Embracing Change

I hate change.  Any other fellow change haters?

Maybe I just resist change.  I mean, instantaneous change wouldn’t be so bad – learn a language in a day or six-pack abs overnight.  It’s the whole uncomfortable change process that I don’t like.  I hold onto to cell phones until Apple stops supporting them.  I have eaten the same thing for breakfast virtually every morning for the past six years.  I wash laundry on Mondays and clean my house on Fridays.  I have two (of my many) Excel spreadsheets hanging on my fridge with an hour by hour schedule of the week and a meal schedule (breakfast, lunch and dinner). I don’t like to go shopping, other than for food, because that would probably require trading something old for something new.  I thrive on tradition, schedules, norms and predictability. I like what is comfortable and familiar.

On paper, this makes me the antithesis of a stereotypical military wife: a flexible, adventurous, spontaneous woman who welcomes change and new friendships with open arms.  I take a long time to settle into a new place. I unpack every single box.  I agonize over furniture placement because once it’s there, it doesn’t move again until the movers pack it up. (I had a roommate in college that loved to rearrange our furniture.  I would come in from class to a completely new design every few weeks.  After an initial wave of hyperventilation, I would just sit in awe that someone would wantto change things around just for fun. Mind blowing.)  Even after the boxes are gone, it normally takes me months to crawl out of my shell and speak to people around me.

As you can imagine, this predisposition sets me up beautifully for success when moving to another country…

Last year, my husband threw out the option of moving out of the country, you can imagine that everything in my screamed, “Absolutely not.” Every fiber of my being wanted to stay in the comfortable and familiar: my family, friends, The Commissary, Target, Chick-fil-a, churches that look and act a certain way and of course, the English language.  I wanted to get closer to home, not further away.  I wanted easy.  I wanted normal.

Yet here I am.

I typically don’t put myself in situations that I have a high probability of failure.  I like a large margin for success.  I knew moving to a foreign country would be hard and would challenge my margin for success.  I knew I couldn’t speak Spanish.  Everyone told me it would not be fun for the first few months.  (Spoiler alert – moving to Europe is not a permanent vacation.) Even with all the mental prep, it has been tough.  In this type of move, I am frequently confronted by my weaknesses and resistance to change.

Not being able to communicate with people is incredibly humbling. Learning a language at thirty-six is hard and most days feels impossible.  Moving expenses have wrecked my budgets and spreadsheets.  Seeing my extroverted children miss their friends and family is painful for a mama to watch.  I grasp to hold on to bits of normal and familiar, which often looks like me staying at home and ordering comfort foods on Amazon and Wal-Mart.  I know the travel and adventure will come as time and the budget allow, but in the meantime is normal life.

So many times over the past few weeks I have asked myself the question, “Why exactly did we do this again?” Given the possibility of such a big move, we took the opportunity to examine our life and what we wanted for ourselves and our children.  We saw the chance to change and grow in ways we never could in the familiar surroundings of “home.” We saw the opportunity to slow down and to get out of the rat-race.  We saw an opportunity for our kids to learn another language and appreciate another culture. We saw an opportunity to travel. Most importantly, we felt like we were being given an opportunity to shine our lights in a pretty dark place. So we jumped.

The small church we attend here is a far cry from the mega-churches of the Bible Belt.  We struggle to feel at home in a church that is so different from what we know as “normal.” But last week, while sitting in the nursery, I met a fellow mom from a Muslim country in Africa.  They were here on holiday and about to return home.  Through her limited English (no judgement…ANYTHING is better than my Spanish), I listened to the story of how she and her family came to Christ through a TV program comparing Islam to Christianity. I asked how I could pray for her.  She said her biggest concern was her young son’s safety in going to school.  “I don’t want him to go to a Muslim school.  He talks about Jesus all the time, which is dangerous in a Muslim school.”

I immediately saw all of my first world problems and complaints for how pathetic they really were.  (“Oh yeah, I will pray for you.  Can you pray that I find some cheese and pickles that taste normal?”)

I don’t want my kids growing up with a subconscious belief that God speaks English.  I want them to see firsthand that He is a God of the whole world. Maybe if they see us take a step of faith and do something hard, then big things for them won’t seem so hard.  I want them to grow up in a way that if God called them to a foreign mission field, they wouldn’t be terrified to say yes.

I sent Chad a card in Afghanistan a few years ago: “Embrace the suck.”  (I would frame it in my office, except I don’t really want my kids to say that on repeat.)  I want to be in a place that I welcome hard things.  I want to fight the desire for comfortable and familiar for something bigger. I want to look back in three years and see how much we have grown because we were willing to jump.

It’s not wrong to live next door to your parents or your best friend.  It’s not sinful to go to the same church your entire life or have dinner with the same friends every Friday night. However, when we live in such routine and familiarity all the time, I think we miss opportunities if we aren’t careful.  We miss opportunities to learn and grow and see God in a whole new way.  Scripture makes it clear that we learn best through trials and hardships.  Mountain tops and wide paths don’t teach you a whole lot.

So here’s to embracing hard things, whether in Spain or Marietta or Washington D.C. Let’s see what God can do when we are willing to jump.