cultural strongholds

It has taken the whole of last month to settle back into our California home, with all of the unpacking and reconnecting and catching up on the duties of property ownership. Now school, and temporary work, and the sketching of plans that come next but still remain too uncertain to sit comfortably in them.

There was certainly some culture shock upon reentry to our old lifestyle, and I am finding that as the stereotypes suggest, everything is indeed bigger in America. We can't find enough laundry for a full load in these luxurious washing machines. Many trips to Costco have not filled up my giant refrigerator. And my daily errands feel a lot farther away than they used to... can I possibly be remembering wrong? We miss walking to the grocery store every other day, but we are also happy to be sleeping in our own beds after eating a delicious plate of Mexican food.

While the "shock" portion of reentering American culture is already fading, I am fighting desperately to hang onto all of the cultural revelations. We had a rare opportunity to have our eyes opened to the way things have always been done. I don't want to forget what I see now that I have never seen before.

Often as a discipline of embracing new or renewed truth in my own life, I write about it. Processing all that I have learned about myself as a follower of Jesus over the course of this past year has taken longer than I expected, but finally, I am reaching some articulate thoughts. Over the next month or so I am challenging myself to write a little bit more, sharing here a series of cultural strongholds that my eyes have been newly opened to. These are a few aspects of our culture that now stand out in sharp contrast to the way that we were living overseas, and I can see how they are crippling to our culture.

Ancient strongholds were fortresses set up against the attack of enemy armies. I picture some of the crumbling castles that we visited in the medieval towns of Europe, often on the crest of a hilltop, surrounded by a fortified wall. It was a good defense and took a lot to tear those walls down. When the whole land surrendered to invaders, these strongholds firmly resisted.

When God invades our life we can surrender it to Him willingly and still withhold areas for ourselves, like strongholds. Within that surrendered life, we manage to maintain a lot of fortified walls... some out of self-protection, some out of fear of the unknown, or some walls that we simply refuse to see because they blend in so smoothly with our surroundings. It has never been His way to take our lives by force.

Cultural strongholds are unsurrendered areas that appear repeatedly among person after person in a particular culture. They stem from aspects so accepted in our culture that when a person turns her life over to Jesus, the cultural stronghold remains unnoticed, just like that well-disguised fortified wall. And yet, living a surrendered life means that every piece of it should get turned over when God invades.

The saying goes that "ignorance is bliss", but I wouldn't feel convicted about sharing all of this if I believed we were better off not knowing. Withholding some areas from heavenly influence might sound tempting, more comfortable, easier, but it doesn't make our lives better.

We have a lot of growing problems in the U.S. like anxiety, and addictions, and the break down of the family unit, and teen suicide. Big and broken things that often affect Believers as statistically often as non-Believers. I can't help wondering if we could change that by revealing and surrendering some of our strongholds.

Our life overseas living in foreign countries was very simple, full of humbling and hard experiences, and challenging on every level. It included many adventures but lacked any frills. The part I miss the most is our utter dependence on God for each decision that we made.

There are four specific areas of my own life where strongholds were revealed and broken, and I am fighting to keep them from succumbing to cultural norms now that we are once again living in a setting where they are completely acceptable. Join me (in what I hope is a weekly post) over the next month to read a little more about these areas as I see them. And pray for me as I put them into words as I will pray for those who read this.

Next time: The cultural stronghold of being in control

an update

I haven't been very good about keeping our plans posted. Only because they keep changing, and even we are have trouble keeping up!

December found us in a deep deep low, mostly caused by the worst case of influenza our family has ever seen. Also caused by the end of a semester of really hard work. And so much transition eating away at our routine. Then there was the weight of the news that Christian's dad was ill. A few days before Christmas we found out that the rental company had forgotten to let us know that the house we were moving to in January was no longer available. It all left for us only hard decisions to make about what was next, where to live, and how to navigate our remaining time overseas.

Coming out of that dark month, I could begin to see how God was using all of these lows to help us rewrite our plan. When our circumstances offer us security, we can begin to unknowingly put our faith in them. This has been the biggest lesson of the year: letting go of everything, even loyalty to any preconceived ideas about what we thought we would be doing next.

Here we have now arrived into the final months of our time in Europe. We expected to be living near Basel for our entire period abroad. However, with the change of circumstances (namely, losing our living place, and the fact that Christian's Master's project was one he could complete remotely) came the opportunity for our family to be a little less stationary. In the end, we made the tough call to pull Annike and Sommer out of their local schools and officially enroll them in what I am calling "World School", since we don't actually have a home from which to school.

We have now just begun the first of 8 weeks of traveling, beginning in Austria. A country that might look a little like heaven does one day. Spain, France, and more of Switzerland are also on the list. Our travel goals are not ambitious, staying in each place for 1-2 weeks at a time, having conversations with locals, making time for days at home with the kids, conserving our energy for this extended period of living out of suitcases. We will gradually be making our way north to attend a family reunion with the German relatives at the end of March. Almost all of Christian's cousins, aunts, and uncles on this side will be there. It will feel symbolic to begin and end our trip on the island of Sylt. Then home by the first of April.

Some of our first days in Austria

Upon arrival to this corner of Europe last summer, the area between Basel and the Black Forest region of Germany, we never imagined it would be this hard to say goodbye one day. I realize that traveling around Europe is a dream, but there is also the reality that a family with small kids only has so much capacity for visiting new museums and public places. Traveling is all about sight-seeing, and sensory overload, and satisfying self-driven curiosity.

In contrast, living rooted in one place is all about relationship. Friendships dig in deep when the bond of Jesus is shared, and the understanding of what it is like to live in a foreign land.

I still can't believe how God filled up our experience here with both community and depth in such a short amount of time. Our part was to bring vulnerable and honest hearts to the table, and to say yes to crazy opportunities outside of our comfort zone. God's part was to put diverse people with inspiring stories in our path. It is without a doubt the relationships formed here that have been the richest part of our experience.

This particular group of women was brought into my life as a simple gesture of kindness from a loving God who sees me and knows me. They invited me to coffee, spoke truth and encouragement into my constantly shifting circumstances, prayed with me, and even held a special lunch just to say goodbye to me. How unexpected and surprising, and needed, it was to find fellowship like this all the way across the ocean.

On Annike's last day at her bilingual German-English school, her 3rd grade class surrounded her with love and celebration. Despite some hard days along the way, her experience was a good one. It was full of growth, lessons in building character, and memories that will last forever. That example pretty much sums it up for all of us.

A 3rd grade group hug.

The final day of the final week, as Christian was finishing his final hard-earned class of the semester, we got word that his father had passed away. He went peacefully in his sleep.

It takes months, or years maybe, to fully process the death of a parent, and I am not prepared to share any of that yet. I want to say simply that the timing of our decision to move on from this season in the Basel neighborhood lined up with Christian's father's passing in a divinely inspired way. The end of a season, and the end of an era. Two closures in parallel, both altering life as we have always known it. In our human limitations for planning ahead, God oversaw it all.

We move on, ever changed each step of the way. Only by God's grace can we continue being, what we hope is, ever changed for the better.

More friends and fun that my memories want to hold onto.

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.