Stepping Up

No doubt about it, I was agitating for an overseas experience. My wife and two daughters would have been perfectly content for us to stay on the trajectory we were on. But Dad had some half-baked ideas about pulling up stake and moving half way around the world. My wife and daughters were gracious enough to line up behind me and support this whole undertaking even when it wasn’t easy.

I remember vividly the first day of school last year. It was just six days after we arrived in Hong Kong. Because Annika’s entry-level Mandarin class conflicted with the math class she needed to be in, somehow in the midst of all the first-of-the-year start-up, she did not have a class schedule as the school day began.

Thirty-five minutes into the school day, I found her wandering around looking absolutely shell-shocked. I could tell that she was barely holding it together. I had a room full of students waiting for their teacher, but I decided at that moment that Daddy trumped Teacher. Annika and I found a sofa, sat down, and I put my arm around her. I don’t know who was closer to being in tears -her or me. I thought to myself, My God, what have I done? What have I done to my family? I have to be honest, if somebody knocked on our door that night during dinner with four one-way tickets back to Chicago, I think that we would have jumped at them.

But oh, what a difference a couple of years make. We not only survived a tough transition, but my family thrived. I asked a lot of them and they stepped up in big and small ways. This experience has stretched us all in ways that we could never have imagined when we climbed aboard that United Airline flight two years ago.

Elise was just nine when we left, now she will be entering middle school when we return. Annika was a thirteen-year-old kid who had just finished seventh grade. When we get back she will be sixth months from getting her driver’s license.

I asked a lot of my family. I turned their world upside down. We changed cities, continents, jobs. We had to meet all new people. The girls went from home-schooling to having school five days a week in an insanely academically rigorous environment. But they stepped up in big and small ways.

Before we left, somebody in Chicago said that this experience would forever change my girls; that they would come back different people than when we left.

I know for a fact that this is true. Their horizons have been broadened. They have been given a taste of what it is like to be part of an international community. And they know that when God leads, it is possible to do really bold, really big things in life.

God used me to ask a lot of family and they stepped up in big and small ways.

Thy Will Be Done . . . (whatever that might be)

I tend to push a little hard for things that I want to see happen. Oh let’s see if I can come up with a recent example . . . I guess living and working overseas would be one example that comes to mind.

One night at the dinner table when it was looking as if this move to China might actually happen, Julie opened the meal in prayer. At the very end, she prayed, “. . . and may Your will be done. Not Jack’s. Amen.”

Fair enough.

We all snickered, but there was a lot of truth in her last-second addendum.

My wife is a pretty wise woman. Once in a while when I am not too busy focusing on myself, I find it beneficial to look at the situation at hand from her perspective.

From my vantage point, the process all too often looks like this: God, I want to live abroad. I am even willing to uproot my family and drag them away from family and friends in order to do so. I am willing to work really hard and take some big risks to make it happen. God, I would really appreciate it if you would be gracious enough to step aside and allowed me to do my thing.

In general, I struggle in life knowing where the balance is between embracing the fact that God wants to satisfy the deepest longings of my heart and knowing when I am just being selfish and destructive to the people I love. God calls me to offer up my desires as a living sacrifice, but I know that God also calls us to do big things. I struggle trying to know where God’s will ends and my ego begins.

From Julie’s perspective it goes a lot more like this: God, I am not in control. I never have been. God, I am confident, that in your wisdom, you will put us exactly where you want us and you will get us there in your own way. You are so amazing, that you can even use the misguided, myopic impulses of a knucklehead like my husband to keep our family in the center of your will.

I guess I should take my cues from my wife. As I bumble my way through life, this has become my prayer. God, I am idiot. On that we all agree. But I really want to be exactly where you want me to be. You have created in me longings and desires. I am just going to go ahead and pursue those and if it’s not what you want, please, please, please close doors as necessary. And feel free to use my wife to slap me upside the back of the head when I need to have some sense knocked into me. She’s pretty good at it.

I find peace in knowing that God can use even a knucklehead like me to achieve his ends.

It’s been a great two years filled with adventure, friendship, challenges, and growth. As much as I pushed and conspired to make these last two years happen, I realize that they happened in spite of me, not because of me.

Deferral

Langston Hughes asked:

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore-- And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over-- like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

Twenty years ago, straight out of college, I took a job teaching conversational English in Japan for a year. If you had told me when I returned home that it would be twenty years before I would leave North America again, I would have been surprised and disappointed. After living in and exploring a far corner of the globe, I was ready for more. I had decided that this was who I was. But then life happened: marriage, first real teaching job, car payments, home, mortgage, church commitments, photography career, credit card payments.

By all measures, I had every reason to be content with my life. Wonderful wife, great kids, good health, good job. In fact, I loved my teaching job in Chicago. But sixteen years is an awfully long time to teach eleven-year-olds how to divide fractions by flipping the second fraction and multiplying top times top, bottom times bottom. Professionally, I felt I was starting to plateau. I was getting antsy and suffering from a large-scale case of cabin fever. I felt that it was time to mix it up and take on some new challenges. I was looking for some dragons to slay.

In the fall of 2008, I started snooping around the internet to see what overseas teaching opportunities were out there. Then, in about October I started to get more systematic in my efforts. I started sending out resumes and cover letters. When I started to hear back from a couple of the schools expressing interested, I let my wife know what I was up to.

On Thursday, December 18, during my lunch hour I sent out my 65^th cover letter and resume to International Christian School in Hong Kong. At 7:00 that night I got a call from Donna in human resources. We talked for an hour. That was followed a week later with a two-hour phone interview with the principal. Julie and I were offered a middle school teaching position and a part-time nursing position.

I was moving my family to China for the next two years.

A few months before our departure, I stopped by to see David –a friend of mine from church- at his office. He introduced me to one of his clients who was on the way out the door. David explained that my wife and I were going to the mission field to serve in China for two years. This wasn’t the first time I had heard one of my more earnest church friends put this spin on our imminent departure. I understood the inclination since we were going to work in a Christian school, but his depiction still made me uncomfortable. It ascribed to me motives that were all-together too selfless.

When people in The States or in Hong Kong asked me why my wife and I why were moving our family half way around the world, I found it easiest to explain that we wanted to give our daughters a long-term international experience. Which was true –in part.

The truth was, I was trying to satiate my incurable wanderlust.

Was it fair or reasonable for a guy who had been blessed with so much to ask for even more out of life? There was a definite undercurrent of self-indulgence to the whole endeavor. But how do I begin to explain that to a friend who is trying to ascribe to me noble intentions or to an acquaintance who thinks that I am willing to make tremendous sacrifices for my daughters’ betterment?

Better to just let them think that I am more selfless than I really am.

The D.T.s and Shifting Gears

I’ve got the detox jitters. I am going through a serious case of withdrawal. After spending my weekends viewing the world through the lens of my camera during my twenty-year career as a wedding and portrait photographer, I traded in my professional gear for a mid-range point and shoot. I took over 30,000 during my two years in Hong Kong. Then my camera was stolen on an overnight bus in China. I survived the remainder of our China trip by commandeering my daughter Annika’s little $60 camera. Now that she has taken that camera back to The States with her, I have found myself without a camera. After averaging 1,500 pictures a week for two years, I have now gone three weeks without taking a single picture. My finger sometimes twitches.

But old habits die hard. Everywhere I go, I keep framing pictures in my head. Mentally, I continue to take pictures.

My wife keeps asking me if I want to squeeze in this or that Hong Kong attraction. I keep turning her down. What’s the point of going to see something, if you can’t take any pictures to chronicle the experience?

*******

When we first game to Hong Kong, I think the excitement and adrenaline of living in a new city shifted us into overdrive. When I look back at all that we did those first two months –weekend at Cheung Chau Island, climbing Sunset peak, visiting Kadoorie Farms- it’s a little insane. Eventually, we realized that we couldn’t maintain that manic pace and settled into a more realistic rhythm.

Knowing that once this school year ended and we returned from our recent foray to the Mainland that we would only have one final month in Hong Kong, I fully expected to find myself shifting into high gear in a panicked attempt to soak up every last bit of all that Hong Kong has to offer.

But much to my surprise that hasn’t happened. I have been pretty laconic as our final days in Hong Kong wind down.

Maybe it’s the fact that teaching kindergartener and first graders in summer school leaves me absolutely exhausted by 1:00 when they go home. Maybe it’s that I am enjoying the slower pace of life now that our girls are back in The States and it's just Julie and me.

Maybe its that I have no camera –so what’s the point anyways, right?