On Being Home

Today in Indonesian class we did mock conversations about how feel about living here. I used a phrase I have been using with my neighbors. I may not be Indonesian, but in a way, this is my "tanah air", my "land and water", my place.

It's so surreal and so normal to be here. At the same time. Does that make sense? This afternoon Judah and Isaac hoped on our (new to us!) motorcycle and got groceries at the store. After dinner the local drum group paraded in front of our house practicing for Idul Fitru (which they also do at 2:30 in the morning every morning to wake people up for breakfast before the sun rises and fasting begins again). I just took a dipper bath surrounded by the noise of rain pouring down around me just feet away from my on-the-porch bathroom.

I can't believe I'm here, living this life.

There are cycles to culture shock, and I am through the first sense of disorientation. I recognize that I am probably in a honeymoon stage, where everything is new and fun and adventurous and seen through rose-colored glasses. It's hard to know what is just the honeymoon stage and what is really me feeling... at home.

Lots of people asked me if this would be like going home and I always hesitated and didn't know how to answer. The truth is that I have considered Indonesia home, but I have been afraid to claim that, because after 13 years away and returning as an adult with a family, I knew it would be different. I knew it could feel so lonely, much more difficult like in many ways, and perhaps just... not home?

So, with the caveat that I am speaking out of the honeymoon stage, I'll go ahead and say that right now, at the beginning, this feels not just like a cool adventure, but like.... home. Other friends are experiencing culture shock, loneliness, isolation, discouragement. I absolutely relate to all of it.... because it's exactly how I felt when I moved to Dallas.

I catch my breath constantly and marvel at the smallest things. I made cups of Sari Wangi extra-sugared tea for Isaac and his language tutor and looked down and thought... this is my life, my adult life. This thing from my childhood, Sari Wangi and hot too-sweet tea, is now just the acceptable hospitality practice for guests in my house.

I walk in our neighborhoods and nearly gasp when I pause, draw in a breath and smell that scent of flowers, tropical-greenery-decomposing, and neighborhood trash being burned. That smell has lingered with me for years from my high school afternoon walks, I have longed for it, and here it is, HERE IT IS!

To sit with my kids on my porch, surrounded by our neighbor kids as they play? It's just what I did as a kid. To have our babysitter sing to my daughter, "Satu-satu, aku sayang Ibu", just as I sang as a kid? To drive a motorcycle again, to marvel at how good basic Indonesian fried noodles and chicken soup really are.... it's all surreal. In between the daily life and raising kids and the fact that this is real adult life with responsibilities... it feels like a dream come true.

I usually shrink from a challenge but I am plowing into language school with great motivation. I delight in wrapping my mouth around words like "ngomong-ngomong", with those long unused "ng" and rolled r's just flowing off my tongue in familiarity. I want to KNOW this language, not just like I did as a kid, informally and with bad grammar. I want it to be a part of me. It's what is amazing about all of this, actually. Yes, it was my home as a child, but as the years stretched on, childhood grew further and further away. To have this place that I love as a part of my adult life too... it feels like it is legitimizing it. It really is my place. It really is the culture I know, the language I speak. It was.... and it is now.

I am not Indonesian. Indonesian is not my first language. This is not my own culture (though neither is America). I know I'm still a foreigner here

. But... it feels like home. And the beauty of that is that it gives me an even greater love for this place and people and desire to pour my life and heart into these people and what God is doing here.

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On Living Without

We live without a number of amenities here. We don't have an oven, we don't have a dryer, we don't have a sink in the house, we have a dipper bath instead of a shower, we don't have a car, top sheets, or comforters.

Here's the thing. All of those things are available here. Some of them are expensive. Some of them just aren't normally used by Indonesians.

It's a decision we have to make. The power of the dollar here is huge, so we can afford any of those amenities. Do we have the right to spend on them? Which things do we want to have to continue to live the way we are used to, and in which areas do we learn to live like Indonesians? It's okay to live differently, we are from a different culture after all, but we also want to be a part of this culture.

We've made a few decisions so far. We bought used motorcycles, but only after being here a month and a half. Although it was really inconvenient to be limited to walking and taking public transportation (in the hot sun, with taxis shutting down in the late afternoon), we knew it would force us to walk through our neighborhood, talk to people, be local, and also get to know traffic patterns before getting on the road. We also bought a microwave, which was probably a lame decision, because as it turns out the convenience we wanted is cancelled out by the fact that using it usually maxes out our electricity and trips our breaker, and we have to go outside and reset it to get the lights and fans back on.

It's really normal to have a shower with a gas heater now, we can get top sheets made and we could buy a dryer. Some of those things we might do eventually, but if we did it all now we'd never learn to live a different way. If there's one thing I've learned over the last few years, it's that we have a remarkable capacity to adjust to situations that feel untenable at first. After two months, warming up a little water on the stove so that I can have a warm dipper bath is pretty normal - who needs a shower?

It's like that with food too. I can buy most things here, actually. No feta, but mozzarella, parmesan, and cheddar. I can buy wheat bread, tortillas, and packets of taco seasoning. They're also ridiculously expensive by local standards. As in, a small block of cheese is a day's wages. So, in the US dollar that's actually about the same as buying a block at Walmart, so we can buy it. But do we? We live here now, we need to adjust. And so I am making my own diced tomatoes, cans of beans, peanut butter, yogurt, syrup, teething biscuits for Elly, and the list goes on. I'm adjusting. We will always eat some Western style food, but we are learning to eat a lot more rice, eggs, and stir-fry.

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On Noah and the desperation of self

Last week Isaac and I were perhaps the most relieved we ever have been to get away from our kiddos and go on a date. We got in the car, shut the doors, and just sat for a moment. We had a gifted date night at the kind of theater with easy chairs, blankets, and dinner served at your seat. It was so, so good.

We watched Noah. Now, I don't have any desire to jump into the fray debating the movie, but I will say that I have no problem with story, even when it isn't a literal interpretation of the biblical text. I liked the movie, even if I am about as ambivalent about the rock monsters as I was about Peter Jackson's depiction of the Ents.

I got teary, though, and that I didn't expect. I got emotional because Noah dug into a theme that has been hitting home the past few weeks since I read Larry Crabb's book Men and Women: Enjoying the Difference. What I loved about the book is that the entire first half of it hardly mentioned marriage or gender roles (second half - meh). Crabb dug into what he sees as the real relational problem - human individual selfishness.The movie Noah portrays this broken, bleeding land that has been filled with evil, terrible things. A cracked and hopeless world. We see, through Noah's eyes, the ark as a new beginning for all things, and for their family.

Then there is a turning point in the movie, partly through Noah visiting the human camp nearby and sees their horrors, rape, pillage and the carnage we can wreck on each other.... but he sees himself in it too. He comes back to the ark with a new conviction that no - humans can't begin again after the flood. The ruination of all things good has come through man, and if God provides a cleansing of the world but Noah and his family survive, the seed of all of that brokenness will be sown in the new world through them and it will just be a vicious cycle. Noah is haunted by this conviction. If God gave him the sacred task of bringing life into this new world, he cannot, cannot, bring death.

Noah says:
 We broke the world.  We did this.  Everything that was good was shattered.  This time there will be no men.  If we were to enter the garden, we would only ruin it again.  Mankind must end. 

Thing is, if you believe the biblical account, Noah is right. It does begin again. The cleansing of the world simply begins the cycle again because humanity immediately perpetuates all darkness over again.

Back to Crabb's book.  Crabb is a counselor and in his other works he digs deep into human suffering. I resonate with it because it's what I am at heart too - a counselor. We all suffer, and so we feel the weight of brokenness and suffering in our lives. No one else experiences our suffering fully except us. And, because of our suffering, we see our selfishness as at least understandable, if not legitimate. If I snap at Isaac after a long day with kiddos, I think.. well.. yeah, snapping is not best. But it is understandable because I am busy, stressed, and tired. When we grapple with our mistakes, we often investigate why we've made those mistakes. We identify the external problems. In the example I just gave, the problems in my life are my stage of life, my full plate, my lack of sleep. And all my friends nod because they relate, and through my eyes it is understandable.

But you know what? The fundamental problem is not any of those things. It is me. My heart. My selfishness. As I read the book I could look back and recognize easily that my own self-concern colors just about every interaction I have.

And the tragedy is that I know it. I simply believe it's normal. We all see life through our own eyes. My selfishness is recognized and shrugged at. I think it's justified. I do not weep over my sin. I don't see that it is this vicious cycle, each of us seeing our own selfishness as justified and normal and so ongoing relational intimacy and growth is impossible because it requires selflessness.

"More often we regard our bitterness not as the product of a flaw within us, but as the interplay between our delicate sensitivities and other people's failures. We think others should be rebuked while our damaged souls receive healing. Why is it so hard to see that self-interest, even when offended, is wrong."

"Careful inspection of ourselves, particularly when we're angry, makes it clear that we suffer from a defect more severe than self-centeredness. The greatest obstacle to building truly good relationships is justified self-centeredness, a selfishness that, deep in our souls, feels entirely reasonable and therefore acceptable in light of how we've been treated....The problem with all of us is that we stubbornly regard our interpersonal failures not as inexcusably selfish choices, but as understandable mistakes. 

"We view the wound in our souls as responsible for problems like jealousy, making pain a more basic concern than sin. Think how naturally we explain our impatience with the kids as the product of a frustrating day at work and how easily we regard their impatience as an expression of selfishness worthy of discipline. What an incredible double standard."

I am not one likely to harp on total depravity or happily reside in the Reformed camp. As a goodie two shoes as a child, I am not one to carry around a load of guilt. I struggle more with pride. That's the thing, though. Somehow Crabb's book made we mourn the selfishness in my heart that breaks the relationships around me, without me ever taking it seriously. 

It's echoed in Tubal Cain's words in Noah. He's a man presiding over such evil, but he looks at it and blames external problems and uses them to legitimize his own anger and continued ruin, "We are abandoned, orphan children, cursed, damned to live by the sweat of our brow.  Damned if I don’t take what I want."

Tubal Cain sees all the brokenness as simply the effect of the things done unto man. Noah sees all the brokenness coming from man, and knows that if there is to be hope, it must stop. Noah's wife looks at her family and sees only good. Noah sees that even in their beauty, there is lust, covetousness, etc. The move digs into both things - the inherent sanctity and beauty and love in mankind and in the world, but also the pervasive sin and brokenness.

When Noah's wife asks him why, in the end, he decides to allow human life to go on, he says that he looked at them and all he felt was love. Though the movie portrays God as silent, I see that line as an echo of our God. If you believe the biblical account, He sees all things broken by us, and still when he looks as us, all he sees is love. He has a world that demands cleansing, and yet He must save.

The Genesis flood is a symbol of baptism. The anniversary of my own baptism was this past week on Easter Sunday, and  with the conviction of my own selfishness heavy on my mind, I pondered again what this means. I was teary during Noah because I saw in his depiction some of this desperation and need to be free of myself. Where the flood left the problem of the sinfulness of man unsolved, on the cross, that is where the work is finished.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved.

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50 Things I've Learned While Living In Dallas

1. I like living in the country
2. Chick-fil-a is the best-run fast food restaurant I've ever been too.
3. I thoroughly enjoy administrative and organizational jobs
4. You can live small after having children.
5. I like green ice cream. Green tea. Pistachio. My favs. 
6. Pick a mechanic you trust and then always, always take your car only to him.
7. If you don't know how to fix cars, don't buy a really old used car.
8. Austin rocks. Best city in Texas.
9. You can find community in a big church.
10. Don't bother insuring a very old car outside of the minimum required. Not worth it.
11. There are communities of refugees in most American cities. You just have to find them.
12. Dallas is not a good city in which to have to rely on public transportation, unless you work downtown.
13. Blue Bell ice cream is the best ice cream... ever.

14. How to pay for a baby: Save up all of your deductible, no matter how high, and then a couple extra thousand.
15. In fact, when comparing salaries for possible jobs, subtract your deductible, because it's very possible you'll pay it out every year.
16. Mediterranean food is the most vege packed and delicious type of cuisine that Isaac and I can agree on.
17. It pays to stick it through the hard stages at a job. You may end up loving it... and there's more upward mobility than you realize.
18. Suffering and difficulty is normative. I should not be surprised by or resentful of it.
19. If you get in a wreck, always have your car towed to the mechanic you trust, not to the closest spot.
20. Never go to the emergency room unless you are dying.
21. On a high deductible plan, even standard doctors visits and regular immunizations are expensive. 
22. The teens of wealthy families are just as broken, if not more, than those of the poor.
23. An authentic community takes time, sacrifice, commitment, and work. It's worth it.
24. Marriages can go from functioning well to disaster very quickly. PS - not speaking of my own marriage!
25. People change. It's incredible to watch. But then, some people don't change.
26. Vietnamese food rocks. Tip - everyone loves pho, but a grilled pork bahn mi is the real winner.
27. Mums are the most ridiculous high school prom tradition ever.
28. Turning 30 isn't bad at all.
29. I love and resonate with Philip Yancey, Larry Crabb, and Tim Keller.
30. Suffering is normative. The key is how we respond to the suffering we all encounter.
31. The evangelical world is still pretty uncomfortable with working moms and stay-at-home dads.
32. Having kids changes a marriage.
33. Dallas is a city of suburbs, which sucks at first glance. In the middle of the burbs and strip malls are communities from around the world. You just have to look.
34. Tacos are not what you grew up with at Taco Bell. Tacos for breakfast, tacos with lime and onion and cilantro, tacos with all sorts of hipster toppings... tacos are where it's at.
35. It is not impolite in Dallas to bluntly ask people for funding and to ask them again... and again.
36. Green tea leaves are best on the second and third brewing.
37. Most things I worry about in my kids are stages. It will pass.
38. In every stage, engage with the struggles your kid is having.
39. If you are uncomfortable with something, it is YOUR responsibility to engage it towards change. You cannot wait and hope for others to realize your discomfort and come to you about it. This is true in work, marriage, and community.
40. Lots of people actually are very interested in faith and would like to discuss it.
41.Always call your insurance immediately after being in a wreck and before leaving the scene. Do not assume the other person will own responsibility, even if they say they will.
42. Pay the ticket. It's more expensive to pay for going to court to fight a ticket than it is just to pay it.
43. Texas has no income tax. This is amazing and wonderful and genius.
44. Birth is hard, yes, but recovery from birth is longer and messy and sometimes equally traumatic
45. Be daring. Sometimes you might regret it, but sometimes you might love it (like when I chopped off all my hair and got a pixie cut)
46.  Cynicism may be cool, but it doesn't help the problems.
47. My role in this life, my vocation, my calling, is to participate with the rest of the Church in God's mission in the world, calling all things back to Himself.
48. Urgent care centers like Carenow are probably the way to go when uninsured or on a high deductible plan.
49. Teenagers are just as cutting to adults as they are to each other. Be the adult and don't take it personally.
50. Yes, people really do care that much about their guns.

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