new year and living local

This has been a rough month for us here in Basel, between the family getting sick a few weeks before Christmas, and the homesickness that inevitably accompanies an overseas Christmas season lacking the usual traditions, and the stress of discovering that we lost our next housing option and need to, once again, rewrite "the plan".

Christian and Annike made a short visit to California to visit his ailing dad. I was left here with two little ones, fighting illness, fighting loneliness, fighting weakness. In all of it, I have been acutely reminded of my humanity. Our own internal strength can only carry us so far.

The year 2016 ended on a low. But, in this season of celebrating the baby birth of God on earth, I saw clearly my desperate need for a Savior who can reach in and heal the illness of body and of spirit. Sometimes He allows us to become broken so that we will allow Him to rebuild us, the way that only the Savior of the world can.

While I love the idea of new beginnings and new years, I find that a clean slate is not nearly as meaningful as the ugly stained mess that will be beautifully incorporated in the new. More than wanting a fresh start, I long for more purpose to come out of the complicated array of experiences we have had this year. The new is more meaningful when it incorporates the old.

This past year has been one of crazy adventures, numerous transitions, rich relationships, first-time experiences, refining fire, purging materialism, cultural diversity, hearing new stories, awakening hearts, laying aside fears, never-ending uncertainty, and the surrender of our plans again and again and again. It was a year of wrestling with loss and celebrating victory at the same time as we flounder for vision in our future. It was a hard year, but a good year. There were many days when pursuing something safe and easy sounded like a better choice than pursuing growth. I will remember this year as a key marker in our family's character timeline. It will, undoubtedly, change the course of who we are.

Despite the adventurous sound of the many places we have visited while we were here, it is actually the amazing people we have met that will leave the biggest impression upon us. We have heard stories from missionaries living in countries all over the world. We have had Muslim men from various parts of Africa sitting across from us at our dining room table. We have been stretched and challenged in our cultural knowledge and our understanding of language barriers. We have sat in the living rooms of strangers and felt like family. And we are absolutely certain that some of these same people will be sitting in our California living room one day as well.

One of our recent highlights took place when the little ones and I were home alone, on the recovery side of our illness, and casting about for something to do indoors. In proper Pioneer Woman tradition, we spent the day baking trays and trays of cinnamon rolls, and decorating New Year cards while we waited for the dough to rise.

Then came the fun part: delivering them. Our delivery list mostly included people who we did not know well. A neighbor. A friend from church. A family of mutual friends. With each delivery, we received so much returned kindness. There was this joy that came overflowing from the surprise at our simple gift. And then the invitations were returned... to stay for dinner, to sit over tea, to join at the zoo, to be a part of life lived, given, and received.

It was a simple act with an extravagant return. Throughout the whole delivery process, which took a few days to complete, I kept thinking: This is what life is meant to be all about. 

Nothing can feel richer to me than giving good gifts to strangers and being invited into relationship because of it. It took a few days of nothing to do, after a month of being isolated, piled onto the end of 6 months as a stranger in a foreign country for us to do it. Yet, at the end of it, I can see clearly that this will be my greatest calling and challenge for this coming year...

To love big in little ways.

To love next door and across the street. Wherever that street happens to be.

To love the unsuspecting, without recognition or fame or reciprocation.

To love local.

And so, my word for this year is "LOCAL"...

Wherever I am, it isn't an accident. All of those gifts and talents and pieces of me that keep me up at night wondering if I am throwing them away, are meant to be used right here where I am. Locally. There are a million small ways to show big love.

2016 was a year of being stripped down to our very basics. 2017 will be a year of being built back up in the simplest and most Biblical ways. How is God challenging you to love better this year?

With the flamingos in a snowstorm.

“Every day God invites us on the same kind of adventure. It's not a trip where He sends us a rigid itinerary, He simply invites us. God asks what it is He's made us to love, what it is that captures our attention, what feeds that deep indescribable need of our souls to experience the richness of the world He made. And then, leaning over us, He whispers, "Let's go do that together.” "

- Bob Goff (author of "Love Does")

my cup overflows

I didn't quite know what our Thanksgiving would look like this year in a foreign country, where turkey is not an easily available item for purchase. And family is not anywhere near by. And friends only go back a few months.

As I reflect on this Thanksgiving abroad, celebrated with new friends who feel they could be old friends, my heart is full. There are times when God's love for us feels so personal. He knows our hopes and longings and tender places and disappointments so intimately. Sometimes it seems He reaches into our lives and fulfills a heart's desire simply because He wants to give a good gift. It brings God pleasure to see us thrive.

Besides a beautiful Thanksgiving meal with most of the essential side dishes, we had a few moments of well-behaved children, allowing us to relax and enjoy some edifying adult conversation. Proof that God is caring for us tenderly, compassionately, and personally in a season that has been deeply stretching.

As this new friend reminds me, we are known by a God who sees us. In this case, He has preempted one of our most intimate needs for community by providing friendship and fellowship in a place that could have been colored by deep loneliness. For this, we must pause to be grateful.

Throughout the month of November, our family practiced the discipline of gratitude by adding to a "thankful tree" made of construction paper hanging on the window. This act of daily inscribing leaves with the numerous reasons we have be thankful is sure to become a new family tradition.

It makes my heart feel especially full to see some of the things my children have put on their leaves...

* "God loves me so so so much" -- Karsten 

* "God is so creative" -- Sommer 

* "answered prayers, like getting to see a hedgehog" -- Annike 

* "the olden days"  (stemming from all the history we are seeing here in Europe) 

* "a ride on a fairy boat"  (meaning: "ferry boat") 

* "milck"  (spelled with a mixture of German and English spelling) 

* "new friends" 

* "old friends"

Our traditionally American Thanksgiving dinner was observed over the weekend because it turns out that there are no breaks from school over here honoring American-only holidays. To make our acutal Turkey Day special, we pulled off our first pot of traditional Swiss Fondue. It is a fun meal to share on a special occasion because it invites the family into community. Everyone gathers in close around the pot, giggling while the bread is dipped, and sometimes lost, and the kids feel especially tickled to be eating with a long sharp stick.

Happy Thanksgiving!

"You anoint my head with oil; 

my cup overflows. 

Surely goodness and mercy will follow me 

all the days of my life."  

Psalm 23:5,6

plant your garden

One of the hardest things about this season abroad for us has been all of the transitions we have faced. We have had housing changes, and friend changes, and school changes, and neighbor changes, and routine changes, and even a change in the country we live in, resulting in a significantly different culture and community change mid-way through our time here. Flexibility has become our motto, but some of the transitions grow tiring over time.

Around a month ago we made the move to our new residence in Switzerland, which has turned out to be a lovely place and even comes with household pets that the kids adore. There is a long and involved story that I won't tell here, but this house is only ours for 3 months, at which point we need to find another place to live. Another transition. Another unknown. Another distraction from the things I expected to be focused on.

Meanwhile, in this season of changing fall colors and tentative plans, I have been thinking about our garden from our California home. It takes some degree of permanence to want to plant a garden. This year, we opted not to plant our vegetables because we knew we wouldn't be home to harvest them. What is the point of planting a garden if you can't enjoy the fruit?

As we were getting ready to leave back in June, however, we discovered a large vine of volunteer pumpkins sprouting on the hillside beside the driveway. It started itself from last year's gourds that we aimlessly tossed into a composting hole, and looked like it might produce 20-30 large pumpkins. I have to laugh because I always dream of having an entire porch full of pumpkins that I didn't have to pay $15 each for, and this would have been the year. Never would I have planted those pumpkins knowing I wouldn't be around to harvest the fruit.

Living under temporary circumstances can send us into a form of self-preservation fearing the commitment or energy it takes to invest in something that might not end up being permanent. Whether it is pumpkins or relationships, I find that the changes, the uncertainties, and the knowledge of upcoming transitions, makes me hold back.

In a season full of temporaries, I struggle with not wanting to invest in whatever today holds because tomorrow I might discover it was all for nought.

No one knew this better than the exiles of Israel, who were carried from Jerusalem into a foreign land against their will, with no return plan in sight. Please don't mistakenly assume that is how I would describe myself right now, it is just to say that the exiles knew better than anyone what it meant to be strangers in a land leading a life full of transitions.

Jeremiah 29 is a beautiful chapter in the Old Testament written as an exhortation for them to get up and live their lives no matter what they thought might come in their future. This is a passage quite well known for a few verses that promise God's prospering plans, hope, and future. While it is wonderful to receive an encouraging promise for the unknowns in life, sometimes we want more. Sometimes we also want instructions about what to do next:

"This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: "Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper... 

"...For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future. Then you will call to me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.""  

Jeremiah 29:4-7, 11-13

More than just a promise, these are instructions on how to live while we wait.

"Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat..." Those things don't happen overnight. They take time, and materials, and energy, and the hope of getting to enjoy the house built out of much labor, or the fruit produced by that garden.

The truth is that no one can ever know what is in store for the future. Some of us are living in a season we believe will be the same for the next 20 years - but that can only be an illusion. We can't know what will happen tomorrow, no matter how secure today seems. I might be feeling a bit unstable as I see the reality of transitions approaching, but they are coming whether I see them or not.

In this season of temporaries, I recognize God's desire for me to plant gardens even if I am not the one who gets to harvest the fruit, or eat it. His instructions are to invest no matter what I see in the future. And to trust His prospering plan.

Might you, also, be living in a place that you didn't intend?  Plant your garden.

Feeling left behind by others who are pursuing their dreams while you wonder if you will ever get to pursue yours?  Plant your garden. 

At home with small children who deter all goals and sense of productivity?  Plant your garden.

Stuck in a job that you don't want forever?  Plant your garden.

Dreaming of a future that is more comfortable, or more exciting, or less hard work? Plant your garden.

In "exile" somewhere, not knowing how to proceed?  Plant your garden.

Stop wasting time waiting around for a different season in life, or wishing things were different. Plant your garden.

 

birthday week

We are rounding the corner on "birthday week" in Germany. We now officially have an 8, 5, and 3-year-old. All growing fast. All celebrated well.

Cakes were store bought for the first time ever. This might become a tradition. They were delicious, and stressfree since I didn't have to come up with some kind of animal cake decorating design (though the kids kept asking and did not understand that buying a cake also meant Momma wasn't decorating it.) If only I can get back to a European bakery for future birthdays...

Gifts were simple, with the goal being suitcase-sized for our eventual return trip. The biggest birthday gift was a visit from my parents, who spent the week on mini-excursions with us. They did not obey the suitcase-sized-gift rule. Karsten's ukelele may make a very nice hand-me-down for little German child a few months from now.



I often dedicate a separate post to each child on their birthday. In the spirit of our motto to live simply this year, instead, here is a simple slice in time of each child and what makes him or her unique.

Annike: 8 years old (on September 19)

Is... a kind leader, often serious and reserved in new settings, but has a creative side that is bursting below the surface. She knows who she is and the things that she likes, and this year of crazy transition hasn't changed any of those things.

Loves... animals, animals, animals. Currently, she is infatuated with animals native to Germany. She is an incredible reader and speller, and loves to draw (mostly animals, of course). She is sweeter than ever while she plays with her younger siblings, and the two sisters have become quite good buddies over this past summer of having only each other as friends.

This year... she developed a joy found in being helpful, whether in the kitchen or with the laundry, or in watching her little brother. If it doesn't interupt her play time, then she loves to help!

We celebrated... with a trip to the "schwimmbad", and treats for her class at school, and cake for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.


Sommer: 5 years old (on September 22)

Is... a talkative, social, bright little light in our family who remains charming and pleasant as long as she is not hungry or in some kind of discomfort (in which she decides everyone around her should also be brought down to her own miserable state.) We think she is pretty smart, but it might just be that she never stops talking, and has thus developed quite a vocabulary for a 5-year-old.

Loves... beauty in all forms, whether playing dress up or coloring pictures that use every color of the rainbow, or wearing all of her favorite sparkling accessories at the same time. She appears to also love talking, singing, or making noise of one kind or another, and there are days when she never stops.

This year... she became a better friend to those around her, including those at school, her siblings, and her mother. She can be the sweetest companion, and has come a very long way in learning to play kindly with her younger brother, who doesn't always appreciate or respect her love for having beautiful things.

We celebrated... with a trip to Alsace (France) and a ride on the carousel, and ice cream for lunch.

Karsten: 3 years old (on September 28)

Is... an even-keeled, easy-going, friendly little guy who enjoys making people laugh and having deep converstions with strangers, who are then charmed into giving him all sorts of things.

Loves... trucks and police cars that have moving parts like doors that open, and scary animals such as tyranosaurus rex and crocodiles. His imagination has recently come fully alive and the line between real and make believe is often a bit blurry in his mind. This makes for a lot of great conversation with him.

This year... he has become a care-taker with a compassionate side, wanting to protect and nurture the people he loves in his sweet little 3 year old way. He loves to "save the day" as any superhero his age should.

We celebrated... with trips to many different playgrounds in the area, and chocolate filled croissants, and cake at various times throughout the day.

Somewhere in the middle of all of this celebrating, and cake, we took explored Switzerland on some amazing day trips with my visiting parents. Lauterbrunnen (meaning "loud waterfall") must be one of the world's most beautiful valleys. Nestled in the Alps just outside of Interlaken, is a striking contrast of lush green cow pastures and steep snow-capped mountains, scattered with old Swiss architecture that adds to the charm. Here is a glimps of our train ride through Lauterbrunnen and hike around the base of the Jungfrau and neighboring mountains. It surely must have been inspiration for authors of fantasy novels, because it simply did not look real.