Not Quite Finished

March 2023

This has honestly been a “new year”. Since relocating to the States at the end of last year, we have been in a whirlwind of newness. New house, new vehicle, new grocery stores, new doctors, new medicines, new coffee shops to write these posts in. And so much more. It seems like every week there is something that we are experiencing for the first time – or the first time in decades. Things that should be somewhat familiar, like church, stores, our gym, old hangouts, even the beach, all have taken on a strangeness to them. 

The church has a new worship team, a new building addition, and a lot of growth in people. Most of them we don’t know, though we remember a few special ones from years past. Some of our very best friends from there have moved on to new kingdom assignments. And while we remain in touch with them, they are now far away from any daily or weekly coffee shop meet-ups. As we look to establish some sort of “roots” here, we are challenged with the mentality of being outsiders – kind of like the snowbirds that come down from the north each year to escape the cold and snow. As we are still not sure of where the Master will be repositioning us, it makes it hard to dig the hole very deep for the roots to grow in the new soil. My wife has done a much better job at it than I have. Kudos to her. I guess that I have not yet hacked off the old overseas roots that grew deep for the past four decades.

The past few weeks we have been dealing with doctor’s appointments. There is a stark difference in getting an appointment and going to a doctor overseas as opposed to here in the States. The norm for there is to call the doctor’s office or the hospital and ask for, and get, an appointment for that same day. If you need x-rays, blood work, or MRI’s done, that will be carried out the same day and you will have the results before you go to bed that night. Dentists are the same scenario. Call, appointment, go, finished – same day. Scheduling surgeries, maybe a couple of days. Having a baby, Bada-bing, Bada-boom. Here in the States, oh my. “Let’s see, we can get you in for an appointment in two months….” “Your bloodwork results will be ready in a week or two”, “We can fit you in for your MRI in about three months”. I can grow a full-on beard between most appointments here. And I won’t even go into all the insurance forms and the exorbitant costs that we don’t see overseas. 

When we go to the beach these days, we sometime think we are on a Greek island or the French coastline. The things some folks wear, or don’t wear, prohibit you from not staring. Sometimes we just laugh, other times we want to cry. Personal space, which used to be such a thing with Americans, seems to have shrunk substantially. As you are sitting in your nice empty, and secluded, piece of sand with nothing but turquoise water in front of you, you can have a family of six walk right in front of you and camp out four feet in front, put up their shade tent, turn on their jam box to ear-splitting decibels, and  block your pristine view of the ocean. That wouldn’t be so bad except for the fact that there is about a mile of empty beach just a few yards to the right or left of that spot. It’s a new day in America.

One other new thing we are learning is “tipping”. For most of our lives there was a simple 15% rule of thumb for tipping. These days that has been turned upside down. I have read no less than half a dozen different articles about the new “norms” for whom and when to give a tip. Totally bizarre for someone coming in from overseas where tips are rare and any service fees are usually included in the bills. I feel like I need to take a college course to learn all the ins and outs of this genre of life. For the most part I have just been sticking to what I have grown up with, adding on extra for exceptional, and kind, service from a waitstaff. 

I’m finding myself somewhat uncomfortable with many of these new experiences. Change in our world is inevitable, and usually pretty good. Computers, airplanes, Internet, medical advances, and so much more are all good things for our world. When you are living in the center of these changes and they creep gently into your everyday life, that is a bearable change. When they plow their way into the normality of ones life in a whirlwind, these changes, the newness of it all, can be quite overwhelming. The question for me now is – Do I run from it and head back to the world I’m comfortable in, or do I bear with it, count it as a growing and learning experience, and find a peace within it? That verdict is still out!