Making it up as you go

"Making it up as you go."

Yep, that's what we're doing!

Often parenting as a missionary feels like you are all alone with little
to guide you. It can be scary. We're praying for this young man as he
transitions to the next chapter of his life: settling in Australia for university.

This was a phrase that an experienced TCK (third culture kid) mum said to me recently about an excruciatingly difficult decision that she and her husband had to make last year. 

I can't imagine making such a decision, but the experience of making it up as you go rang true. It is, indeed, what we've been doing our whole parenting journey. All, of which, has been done in the context of mission. We began applying to be missionaries with OMF before our eldest son was conceived, so when we announced my pregnancy there were questions from spectators. Even though we were still in Australia.

So this week as we head relentlessly towards saying goodbye to our son as he heads off to university in Australia, we especially feel as though we're making it up as we go. Questions like these have arisen within our family:

• What will we do about his birthday in May?
• Can we text him in Australia?
• How much should he take with him? 
• Should he take his wrestling trophies?
• When will he next be in Japan?
• Should he take all his shoes, even the grubby work ones since they still are in otherwise good condition?
• What kind of farewell should we have on Sunday? A family one? One with a bunch of friends?
• What food would he like in his last week here?

Parenting, I suspect, even in a mono-cultural situation is always about "making it up as you go", however there are many less cues to call on when you're doing this in a country you  didn't grow up in with a child who is having a very different childhood than you had.

I remember talking to a Southern US dad last year at wrestling. He said if he was bringing his son up in the US, he'd know exactly what sport his middle-school son would be doing. It would have been the same that he did when he was a boy (baseball?), and the same as a lot of his son's peers. But he was raising his son out of that context and to his surprise found wrestling had entered the mix and he was scrambling to catch up, to find out what this unknown sport was all about.

We've made lot of different decisions to what our parents made, purely because of context, not because our parents were wrong. I'm sure they've looked at what we've been doing, at times, and wondered at our wisdom.

The additional challenge to making it up as you go, is that you have to "back yourself" (an Australian phrase? Meaning "to have confidence in one's self"). Despite others, yes, even other missionaries, around you making different decisions you have to make the best decision you can come up with and stick by it. Getting to know our kids as well as we can has been important here. For example, knowing that some of our boys hate rapid change has informed lots of our decisions, for example not taking short home assignments.

As any parent knows, there is no laboratory for testing your decisions either. You may never know if you've made the right decision! That's hard.

Making this big change means that we're making it up more than usual in the next month. We're praying that we "get it right", which, of course, is what we always do: praying for wisdom and then doing the best we can.