Trailing Spouse

How Do You Write Your Name in the Land? {A Life Overseas}

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Here’s an excerpt from Elizabeth’s recent post on A Life Overseas:

Sarah, Plain and Tall tells the story of a woman from Maine who moves to Kansas as a mail-order bride for Jacob, a widower with two children. Jacob and Sarah fall in love, and by the beginning of the movie Skylark, they’ve been married for a couple years.

The people of Kansas are now facing a drought. The prairie dries up a little more each day, and it has truly become a “dry and thirsty land.” But Sarah comes from a place by the sea — a cool, wet place, where drought is unknown — and she’s never experienced a season like this before.

When the wells run dry, the people of the community travel to the river, hoping to find water there, but the river is nearly dry. In desperation, Sarah’s closest friend Maggie, and her husband Matthew, tell Jacob and Sarah that they are considering leaving the prairie and settling somewhere else. Sarah is so frustrated by this possibility that she blurts out:

“I hate this land. No, I mean it. I don’t have to love it like Jacob, like Matthew. They give it everything, everything, and it betrays them. It gives them nothing back. You know, Jacob once told me his name is written in this land. Well, mine isn’t. It isn’t.”

Maggie replies in a thick Scandinavian accent:

“You don’t have to love this land. But if you don’t, you won’t survive. Jacob is right. You have to write your name in it to live here.”

 

To read more, visit A Life Overseas here.

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Trailing Spouse: He Heard, “Go!” and I Said, “No!”

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The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.” Genesis 12:1

When my husband first told me, rather excitedly, that he wanted to apply with Team Expansion to become a missionary in Cambodia, I did not in any way share his excitement. I had many mistaken ideas about missionary life – mistaken ideas that told me, “No! Never! Don’t go!”

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Trailing, Revisited (Looking Back on a Year in Asia Part 4)

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Just FYI, the next couple posts in this series will dip into some serious topics. Don’t worry, though, I won’t stay there forever.

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The tutors at our language school really wanted all six of us to attend their annual Christmas party. (Red Flag! Taking children to cultural events markedly increases my stress.) Jonathan had some duties during this party. He was assigned to read the Scripture in Khmer and lead a Christmas carol in English. This meant that we needed to bring not only the 4 kids and diaper bag, but also Jonathan’s oversized Khmer Bible and his guitar, which does not yet possess a case of its own. (Yes, you are entirely right. A guitar does indeed deserve better. We really should remedy that situation.)

The child-care and the stuff-care fell to me during most of this program. Our four fair-skinned blondes are quite the spectacle in this country, so I knew people were watching me as I watched my kids. And I felt more pressure than normal for them to behave during what amounted to a church service, complete with incarnational sermon.

It seemed like my younger kids squirmed and fought their way through this entire service. I had no husband sitting next to me to take one of the kids, or enforce their silence. (Oh why are fathers so much better at keeping kids in line?) When Jonathan read the scripture, I held the guitar. When he played the guitar, I held the Bible. All the while trying to prevent my toddler’s escape and begging my preschooler not to whine too loudly. And I was smiling. Oh yes, I smiled through the whole program.

But I wasn’t happy.

xmasparty

Here are my kids after the program. At least some people were happy.

Jonathan was the main event. He even received some free tutoring hours as a thank you for his help at the party.

Sometimes he was the main event back in America too.

Every Sunday for seven years, he sat on the front pew to lead worship, and there was always a line of people waiting to talk to him after church. I sat in the 3rd pew with my parents, who thankfully helped me with my kids. But the thing is, I felt secure. I was at my home church, and everybody knew me. I had friends – people who knew I wasn’t just the wife of the youth minister and worship leader, capable only of smilingly policing my kids. I had my own identity. I had my own skills and opinions, my own relationships and personality.

But as I endured that Christmas party, and its aftermath, with all the tutors praising Jonathan to the sky for his language ability and contributions to their party, I did not feel that same security so familiar to me in the Midwest. Nobody there knew me as anyone but my husband’s wife. Nobody knew if I had anything of interest to say, or had any skills besides holding squirming children. Nobody even knew if he had had good reasons for wanting to marry me. (I may have been slightly Overreacting there.)

I felt Exceedingly Sorry for myself.

What really happened that night is that I experienced all the emotions of a Trailing Spouse.

And it is NOT fun.

Trailing Spouses often do not have the meaningful, fulfilling, and yes, congratulatory, work that their spouse has. Their skill set may not be useful where they live. They may be unable to relate to their spouse’s colleagues. They may be lonely. And they may be deeply unhappy.

I was unhappy that night; I was Trailing. It had been almost 3 years since I identified myself as a Trailing Spouse, and I had forgotten how awful it feels. Jonathan’s skills and abilities were on display that night, and I was little more than a babysitter on display.

The Christmas party reminded me how draining it is to take children to cultural events.

But the experience also made me more thankful than ever that I am no longer trailing behind my husband in his desire to live and work in Cambodia. It made me more determined than ever to remain non-trailing. Oh, I may always trail in the language department. But I don’t trail in the passion department. I don’t trail in the settled-in-this-country department.

And I’m really glad.

Because Trailing stinks.

How to be a Temporary Trailing Spouse (or, How One Husband Lives with his Wife in an Understanding Way)

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– By Elizabeth

While I played with Faith in the church nursery recently, a mom asked me why I decided to homeschool. I paused for a second. It’s been a long time since I’ve pondered my journey to homeschool motherhood, a choice that’s just as uncommon among ex-pats in Phnom Penh as it was among church-goers in Kansas City. (Most parents in this city send their kids to international schools.)

As many of you know, Jonathan was homeschooled, and I wasn’t. When we started our family, I just figured we would homeschool because Jonathan would want that. After a few years as a mom, however, I wasn’t quite so sure anymore. I was afraid I’d do it poorly. I was afraid I wouldn’t enjoy being with my kids ALL DAY. I was afraid that life would consist of only one thing: schoolwork.

Our school room in Cambodia

You could say I was a trailing homeschool spouse. I’ve previously used the term Trailing Spouse to describe my initial hesitancy toward missions. Jonathan’s desire to come to Cambodia was originally much stronger than mine, but I eventually caught up. It’s easy to see that my trailing pattern had been established before, when his desire to homeschool was much stronger than mine.

I’m a data gatherer. When I trailed behind Jonathan in homeschool-parent-willingness, I joined a homeschool co-op in order to gather data. I gathered data from real women who were educating their children at home through varying styles of homeschooling but who were all satisfied with their choices. I pleasantly discovered that homeschool didn’t take over their lives. I realized that there were a lot of available options, but most importantly, that we could still be a happy family. My new knowledge gave me the courage to try it. Now I love homeschooling. I love it so much I forget there was ever a time that I didn’t want to do it. My desires did catch up with Jonathan’s.

In these trailing situations, Jonathan has truly been a husband who lives with his wife in an understanding way (from I Peter 3:7). It’s not one of the more commonly quoted Bible verses on marriage (Ephesians 5, anyone??), but it’s my personal favorite. It perfectly describes my husband’s behavior. He understands that I’m a data gatherer, and he lets me gather data. He understands that I will follow him, but he also understands that from time to time I might trail temporarily. He understands that I often have fears, and he waits for them to dissipate. He makes it easy to be his wife – he’s got 12 years of experience in living with me in an understanding way.

Thoughts from Elizabeth in re: “The Call”

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Here are some thoughts I recently shared with our sending church, which also happens to have been our home church for most of our life. 🙂

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I think over the years of talking about missionary work it has seemed more like Jonathan’s dream than mine . . . and I thought it was good enough to just follow my husband to a country God would show us, just like Sarah following Abraham. But after Jonathan’s trip to Cambodia this February it became clear to me that I needed to have the “call” too, and I didn’t feel like I had it. [I use the term Trailing Spouse to describe a person who is married to someone who wants to Go, but who doesn’t personally want to go.]

And so we took a step back to pray and re-evaluate our plans. We talked with the elders here at Red Bridge. They didn’t give us any answers, but they did give excellent counsel in regard to being unified on this issue.

So after praying separately about this, I really felt God calling me to go. I knew I had been given the freedom to stay in America, but when I contemplated that, it just wasn’t right. I knew we were supposed to go, and this time I knew God had told ME, not just Jonathan. I had never doubted Jonathan’s call, but I needed to hear it personally from God.

I just couldn’t seem to get over my fears of leaving the country. The song “Safe in His Arms” by Phil Wickham comforted me during this time – knowing God was going with me to a foreign country. I had forgotten He lived not only in America but elsewhere! After this time I felt sure that God was calling me to go – I no longer felt forced by my husband. So although it was a stressful time I am thankful we took that time to make sure both of us were equally committed to going to a faraway place to serve God.

I see my role overseas as similar to what it is here. I’ll still be the supportive ministry wife and home school mom. (Note to the uninitiated: those are big jobs.) I even see Jonathan’s role as not changing – he’ll still be an evangelist. (I have loved watching him transition to evangelism within Red Bridge’s Kids for Christ ministry.)

Besides all that normal ministry wife and homeschool mom work, I will be learning the language as full time as possible.

— Elizabeth