Elizabeth’s

10 Ways to Survive Your First Year Overseas

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by Elizabeth

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I worked at a lot of summer camps before moving overseas. Camp work is hot, sweaty, and tiring, and I always loved that last shower before “lights out.” So before moving overseas, I told my husband that I’d be able to handle anything during the day in Cambodia as long as I had a clean shower and clean bed at night (with a fan!).

And for the most part, that’s been true. Besides the nightly shower, however, I’ve picked up a few other survival skills from my first year overseas. My best advice still lies in the Preparation Phase, but today I want to share tips you can use once you get to the field. Here they are:

1. Figure out your Absolute Necessities, and do whatever you can to install them in your home or in your life. For myself, I needed curtains in my bedroom and gates on my stairs. I had to be able to dress and undress in private, as well as spend time with my husband in private. I needed curtains pronto! Thankfully a friend supplied me some hand-me-down curtains three weeks in to our Cambodia adventure. They may or may not have matched my sheets, but they gave me the privacy I needed.

A close second for me was the safety gates on our treacherously steep concrete Asian stairs (for my then one-year-old), obtained five weeks in to Cambodia life. Those were my Absolute Necessities. You may need something different. Certain kitchen equipment, perhaps. The point is, figure out your two or three Absolute Necessities, and obtain them if at all possible.

2. Funny YouTube clips are your best friend. Some weeks it was all I could do to get to Friday, when my husband and I would watch Fail Blogs on YouTube. Another favorite was Mitch Hedberg (FYI his language is sometimes questionable).

We’re big fans of Brian Regan’s “I Walked on the Moon” (mostly clean, with occasional bad words). And of course who can’t help loving Jim Gaffigan (also mostly clean, with even fewer bad words)? We loved NFL Bad Lip Reading, but buyer beware: a lot of Bad Lip Reading videos are not kid-friendly.

3. Find spiritual nourishment. I can’t tell you enough how much I love our international church and the spiritual food I receive there. But I know not everyone lives in a city that offers English-speaking church services like I do. Nowadays, though, overseas workers have access to sermons and podcasts on the internet. My husband, for example, likes listening to Andy Stanley sermons. Figure out which teachers feed you, and set aside some time to listen.

We all need to worship God in song, so if you don’t have access to worship services in your heart language, remember you can purchase worship music on iTunes (artists like Bethel, Hillsong, and Matt Redman are some of my favorites). I know some of this depends on your internet quality and won’t work for absolutely everyone at all times; still, it’s an improvement in resource availability over times past.

And don’t forget your own personal morning quiet time – it’s worked wonders in my life. So no matter what your options are, I do believe you can find the spiritual nourishment that you crave and that you need. You just might have to be creative about it.

4. Closely related to spiritual nourishment is finding community. You might be able to find that at an international church or on your team, as I’ve been thrilled to find. (Although I personally have had to guard against being oversocialized.) Finding community might be trickier for you if you live in a really remote place, with few other workers.

One of the best things you can do is pray for God to bring you a kindred spirit or two. Yes, the goodbyes hurt, and sometimes God brings people into our lives only for a season, but I do believe God answers our prayers for friends. Sometimes we have to get creative in our search for community as well, and another option is online community. Velvet Ashes and A Life Overseas are two options for Christian expats.

If you’re married, it’s far too easy to forget that you and your spouse can provide built-in community for each other — but that only happens when you spend time together. Maybe there’s no money to go out anywhere, or nowhere to go out, or maybe you don’t yet have babysitters you trust. You can still have coffee at home. You can still put the kids to bed early. You can still find fellowship with each other; in fact friendship is a vital part of a thriving marriage. Our first year we went up to our roof after our kids’ bedtime a couple times a week, looking out over our city and just talking to each other. It was peaceful and bonding, and I cherish those memories.

5. Your old coping mechanisms might not work at first. Don’t sweat it too much. I love to read, but my mind was too tired from language learning and culture acquisition to read much that first year. I’ve had other friends whose beloved piano playing went by the wayside their first year. Don’t lose heart – these things will come back later, when your brain isn’t so tired from the onslaught of culture and language.

6. Your body and mind may feel weaker than ever. Take care of them. You’ll probably get sick with strange illnesses. (The first two years are the worst for that, until your body adjusts.) But I’m not just talking about illnesses here. Before I moved overseas, I’d never struggled with mood swings, due to either hormonal shifts or low blood sugar. Now I deal with both, and not only do I need to be aware of them, but I have to be diligent in alleviating my symptoms.

Living cross-culturally (especially in a developing country or a very hot country) drains your body of its resources. So you’ll have to feed and water it regularly. You’ll need to de-worm regularly, take your vitamins, go to bed at a good time, and exercise. Exercise is not a coping mechanism you can afford to relinquish. You may have to get creative for this one too. A lot of people don’t like using videos for exercise (you can access a lot online if you don’t already own some), but if you don’t have access to a gym or decent running paths, you may be forced to exercise in your home.

7. Fall in love with something in your host country. In the beginning it’s too easy to love everything or to hate everything. But as with everything in life, the truth about your country is probably somewhere in between, a mixture of both good and bad. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve encountered God in a sunset or a palm tree, in a rice field or a painted sky. When I need a reason for why I stay in a dirty, stinky, crowded city, I simply go to my roof and meet God in the clouds and banana leaves. You won’t be able to love everything where you live, but if you want to stay, you can’t afford to hate everything, either.

8. Some days you’ll only be able to accomplish one thing. You might feel like a failure for that, but you need to celebrate that one thing. You might not be able to shop for furniture and groceries in the same day, and that’s OK. You can always try again tomorrow with something else. You’ll get more efficient at this life, and eventually daily living won’t wear you out so much. You need to give yourself this grace. And you’ll need to continue giving yourself that grace, because to a certain degree, living cross-culturally will always wear you out more than living in your passport country.

9. If you home school your children, don’t be afraid to drop it for 3-6 months. Your kids will be ok, I promise. I didn’t believe that at first, either, even when my missions coach assured me of it. But she was right; it turned out ok. Not only does it save you sanity (it’s hard to home school kids and study language at the same time) but your kids really do catch up later. Plus, they need to adjust to overseas life, too. We don’t want to overload our kids with too many expectations.

10. And returning to my first point, if all else fails, don’t be afraid to put yourself in time out in the shower. Go to bed early. You can try again tomorrow! Grace grace grace. You’re gonna need to give yourself a lot of it this year, so just starting doling it out now.

Angry, Mean, and Redeemed {A Life Overseas}

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Elizabeth is over at A Life Overseas today, talking about bitterness and repentance. . .

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I lost my mind this hot season. Became unglued. Went a little nuts. Whatever you want to call it. Yes, everyone’s crabbier and more uncomfortable this time of year, and it would be mighty convenient to blame my meltdown on the heat. It would also be unfair, for I can’t in good conscience blame the external temperatures for my roiling internal mess.

I’d been angry at some disappointments in my life for a while, and it was spilling out into irritability and rudeness with my husband and children, who did not deserve my unkindness and snappiness. I refused to talk to God about these things because I was convinced He couldn’t change any of the circumstances anyway, and I didn’t want to be even more disappointed by His lack of intervention. So I just kept getting angrier and angrier, more and more irritable, and more and more distant from God.

Finish reading here.

Paradox and the Hope of Progress

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by Elizabeth

The paths of subatomic particles in a bubble chamber.

The paths of subatomic particles in a bubble chamber. Photo source: CERN

A few months ago I came across the phrase “No paradox, no progress” in a science magazine. The quote was attributed to quantum physicist Niels Bohr and immediately grabbed my attention. (Bohr made breakthroughs in understanding the structure of atoms, among other things.) No paradox, no progress?? This statement is as true of quantum mechanics as it is of life.

The phrase really stuck with me and came to mind as I was writing my last installment in the Parsonage Heresies series at A Life Overseas. I didn’t have space in the article to contemplate this beautiful quote the way I wanted to. And at any rate, I couldn’t remember in which article I had found the words “no paradox, no progress,” so I let the idea go. Until now.

When I went searching for the quote in the Place Where All Lost Quotes Reside (also known as The Internet), I discovered that Bohr’s actual words were more akin to “How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.” I love the sentiment from this scientist: we need to give ourselves permission to embrace paradox.

Paradox, that discomfiting feeling we experience when opposites happen at once. Paradox is living in a place where it smells so bad and smells so good all at the same time. Paradox is feeling hope and despair in the same moment. Sometimes we struggle when we cannot reconcile our contradictory facts and feelings, or, in the arena of theology, reconcile seemingly contradictory Biblical passages.

We Western Christians are not very good at making peace with Paradox, are we? Yet without Paradox, our faith gets stuck. Without Paradox, we cling so tightly to our confusion and our contradictions that we can’t move forward in life.

I’ve found that it’s easier in the end — though definitely not in the beginning — to simply accept the paradox of two seemingly opposing truths than to attempt to force them into one truth and lose my faith. It’s better to accept both the good and bad in life and within myself rather than rationalizing any of it away.  After all, Niels Bohr is also quoted as having said “The opposite of a profound truth is another profound truth.”

Bohr’s kind of thinking has strengthened my love for God (He’s so much bigger than I could imagine!) and enriched my study of the Bible (I don’t have to understand it all!). It’s illuminated my past and enabled me to offer grace more fully to other people. I think the more liturgical among us call Bohr’s motto “Mystery.”

Mystery is holding two truths together lightly in our imperfect, human hands, and releasing the need to have one Perfect Answer. Mystery is the reason I’m troubled by extremist theology. Why is it so hard for us, in a trusting embrace of the Father, to hold two truths at the same time? Why can we not hold both that God is mercy, and that He is justice? Why can we not hold both that God is sovereign, and that we have free will (because He gave it to us)?

This Mystery I speak of, it consoles me.  I don’t have to have all the answers. I don’t have to get it all right. I can still believe. Mystery: it’s such a comfort. And in the words of Laura Hackett Park below, what Mystery can give back to us is a Life Abundant.

 

Now love’s a choice I know it’s true

He never forced my heart to move

But therein lies the mystery

That He reached first in choosing me

He spoke my name the sweetest sound

And to this day I still resound

Now death has lost its hold on me

Now life springs up abundantly

When Ministry and Marriage Collide

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by Elizabeth

Jonathan and I have been married almost 15 years now, and I can honestly say being married to him is the best thing that has ever happened to me. We were friends first, then fell madly in love our senior year of high school. Even our first year of marriage – considered by some to be quite difficult – was pure bliss. And I can honestly say that every year after that has grown more joyful and more intimate. This is not to say, however, that we haven’t ever struggled.

I’ve shared before about two of the major struggles in my marriage. I’ve talked about how I didn’t want to move overseas in the first place and how Jonathan and I were at an impasse until God got a hold of me. I’ve also shared my struggle to believe God loves me as much as my husband, since he seemed to have so many more gifts than I have.

There is another difficult season in my marriage that I’ve never discussed online. The two stories I mentioned earlier represent enormous works God wanted to do in my heart and in my spirit. They also had enormous implications in the way I lived everyday life alongside my husband. The struggle I’m going to talk about today might seem more earthy than spiritual, but it still looms quite large in the landscape of my memory.

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Some of you know we served in youth ministry in the States for 10 years. At one point we lived in a Parsonage next door to the church building, and we hosted summer youth meetings in our house. Initially we only invited juniors and seniors to our house on Tuesday nights for Bible study, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Later we started hosting all ages in our house every Wednesday night during the summer. And every Wednesday night without fail, teenagers trashed my house.

This went on for two whole summers. My house was a disaster every Wednesday night, and I had a breakdown every Wednesday night. Jonathan and I could not see eye to eye on this issue and often fought over it. He felt we needed to have the teens in our home, and that I needed to want to have them in our home, and that furthermore, he believed the teens would perceive my reluctance to welcome them into our home, so I needed to check my attitude.

This, as you can imagine, led to lots of stress in our marriage. I wasn’t confident enough to instruct the teens how to throw trash in the trash cans or how to avoid spilling coke all over my white living room carpet. I’m more confident now and would be able to teach teenagers in that way, but I was too intimidated back then. (Also I was much more uptight about cleanliness when I only had two kids as opposed to now, with four.) I just wanted my husband to kick the teenagers out; I wanted him to do it for me. At the same time I felt an intense pressure to let them in my house every Wednesday, or else I’d be a “bad ministry wife.”

Conflict can happen, even when you’re married to your best friend, even when you are absolutely convinced he’s the only one for you, even when you love practically everything about him. We shouldn’t be surprised when we have disagreements with our spouses. We’re different people, and we’ll see the world differently. And when we feel our own point of view so strongly, it can be difficult to imagine someone else’s point of view.

For any of my old darling youth group members who may be reading here today, please know I love you. And I want you to know I miss you all so dreadfully. I’m recounting a problem that was mine, not yours. Probably any of you who still like me enough to read my blog wouldn’t have been the ones tearing it apart in the first place, but either way, it doesn’t matter. This conflict wasn’t about you.

Two years and many, many fights later, we finally got creative in our problem-solving. We finally thought outside the box. This wasn’t either/or. It wasn’t: have them at our house, or they won’t feel the love. It wasn’t: have them at our house, or I’m a failure. It was: let’s have them at our house and not in. We didn’t cancel Wednesday nights at the Parsonage. Instead, we invited teens into our yard (but outside our house).

We gathered around the fire pit for hot dogs and marshmallows, for long chats and pyromaniac adventures. We played volleyball with the teenagers and let all the youth volunteers’ kids play in our kiddie pool. We swung on the bag swing and climbed up the rope on the oak tree. And it was a great compromise. It was hotter outside than in, that’s for sure, but my husband didn’t have to give up teens at his house, and I didn’t have to give up my sanity, my privacy, or my clean house.

I share this story to illustrate that compromises around ministry stressors are possible. For a long time, I saw the problem one way, and Jonathan saw it another way, and as long as we did that, there was no meeting in the middle. We had to get desperate enough to think about things in a different way, desperate enough try something new. I’m such a black and white thinker that our eventual solution never occurred to me (or my husband). In the end he must have figured he had to do something about his unhappy wife, no matter the ministry cost.

Now I look back and think how silly we were that we couldn’t find a compromise sooner. At the time, though, it didn’t feel silly at all. It felt deadly serious, as I’m sure all marriage conflicts do at the time. It took me a long time, but it was a good lesson to learn: sometimes there’s a solution that isn’t either/or. Sometimes there’s a solution that meets both spouses’ needs at the same time. Sometimes we just need to consider other options.

A Conversation with Timothy Sanford {A Life Overseas}

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by Elizabeth

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The last four months we’ve been exploring the ideas in Timothy Sanford’s book “I Have to be Perfect” (and other Parsonage Heresies). Here are the first four posts if you need a refresher:

The Little Word that Frees Us

“I’m Not Supposed to Have Needs”

“I Can’t Trust Anyone”

“God is Disappointed in Me”

Today we’ll conclude our series with an interview with Timothy himself. My questions and comments are in bold. Also stay tuned for his book to become more accessible for overseas workers this summer, when it will be published electronically.

Click here to read the interview.