Pair of Ducks

Our transition continues and all in all things are going pretty well. Adalynn started school at Sunset Elementary here in Craig with 20 other classmates and is doing really well. Her transition to school in a class where she would be the youngest student was probably our biggest concern after choosing to move back to Craig. She has settled into the rhythm of the class and has not had any problems keeping up in her school work. Cora and Jack weren’t able to get into school this late in the year but they are able to attend a preschool program one morning a week at church while Tracey has a women’s bible study and a great child-care situation for the days Tracey works. Cora went to a kindergarten welcome night and is excited to start at Sunset in the fall.  Jack can’t wait to start Preschool in the fall either at his sisters’ school or at my work, that also has a preschool.

I have started my job and am figuring out the world of school finance. We have a great superintendent that has been great to work with so far and all of my co-workers are helping with my transition. They have held onto certain aspects of my job that they took on when there was no finance director and are handing them back over to me as I am ready instead of just dumping them on me in my first weeks on the job.

Tracey just started working at the family practice clinic run by our local hospital. It is a real answer to prayer for her to be working in a place where she is known and wanted and where she can work part time and still be home when Adalynn gets home from school.

One of the most fun parts of our return has been watching our kids love skiing as much as we did. We had the last day of the season last week and for the first time the kids skied from the top of the mountain to the bottom. They get excited about going and it such a joy to do it as a family. I never knew I would have so much fun making laps on green runs, but those laps were more fun this year than the runs I was able to do when skiing the “big stuff.”

There are tough days for Tracey and me as with any transition away from the field. We call these days re-entry days and just try to support each other while we work through it. One minute we love being back here and what it affords and the next we long to be back serving on the ship or somewhere else. One minute we feel guilty about getting to move back into our house and think we should just stay in our little rental that has been such a blessing for us in this transition time. The next minute the house we own isn’t good enough and we desire to get into something bigger that might fit our family better. One minute we are having a good time making runs with our kids at a ski resort and the next questioning the purchase of a dresser from a thrift store. On one hand I am dealing with a 20 million dollar school district budget where there just isn’t enough money to go around and the next I am thinking of the schools that we  worked with in Africa that were supported for less than 10,000 a year. The list goes on and on. It is such a crazy thing to work through.

When we were at our debriefing course last month, our facilitators place two ducks on a table for us to see. One was shiny and new, basically out of the box. The other was drawn on and scratched up and well worn.

They told us this was our pair of ducks and would be facing us for the entirety of the week. They did this because the transition back is full of paradoxes (get it pair of ducks, paradox). Our facilitators who did 10+ years in the Philippines with their children wanted us to know that we would be dealing with these paradoxes for the foreseeable future. Our time with Mercy Ships was an amazing time that has forever changed who we are and how we see the world. What we learned and will continue to need to remember is that it is okay to live in this tension. None of the things we are wrestling with are wrong in and of themselves. We just have competing view points from our life experiences and the worlds that we know.

We met some wonderful people at our debriefing course and it was an amazing experience that involved lots of laughter and tears as we all worked through this process together. The kids bonded with other kids who where there and enjoyed the kid-friendly debriefing program. One family lives in Colorado Springs now after 15 years in Morocco and we hope to spend more time with them in the future. Another family with two teenage daughters, home on furlough before heading back to Zambia, was also part of the group and they brought great laughter to our group and we hope that we are able to visit them in Zambia at some point. There were also two ladies who were retiring after teaching and working in South America for a long time. So our group covered the gambit of different re-entry scenarios but we all commiserated in what we were experiencing and that was by far the best part of that week. There is camaraderie in shared experience that we so desperately needed after our return.

Our small group

Those ducks and that camaraderie were great for us as we settle into life in Craig. We know that there will be ups and downs, but we know that our Father loves us for who we are and not what we do. It’s okay for us not to do for a while we work through these tensions and adjustments. We will continue to live lives that, hopefully, honor our Father and just follow the path that is before us, a path with a pair of ducks to remind of us what we have been a part of and what is still to come.

No longer at Sea

So it has been two months since we left the ship. The amazing thing already is that almost feels like a lifetime ago. We did a lot of reading on transition and re-entry and I think we were prepared as we were going to be for this period. We are now in Craig, CO (where we lived before joining the ship) and I have accepted a job with the school district for our county.

Here are a few things that have happened in the two months since we left the ship.

- We have lived in three places (with a fourth coming soon).

- We have purchased two cars (one of which had to be returned because it was no good). We also had a car given to us.  I had no idea how much cars cost now or how difficult the process to buy one was going to be.

- We were given smart phones and then purchased another when one of those gifted phones died. Just three months ago I was still typing text messages by hitting a number two or three times and waiting to do the next. I about fell over when I saw someone speak a text message and turn on the TV using their phone. Not to mention learning that traffic is determined by keeping track of the locators on people’s phones.

- After eating on the floor for a few meals in Craig, we now own a table a bookshelf and are borrowing beds and a couch and trying to learn what the value is of other purchases to come.

- I paid for a haircut ☺

Costs are so much different than when we left and we feel kind of like we are just swimming especially when we think about where we just came from. My first culture shock after coming home may have been seeing a Big Mac meal for about $7. I was even caught off guard by the cost of light bulbs since I never had to change one on the ship (we weren’t allowed and had to call the electrician to do it). Everything feels so expensive that we just don’t know what to think about the value of anything anymore.

Another thing that has really caught us off guard is the pace of life. Life feels so fast back here in the US after our four plus years on the ship. Driving places to visit friends and church, going to stores and buying things, cooking and other things all take up so much time. Just a few months ago just about anything we did was done within steps of our home. Schedules here are packed (including ours) and it was difficult to work out when to see people and do things. At times it made our head spin.

In learning about the pace of life, we have also experienced maybe the hardest part of transitioning back to our home culture. That being that life has carried on here for five years while we were gone and we are just trying to catch up to everyone. People have their lives here and just like our friends can’t possibly have the context for what our lives have been like for the last five years from facebook and blog posts, neither can we understand what their lives are now like. When we would visit the US while serving with Mercy Ships, people would want to know about all that we were a part of and would ask a lot of questions. That continued when we first arrived but we were also asking them questions trying to understand what life is now like in this place that we call home but don’t really completely understand anymore. Now the questions about our time with Mercy Ships come much less often and we are still trying to catch up with everyone else and learn what it is like here.

Since we have returned we don’t have much feel for what is happening on the ship or in Benin. We don’t have friends just down the hall to go play a game, invite over for a chat or send our kids to go play with. We have chosen a town to live in, Tracey and I will start new jobs soon, Adalynn will start school soon and there is a new person who will take care of Cora and Jack, who are not in school. It is all happening so fast, that it feels like the last five years are quickly becoming just a memory. I told a friend the other day it is a similar feeling to when I got married. The times I had while single were great but after marriage and kids those times quickly faded and life turned to our new status. It feels like that now, except I was happy to leave singleness behind. Now though we don’t really want to let go of what we were a part of.

We are secure in that we know it was the right time to leave. In all of this transition, we really have had some amazing family time getting to ski and go to parks and the library and playing games with the kids. We have really come together as a family. The kids’ transition has been nothing short of amazing. Our move to Craig and the jobs here really fell in our lap and are confirmation of where the Lord was leading us as we left the ship (more on that later). We are happy to be in Craig in our home church and have been amazingly supported as we moved back to the community. But in all that, we still mourn what we have left behind and we ache for the life we were leading just two short months ago.

Before I start my new job, we will be going to a re-entry debriefing course for a week in Colorado Springs (27 Feb thru 3 March). Mercy Ships paid a significant portion of the cost of that course and while we weren’t sure if we really needed it when it was booked, we are most grateful to have this opportunity now that we have experienced what we are experiencing. Please pray for us and we sort through these feelings over that week and transition back to “normal life” here in the States.

Thank you again for being a part of our journey and we will put out some more updates as we settle back into life here in the US.