Transition feels a lot like grief sometimes. Maybe it is because, at least in my experience in transitions, grief holds a lot of space. Transition is not a one-size-fits-all experience. Each person feels it and lives it differently than another. There are probably different parts of transitions, just like there are parts or steps of grief, but no one person experiences it exactly the same way. There isn’t a number of days I can give you that says, THIS DAY I will feel like this life feels like normal again. It can’t. As much as we would like it to just go back to how it used to be, it won’t.
The kids have asked us at different times when life will feel like it did in Ecuador. I wish I had a good answer for that. But, the hard and real answer is that it won’t. Our idea and maybe even ideal of what life looked like previously in Ecuador changes. The expectations of how we imagined our transition to life here in the U.S. is way different and honestly, it doesn’t feel normal. That doesn’t equal bad, it just equals different. There are some days we are glad we don’t have to schedule our lives around pico y placa (the day of the week in Ecuador when we can’t drive at rush hour). There are days when it is 95 degrees in the shade and we just miss our breezy, beautiful “eternal Spring” weather at 10,000 feet in Ecuador. There have been days I miss walking a few steps to the nearest “tienda” on the corner when I run out of eggs or flour instead of having to get in the car and go to a big, overwhelming, full-of-people store to get one thing (that turns in to 15)! And there are days I am grateful that I can order all my groceries online and have someone deliver them to my house 3 hours later. I am not really fond of the part of transition I am in. However, we are together. We live with the boxes and unpacked suitcases. We live through this new part of transition together. With all of its hard and good. With struggles to find friends to sit with at lunch and joys of pool dates with new friends. The joys of speaking Spanish with all the soccer parents, but missing the huge cheering section of cheering for our kids in Ecuador! We are grateful that home doesn’t mean a building or a structure. It includes people and it includes the presence of God. A presence that is bigger than our situation and that is our constant normal even when we feel like nothing around us is normal at all. Home is when we are in the presence of the true living God. The same God of Moses and Mary. It isn’t to make light or trivialize what we are living. It is a comfort knowing that God cares enough about our situation to live with us in it.
We may be in an interesting time of transition, but our dog Manchas, has found this new place to feel pretty homey. Trading in plastic laundry baskets for comfy woven ones with the socks that have no matches!
The Santiago Partnership