Author: between worlds

Culture & Race, Spiritual Formation

What’s saving me right now

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Catching up on beautiful blogger Fiona Lynn pointed me to Sarah Bessey’s synchroblog on what is, as she puts it, ‘saving my life right now’.  I’m a little late to join the conversation, but since I’m looking for ways to process all the newness in my life, this seemed like good practice.  So, here goes.

These days, the crossroads of my life meet in a city of nearly 18 million people, and I hardly know a soul here. It’s a funny juxtaposition, really.  I just left a town of 2,000 where it was hard to go to the gas station without seeing someone you knew.  I’m actually mostly excited about this change in reality, but let me tell you, it’s a big one.

When I hear people speak of community and relationship and authenticity, I am at a loss for words.  This will not be my story for some time.  On top of that, relationships don’t seem to be my strong suit.  I can be honest, but I’m not very good at trusting people, especially when I don’t know them.  I love my husband, my kids, but I even have to  remind myself to pay attention to them.  It just doesn’t come naturally to me.

Strangely enough, I find myself jealous of women who trust other women, who find a home in the arms of sisters. I do have them – sisters – they’re just never close enough to touch.

  1. There’s my dear college roommate on the East coast, who walks her days out in honesty and brokenness. She leans fiercely into the hard stories that many of us would prefer to ignore. Continue reading “What’s saving me right now” →
Travel

The world in color

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In a class I taught last spring, we talked about how the world gains a layered complexity once you leave the space that you know and enter one that you don’t.

“The world isn’t black and white, it’s gray,” I commented to my students. However, I woke up the next morning realizing I was wrong.  While I still maintain that the world is not black and white, it isn’t anywhere close to gray, either – the world exists in vivid color.  Limiting it to just two hues removes a depth of complexity that takes away beauty from our lives.

One of my coping mechanisms for surviving my husband’s PhD program was to develop an array of personal hobbies.  To my great delight, one of the hobbies I developed was photography and photo editing.  When editing photos from our most recent trip to Sri Lanka, I found myself jacking up the intensity and contrast on the photos of Colombo, the capital city.  They weren’t exactly realistic looking, but the intensity and depth of colors felt more accurate to me.  “This is how I see Colombo,” I mused, “teeming with color, full of life.”

In the scheme of things, isn’t that how the whole world spins? There are no moments in black and white.

And yet, some still mute these moments.  We bow to a ‘culture of politeness’, smear it with smiles, and muffle the quiet desperation in our hearts.  Loudly, we proclaim the white of truth, the black of sin and move triumphantly on. Yet when do we pause to speak of the staining red of unchosen sacrifice, the haunting browns of crippling addiction, the bruising purple of unhealed wounds?  When do we stop to breathe deep and notice the infusing green of hard-chosen growth, the eye-opening yellow of soaking in the sun, the intense orange of walking with a well-lived passion? Continue reading “The world in color” →

Travel

Out on the open road

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ImageThere’s something soul settling about driving mile after mile on a highway (without a two year old, of course – that’s more of a nightmare).  Once we made it through the doldrums of never-ending Kansas, we were left speechless by the beauty of Colorado and Utah.  It was as if every mountain let us pass through, silently reminding us that the universe is large and we are small, that we hold but a moment of space in time, and that there is a reality much larger than the transition of our current moments.  It felt good to be small, to shrink into the vastness and to remember that my role is simply to pay attention to what God creates, not orchestrate it.

Image“At present your business is to come and see.  Come and see.  He is endless.  Come and feed.” – C.S. Lewis

Families, Children & Marriage, Spiritual Formation

Where is the good in good-bye?

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Just a few more days, and a whole new life begins for us. The boxes are piled high. The goodbyes are pouring in.  It’s bittersweet – change always is.  Bitter for the loss of the daily sharing of lives with people who have become cherished friends, for family who will now be far beyond a car ride away, for cornfield sunsets and quiet roads.  Sweet for the adventure that is to come, for the new experiences that will shape our hearts and stretch our souls, for the miracles of our needs being met, for the little house nestled snugly between the mountains and the sea.

At a good-bye party the other night, a friend gave me some great words on goodbyes.  Quoting the Music Man – where is the good in goodbye? – she reflected that even though goodbyes can be sad and hard, there is still good within them.  It was so touching, I wanted to share it with others who face their own good-byes.

So where is the good in goodbye?

The good is in claiming new territory, moving beyond either of your homelands to stake claim on the left coast where diversity is normalcy (hallelujah) and where you may be the conservative ones!

The good is in the not knowing and the uncertainty. In losing control of all the details for awhile, you’ll have to lean more fully on God.  That’s always good.

The good is in your new locale.  God proclaimed everything good at creation, and no doubt he was especially proud of his work on sunny, southern California. Continue reading “Where is the good in good-bye?” →

Restoration & Reconciliation

Commencement

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We stood
under a blistering sun,
reflecting on older days,
contemplating new beginnings.

Do you see?
her eyes brimmed with hope.
He’s good!
her zeal showed no signs of slowing.
He’s GOOD!
her braids bounced joyfully with the rest of her body
To YOU!

Not at all spiritual niceties,
these were words spoken
from deep knowing,
from messy sharing of lives.
She has walked much
of this shadowed road before us
and has seen
the fears, the angst, the unknown
juggled with the healing, the growth, the obedience.

Eyes and heart brimming,
I could simply grin my agreement with her,
understanding anew that
sometimes His goodness points us first
toward redemption of what was broken
before it leads us to the place of goodness
we dreamt for ourselves.

Families, Children & Marriage, Restoration & Reconciliation

A long(er) view of intercultural marriage

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Hiding from the rain under a tiny umbrella, my boyfriend of barely a month and I were making our way to class. We couldn’t see anything but the inside of the umbrella and our own two feet.  In the midst of a conversation about the future of our relationship, I reflected how this was what much of our relationship felt like – all we could see was the very next step. It was a simple statement, but a lesson that we have been learning ever since that day.

I’ve been reading some blogs of others in South Asian intercultural marriages here and there, and one particular post took me back to that time when my husband and I were working out the ifs of what it would look like to spend our lives together.  The question of loving each other wasn’t the problem – it was more the question of being able to commit to working out life together permanently. There was a lot of angst, questioning, talking, praying, reading.  After a long four years, we decided to take the plunge.

We’re now well over ten years in – past the questions of if to be together and well into the actual hows.  As we worked through the initial surface differences (i.e. food, race, dialect), we found ourselves in uncharted territory regarding where to go after the books we’d read stopped.  Living in a non-diverse area of the country, we found ourselves feeling isolated because of choices we made in relation to our bicultural-ness and unsure of how to connect to others without our experience.  Our hearts ached from the lack of frequency with which our children would interact with both families because of distance.  We grow weary of always being different, of still feeling like we’re navigating this boat alone.  In spite of these realities, we also know deeper levels of commitment and love than we could have even imagined when before we married.  Our friendship has grown and stretched us into more compassionate and humble people.  We wouldn’t dream of trading what we have for a simpler, more straightforward life, but we readily admit it hasn’t been an easy road. Continue reading “A long(er) view of intercultural marriage” →

Belief, Miscellany

Change of plans

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(Mark 14:37-38)

At the moment,
‘watch-and-pray’
feels more like
‘peek-around-the-corner-and-hope-I-make-it-out-alive.’
.
It must have been far easier for
James, Peter, John
to fall into a numb sleep
in the dark of that Garden
than to stare down
the paradox of
crushing loss creating
unimaginable gain.
.
The unknown
in beholding the Cross
whispers
what-if’s, what-for’s
how-to’s, dare-i-even-dream’s
as the spirits willing
war with the flesh failing.
Miscellany, Restoration & Reconciliation

Unsure

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Transitions make me quite reflective, which is why I think I’m processing leaving our current home in poetry…  While I will certainly leave this place with some fond memories, there are also hard memories that will accompany us as well.  (It doesn’t help that we received a racist and threatening prank call at 2 am the other morning either).  *sigh*   here is an honest thought in that vain…


How do you leave a place,
limping,
feeling as though you
made every effort to live
but aren’t sure if you ever
really got there?
.
Except for the time
you gasped
at the tree in the fog in the field
or hiked
with your daughter through the woods
or cried out
for healing on the lonely streets of an empty town.
.
Perhaps
limping
is simply
another step forward
along the path
of living.
.
Miscellany, Spiritual Formation

On nearing the end of this road

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I’m big on seeking closure in transitions, and have been pondering for a few months how to start this process for our upcoming move to the other end of the country.  We’ve lived in our current town for 8 years, so we have much to say good-bye to…  Living between worlds requires good-byes, a fact with which we are well acquainted. So, as the mood strikes, I plan to do my own little series of ‘closure poetry’, and will post some of it here, to share with the rest of you who also know good-byes well.

On nearing the end of this road
 
Been waiting for this moment
for what seems like an eternity.
And now that it’s pressing close,
I wanna bottle up the moments
        of happy dandelions and fresh fields
        of bright-starred skies and lonely trees
        of quiet streets and nosy neighbors
and take them along
as a reminder of the beauty
in the days here.
These things do not await us
where we go. 
All will be new there –
crowds and cars,
action and noise.
 
Funny
how a difficult journey
morphs
into a sweet memory
one slow step at a time.
Families, Children & Marriage

On venn diagrams and biracial identity

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My six-year-old son made a brilliant analogy this week…  We were discussing biracial familes – his aunt and uncle are Sri Lankan and African-American, and his cousin is African American – and he had asked if they would adopt a white baby.

When we answered that they’d probably adopt a biracial or black baby, he breathed a huge sigh of relief, “That’s good,” he commented enthusiastically.  “It would be a little strange for there to be three brown people and one white person in a family.”

“Hey!” I protested, “What about me?!?”  (I’m the one white person in a family of three brownish people).

“Well,” he thought for a second, “We’re [his sister and himself] aren’t really brown…  We’re light brown, in-between, a mixture.”

It was quiet for a minute.  I could nearly hear the processing in his little brain, and out it came, “I’m like a Venn Diagram!”


This is a Venn Diagram, often used in schools to help children compare/contrast what’s the same/different about specific objects
Miscellany

Dreams, unexpected.

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“I’m not moving to California,” was my firm response nearly a year ago when my husband told me he’d spoken to some people about a job there.  At this point in my life, I should know better than to respond to anything with this level of certainty.  To cut to the quick, he accepted the job last week.

So, um, yeah…

We’re moving to California.

Even though Indiana wasn’t ever quite on my radar, I must admit, neither was California…  It’s far from both of our families, and we were hoping to head back east.

But, sometimes life surprises us with quite unexpected realities.  Very slowly, my definitive “I’m not moving to California” response softened:

On applying for the job: “You know I don’t want to live in California, but I won’t stand in your way if you feel like it’s something you should pursue.”

On accepting an interview: “Let’s just walk through open doors.”

On accepting an in-person interview: “Best not to shut a door that’s not open yet.”

On arriving in California in January: “This weather is AWESOME!”[1]

And then much to my surprise, all the doors were wide open, and it was clear that we would be missing great things to not walk through them.

So, good-bye, cultural isolation.  Hello, California!  The slate is clean.  Much awaits us on the next leg of our journey.

[1] I should clarify that weather was not the only detail that opened the door.  As much as I hate winter, even the sun isn’t enough to be the sole reason to uproot our lives.  (Good Asian food and access to Trader Joe’s come close though!)

Families, Children & Marriage

On raising children to dance

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Tonight, I watched my children dance in the churchyard under the palm trees, surrounded by scurrying geckos and warm sea air.

I thought of the richness of the childhood moments they will remember from this place – the lilting accents of their grandparents, the swirling nod of their cousin, the raucous cricket games of their uncles.  I thought of the losses and gains this reality will imprint on their hearts – the comforting ability to store their hearts completely in one place, the blissful assumption that the world in front of them is the only one which matters, the conflicting knowledge that their lives root themselves deeply in both the expanse of the Midwestern cornfields and the hurdy-gurdy of an isle in the Indian Ocean. I thought of the ‘normal’ they will take for granted – seeing the whole entire world as just around the corner, playing in a world where three-wheelers and taxis are both viable means of transportation, learning to make cookies with Grandma and chapatis with Aththa.

They don’t know any of these things, of course. Continue reading “On raising children to dance” →

Books, Families, Children & Marriage

GUEST BOOK REVIEW: Bringing up Brits

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I’d like to introduce a new book that looks like it would be appealing to many readers here.  Rachel Dines is guest posting a review of her book.

Being a parent is challenging enough, but for those raising their children in a country that is foreign to them, a whole new level of difficulty is introduced.  I have spent time living in the USA, as a parent of a pre-school age child, but it was only ever a temporary situation and that time constraint saved an awful lot of thoughts, worries and longer-term complexities. Continue reading “GUEST BOOK REVIEW: Bringing up Brits” →

Travel

Printable packing list

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I made this to help myself pack and thought I’d share.  Click here to view a printable version.  For more of my recent packing tips, check out the travel category on the right sidebar.

Travel

Tips for packing a carry-on for a loooooooong plane trip with kids

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Tips for pack carry-ons

  1. Carry a travel purse.  I use an Eagle Creek Pouch I purchased years ago that has a thick cross-body strap, top flap and lots of zippers.  This is where I keep our passports, itinerary, $, etc.  I don’t ever take it off when we’re in the airport, just to be sure I don’t lose our important info.
  2. Take a change of clothes.  You can live with pee/puke dried on jeans for a few years, but its positively miserable to live in it for much more than that!  Don’t forget a few extra pair of underwear!
  3. Bring food. Due to the horrible news stories about runway delays combined with the unpredictable quality of airline food + kid moods, I also take snacks like energy bars, fruit strips, goldfish, apples, clementines, and grapes.  When the kids were small, we also had to make sure we had enough formula and our own water (one airplane we were on actually ran out of water once!).  Candy isn’t a bad idea for bribery purposes (like when your kid is screaming while the rest of the plane is asleep!). Continue reading “Tips for packing a carry-on for a loooooooong plane trip with kids” →