious with my Akubra hat on, sunglasses, and loads of sunscreen. Our house is on a slip road, next to a major road with three lanes in each direction, and a median strip. On the other side is the local mall (from above). It is a convenient place to live, if a little noisy sometimes, and definitely exposed if you're working on the front garden

So I'm mowing away, and a car I don't know pulls up onto our curb. It's big four-wheel drive. The kind that never sees any off road work, but the driver feels 'safer" on the city roads, for some reason. A man is driving, and from the passenger side out hops his teenage son, dressed in a uniform, clearly from one of the fast food places at the mall. The son comes around to the drivers side, and they say goodbyes, and he then starts to cross the busy road.

What happens next just about floors me. The dad pulls away and turns around in our street. By this time the son is halfway across the major road, waiting for the traffic to clear. Without his son knowing, the man stops on our street where he can see his son. He waits there just long enough to see his son cross the road safely, and then drives off, happy that he has safely delivered his son to work.

That's the parent I want to be. One that has a great relationship with his son, and cares for him, even when he doesn't know it.

Have a great 2006. See you in the New Year.

Margin

My friend and former pastor, Brian, blogged about having "margin" time. An interesting concept, I think. A long and rambling post. I just hope you can get through it!! ;-)

How much margin is in your life? I know in mine, there's not much at all.

By "margin" I mean time to sit around and read, think, observe people going here and there. I think it's more than just time to "veg out", doing nothing. Whilst it might be physically inactive, margin time is still very active - at least, it is for me.

Click the post title to continue reading...My schedule basically looks like this:

Monday to Friday:

• Get up & shower
• Get my 3 year old up, dressed, and having breakfast
• Take the bus to work
• Work
  
• Take the bus home again
• Help my wife finish off preparing dinner, and have it with our kids
• Get the kids washed and to bed
• Monday and Tuesday nights I work from home
• Wednesday night is Home Group (which I wouldn't miss for the world!)
• Thursday night is music rehearsal for church (generally whether I'm playing or not)
• Friday is tidying up the house and preparing for the weekend

The weekend is generally just as busy. Often I'm taking my son to swimming lessons, shopping, or helping my wife catch up on the things that need to be done, etc. Sunday morning is church, and sometimes in the evening as well. The weekend has been good for those catch-up-naps, of late, too.

Now I'm trying not boast here - this is certainly not the quiet, relaxed life I'd like to live. Much of what goes on is necessary to keep us afloat financially, spiritually and emotionally. Circumstances permitting I'd gladly cut the neccessary in half to have more time for what I think would benefit me, and those around me, more. Things like writing, composing, more playing, more talking with people. More time for prayer.

Anyway, the point is that the marginal time is fairly limited. I crave the time on the bus, as that is where I get to read my Bible, or our latest home group study, or the latest book I'm into. Two 30-minute times a day doesn't allow for much reflection, but I certainly know when its missing.

I miss the days when we lived in The Hague. There was this fantastic cafe down the street from us that made its own bread, and on Sundays it served breakfast till 3 in the afternoon! When my wife was away on tour I'd often go down there for a beer with a good book or a good a friend or just to watch people. They used to give free Salsa lessons, and the music and dancing was inspiring. I realise now that it wasn't simply a relaxation time, it was the time I needed to put things in perspective.

You see, I think we need margin time in much the same way we need sleep. The nightly slumber allows our body to refresh itself, to do the repair work it needs to do. Having a nap may help, in that it gives my body a short term boost, but there is nothing like a having a good, solid night's sleep, even a few in a row, to totally refresh and enliven your body. Margin time is the same, I think, but for our minds.

With so much going on in the world, with the advance of media and communications, we're constantly bombarded with information, often whether we like it or not! Can you imagine what it must have been like, even 50 years ago, to not know what was going on in another state, let alone another continent? Today, Australians keep up with American politics like never before. We were all impacted by the Boxing Day tsunami's the very day it happened.

Our minds need time to relax, to refresh itself, and to take in and process all this information. We need margin time, to put things in perspective, think, and adjust what we have just learnt or hes ard. Without this time to let our minds wander and evaluate, to make the necessary connections between differing concepts, we risk running them ragged - letting the constant flow of information never be questioned. We end up letting anything in and become part of us, regardless of what we think about it. In fact, that's the whole point: without margin time, we're not thinking about anything, we're just accepting it!

Romans 12 : 2 (NIV) urges us:

Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Or, in The Message:

Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. (Emphasis mine.)

So, this Christmas, take some margin time. Get out of the hubbub, and at least try to get some things in perspective. Perhaps there are things you need to evaluate that you've just been accepting, things that need to find out what God might think of them.

Have a very Merry Christmas.

Leaving...

A short reflection on leaving The Netherlands, now 2 and half years ago

I had never seen her cry, and even now she only teetered on the brink of tears. Although she would not let herself dissolve into emotion here and now, I knew that when we had finally gone through the gates, the good byes said, the prayers and blessings pronounced, as soon as she was comfortably home with her husband, the tears would not stop. I felt honoured; this was the closeness of our friendship. Remembering that day still brings tears to my own eyes.

Click the post title to continue reading...She was my wife’s closest confidant. Their professional careers shared many experiences and qualities. Had my Indonesian wife an English double she might have fooled even me. She was my ministry leader and coach. She was the one who, in the wars of leadership and power struggles, believed and trusted in me. In those tumultuous times we became her sounding board, shoulders to lean on, and close friends. We shared meals, movies and wine together, just to unwind and forget the day. We laughed, drank coffee and talked. Still, I had never seen her cry, and she wouldn’t allow herself to do so in the busy airport corridors.

We lived in The Netherlands for almost seven years. The intended two year stay become just one more; then just one more; then an apartment just outside of Amsterdam; a new church; our first child. We met her at the new church, and over the next three years our friendship grew. Together we struggled through internal wrangling and Dutch bureaucracy. We helped her move house. (Twice!) She met her future husband and married him, and the four of us spent hours together solving the world’s problems. They are God-Parents to our son.

I was unsure about staying permanently; caught between what had become an exciting, adventurous home, and mother country Australia, with family and a language and a people I could at least understand properly. I think I wanted to stay, but it was such a departure from our original plans, I couldn’t bring myself to accept it. When my wife first brought up moving back, my heart raced with anxiety. I was still so unsure. I didn’t know what to do. We prayed.

It would mean leaving this small home, leaving our European Adventure of culture, art and history. We would be going back to a place I wasn’t sure I wanted to return to. The few times we went home for a holiday the extended family dynamics were, at times, rather difficult. We would need somewhere to live. I would need to find a new job. We would need to go Church shopping again. But the hardest pill to swallow was leaving our current church family and friends, particularly these two.

Over the next few months we came to the conclusion that God was asking us to return to Australia. It wasn’t forced, or manipulated, but He knew it was the best thing for us, and we wanted to be obedient to Him. We didn’t like it, we didn’t understand it, but that was the way it was. It was very painful. For three months we met with people to say good bye. We started with the easy ones, those important to us, but not emotionally close. Slowly we worked ourselves to the closest friends, the ones whom it would be most painful to leave.

The last two weeks were hell. Constantly in tears, we were emotionally wrecked and the reality of what was about to happen hung over our heads as a rocky outcrop just waiting to collapse under its own weight. We felt blank, empty, like a bucket with a hole in the bottom, and the last of the water finally, slowly, dripping away. The last dinner, the night before we got on the plane, was with these friends. This is the hardest thing I have ever done, I remember thinking. We cried out to God so many times, wondering what on earth was going on. Why was He asking us to go through so much pain?

It took a month to find a place to live; two months to find a church; three months for my wife to find work, and four months for me. All the while we were only just surviving financially, emotionally, and especially spiritually. We were certainly not living abundantly or prosperously. Each day it was all I could do to turn myself over to God, and to trust that He knew what He was doing. Despite the pain of adjustment I was not going to let myself be overcome by confusion. God was going to stay firmly in my sights, even when work did not materialise for me, when old friendships we counted on evaporated, or when it was hard to adjust to a new church.

And you know what? God did know what He was doing. We’ve been in Australia for two and a half years now, and I cannot begin to describe the work He has done in us. Only He could’ve placed us in an internationally experienced home group, with new friends that understand our pain, and don’t gloss over it or try to fix it. Only God could place us in a house that suits our needs as our family grows. Only He understood that learning to stay close to Him meant we needed to be totally out of depth in every possible way. Only in all that pain could we have possibly learnt just how good God is. It isn’t over yet, not by a long shot. In many ways we’re only just getting on top of things. But God knows what he’s doing, and slowly, He’s teaching us to leave, and to return to Him.

You'll be going to sleep now...

Coming out of anesthesia is not at all like waking up. It seems more of a switch or a toggle than the slow progression of states that greet the very early morning. One moment and you're awake, aware. Hours may have passed but the prior lucidity remains, dulled perhaps, but certainly not clouded over as with sleep. Still, the effects last much longer than any strong coffee can put right, the light-headed swaying softer and subtler than any alcohol could induce.

No, anesthesia is not at all like sleep. It is but a controlled superficial mimic that neither rests, nor, ironically, recuperates.

Do you rest, or do you just go to sleep?