Looking back at 2019

Well I've neglected this blog for the last couple of weeks. I was tired and needing a break from many things. Hunkering down for a break meant majoring on reading, recreation with the family, more sleep, and basics that continue as usual like feeding everyone (plus some festive baking).

But it's time for an end-of year blog post! Actually I'm finding that our six months in Australia last year has disrupted my memories of this last year somehow. Not sure why, though I do know we started the year very tired and that hasn't much abated as we've been propelled along by life's responsibilities.

I read an article recently that suggested some interesting questions. I thought some of them were helpful, especially if I'm having trouble remembering details about my year. So I'll give this a go.

1. What makes this year unforgetable?

• Coming back after six months away and jumping straight into school was a new experience for us. We won't be keen to do that again! Especially with all the last-minute drama surrounding our departure.
• Having David in hospital for two operations was also a new experience. One I'd also be happy not to repeat. 

2. What did you enjoy doing this year?

• I enjoyed staying in touch with four special friends in Australia, friendships I'm counting on more than I have in the past. It's a new strategy to keep me emotionally healthy that I am very grateful for.
• A two-week holiday in July that wasn't camping was something we haven't done for several years. Our boys were initially opposed to it, but it turned out really well, something we'd like to repeat in 2020.

3. What/who is one thing/person you're grateful for?

• David, of course. Having him incapacitated in hospital for 20 days (in total) was a sharp reminder of how much we work together as a team to keep us afloat here in Japan.

4. What did you read/watch/listen to that made the most impact this year?

• This is a hard question! I could glibly say "the Bible". That's a good Sunday School answer! But more specifically, having special friends (note my question one answer) who are going through hard times, but love the Lord and love me too, has meant we're keeping each other accountable to keep our eyes on Jesus. I can't pin down any one time or passage or book that has made the most impact, though.
• However, in the last couple of months the verse "Be still and know that I am God" (Psalm 46:10) has been special. That verse was given to me on a little card at the spiritual retreat I went to in May. It's a verse I've known since childhood, but only recently have I realised the deeper meaning of it: God is way above my ability to understand him, I need to continually relax my desire to control things and people around me and let God be God. I need to continually remember that worry doesn't help and God actually tells us not to be anxious (Philippians 4:6). I can walk away from my work and leave anything unresolved in God's hand. I can go to sleep at night and leave all my concerns with him.

5. What did you worry about most and how did it turn out?

• Well this follows uncomfortably on the tail of the previous question. I can't answer this too transparently here as that would impede on the privacy of some I love.
• I did worry about David's hospitalisations: about how I would cope and about what could go wrong. It all turned out okay, though.
• I worried about one of our sons and some educational hoops that he had to or chose to jump through in the last 18 months. That also worked out okay, but not without a good deal of stress incurred by our family.
• When we came back in January we had some unfinished business that we had to attend to to transfer our family here well. That took some time and travel, but I couldn't say I wasn't worried about it at the time. It's also turned out well.
• Finances were a concern early in the year as our mission only conditionally cleared us to return to Japan. Worries again unfounded and God has provided all we've needed.

6. What was your biggest regret and why?

• Another hard question! Words are one of my strengths, but also my biggest downfall and I've used my words unwisely on occasion this year. There are words I wish I'd never typed (or spoken). 

7. What's one thing that changed about yourself?

• Yikes, these questions are getting harder. Perhaps because of the four special friendships I've cultivated in Australia I am more settled? I'm very grateful to the two ladies who I text with almost every day. Because we are so frequently in touch I don't need to explain much. If I'm having a good or bad day, I can just say it.
• Our eyes are on the goal of getting our youngest two through high school and then moving on the empty nest stage. It's not that far away! I think that change in focus is probably significant.

8. What surprised you the most this year?

• Possibly a few of the decisions our boys made in relation to what they've committed to do or not do. 

So . . . after that forced reflection, here are some highlights from the year:

• Coming back to Japan in early January and feeling at home pretty quickly. That was underscored by how close we came to not coming back at all which made us all the more thankful.
• Having our eldest visit twice during the year.
• Three camping trips: to the beach in March, the mountains in June (though excessively wet), and northern plains in August.
• Two family holidays in the mountains.
• Continuing to plug away at Japanese study and slowly seeing the benefits of that.
• Spiritual retreat in May.
• I had a pretty healthy year.
• Discovering I could borrow ebooks from our library in Australia.
• Receiving a huge care package from our home church this month. Seeing them learning about what supporting their own missionaries looks like.
• Starting a new prayer booklet publication project.

Lowlights of the year

• Hospitalisations of David, as previously mentioned.
• Sometimes feeling a lack of motivation for my work. Possibly fatigue, but also a product of having reached something of a plateau, as in I'm doing a lot of the same work with all the challenges and not many changes.
• Hardships that family and friends in Australia have endured: deaths, cancer, marriage breakups, mental health problems, drought and fire, etc.
• Having to say goodbye to our son at the end of his visits here.

Later this week I will write a "looking forward to 2020" post, so I won't go there now. But I will finish this post with thoughts about being real. Mid-year, in an attempt to resolve some of the angst I've felt about not writing here as often anymore, I resolved to write weekly. 

I've not done too badly at that, however I'm aware that it's meant I've moved a little bit away from my desire to write about my daily, ordinary life. However, I remain committed to that ultimate goal: to write so that people will see that we are not some superhero missionaries living a life most people could never imagine or attain. 

On Sunday a song was playing on our computer (with a son with misophonia, we often have music playing in our dining room). It's a song I've heard many times before, but it grabbed my attention. It's called "Just Pretending", here are some of the lyrics towards the end:

What if we just all agreed
To wear our hearts on wrinkled sleeves
And live the mess and mystery
Of a real life

That's what I'd like to do. But before I traverse into the land of "looking forwards" I'll quit and let you hear the song itself:

Thoughts at the end of a 16-week "term"

We're nearly there: at the end of the first "block" of school. In Australia they have four terms: each of 10 weeks. I originally wrote "we are used to", but the truth is we've rarely had our kids in that system, so we really aren't "used to" that anymore, though we grew up in such a system and hanker after it every now and then. 

Here, we get only two breaks of a week or more within the school year. The first one is over Christmas-New Year and is about three weeks. The second is just a week, at the end of March. [Of course we then get a rather long summer holiday of nearly three months! But I honestly would rather have it split up through the whole year.]

School started over 16 weeks ago  we've had just a couple of long weekends in that time. Plus, this year, two hospitalisations during that period. Not to mention that the last four weeks of our summer break was fraught with stress as our middle son, with the assistance of David, completed a whole year subject of high level maths. [Long story about how that happened, but it was much more than we expected.] I was working from home (as usual) during that period, and the daily saga of wondering if he'd get through this mountain of work, and sitting in relatively close proximity to the drama, was stressful.

When the boys were younger it was crazy by this time of the year: fatigue, plus the excitement of Christmas overwhelmed our household in early December. Now the boys are older that is lessened, but we have noted that these older boys are having a bit more difficulty getting out of bed. That's compounded by the fact that it really is nicer in bed than out on these cold mornings, and that the sun doesn't get up until after 6.30 (not as bad as many northern European places, I know, but still, it doesn't help).

A Christmas morning tea in a past year.

Needless to say, we're all looking forward to next week. We're going away for a seven-day break, back to the house we stayed at in July. Loaded up with books, movies, games, and food, we'll apply ourselves again to intense relaxation.

This pre-Christmas holiday week is one of the few traditions that we've managed to maintain as a family. At least "big" traditions. This year it will be a bit strange as we get used to doing it as a family of four, rather than five.

I'm looking forward to time away from the relentless-ness of my work. My never-ending pile of editing, email, and social media responsibilities will be put on hold for a week. And no WiFi will certainly help! I'm also glad this Christmas that we are not looking down the barrel of lots of travel: though seeing family in Australia is always good, for us it means hours and hours of driving. Last Christmas we also were in the midst of transition as we packed up our lives in Australia and shifted focus back to Japan. Not starting 2020 like that will be a huge bonus! But now I'm moving onto an end-of-year post that I can write after Christmas.

I hope the lead up to your Christmas is not too fraught. At Christmas there can often be a lot of pressure to be perfect and to have it all sorted. We see ads and social media posts with happy families that have it all together, with piles of presents or food, and with intricately decorated homes. No one is arguing, or hiding in their room. We don't see the struggles people have with finding time or money or even enthusiasm. We don't see the loneliness that often comes with such a season. We don't see the families that are torn apart with divorce, and the parents who can't see their kids on Christmas day.

If any of the above describes you, please don't despair. The ads and the social media only show a sliver of the truth, not the whole truth. No family is perfect, many out there are hurting. You aren't alone. If you need help, please reach out. To a friend, to a local social service, to a trusted pastor. If any of my personal friends need an ear, know that I'm around on Messenger, or via email if you need me.

We ourselves aren't doing badly. We have friends here, tomorrow night we are celebrating with a few of them. Christmas Day will be quiet, with just the four of us, but we typically connect with family back in Australia via video calls as well! After a busy year we won't be disappointed in a quiet Christmas. It is our first Christmas without our eldest son with us, but then both of us did that to our families when we were in our early 20s, so it's not such a strange thing that he's growing up and doing his own thing.

Well, this has turned out to be a rambling blog post. I hope it gives you some insight into our "on the edge of ordinary" life at the moment. A friend just sent me this video, I thought you might enjoy it too.

Books: another one of my hobbies (and a book review)

I told you a while back that I'd discovered that cooking was one of my hobbies, though I'd struggled a little to identify it as such. Another such hobby I have that I often forget to mention is reading. It sounds so pedestrian and yet it's been such an integral part of my life for as long as I can remember, that I don't think of it as a hobby very often. I can barely go to sleep at night without spending time reading (usually 30 to 40 minutes, depending on how tired I am). I never pack a suitcase to go away without including a book or many more!

I've just this last week or so made a very exciting discovery. You see one of my chronic problems is running out of books to read because I read quite fast. It's not a problem in Australia because there's always a library to turn to. People think about various things that missionaries sacrifice when they go overseas but rarely do they mention access to a library. And we live on a limited budget, so buying many books, even eBooks, is not a good option either.

Don't feel too sorry for me, because for the last 14 years we've had access to the school library. But recently I've noticed that I am having much more trouble finding fiction there that I haven't read and also like (there's lots of fantasy and SciFi, but they aren't my genre).

So, back to my exciting discovery: our Australian library card allows us to borrow eBooks! I can't read them on my old Kindle, but a free app on my phone has turned that device into a  huge source of free books! I'm so excited. And instead of filling free pockets of time with too many phone games, I've been reading instead. Oh the joy!

But today, I want to do something I do very rarely and share with you a book that I read recently. A hard-copy book! It's by a friend of mine and fellow Aussie OMF missionary— Christine Dillon (author-signed copy!).

Grace in Deep Waters is Christine's third book in this realistic fiction series. The previous two are Grace in Strange Design and Grace in the Shadows. They are Christian fiction, which I am often a little tentative to touch because Christian fiction can be a bit unrealistic or predictable (with the inevitable romance thrown in). But this series is none of those things. The family that is at the centre of this series faces some very challenging, yet realistic problems in their faith, health, and relationships. And yet the grace of God shines through in remarkable and unexpected ways. So much so that it's hard to put the books down because you want to see how God's going to work in and through these flawed, yet realistic characters.

One reason it's hard to write fiction reviews is the danger of "spoilers" as my son would say. I don't want to wreck your experience of reading this. Though I wouldn't recommend starting this book while your loved one is in surgery, as I did. My heart was a little too raw that morning to deal with the difficult emotions at the start of this book. However, the book moves from a dark and difficult place towards much better things.

It's a treat to read an Australian book with a Christian "heart" by an Australian author. If you have not picked up this series, I highly recommend it! Christine is working on the fourth in the series, and I can't wait to get my hands on that, because the end of this book leaves you hanging, and hungering for more of the story.

(And no, she didn't pay me to write this, neither did she give me the book.) 

Musing Marshalls in December

I've been busier I'd like. And more tired than I'd like to admit! The latter is proved by being clumsier in my actions and words than usual. I'm very much looking forward to our holiday next week. We're taking off to the mountain (same places as July) for a week.

I was very thankful to put one of my projects to "bed" last week when we sent the Winter issue of Japan Harvest to the printer (I'll help them pack some of the magazines this Friday, but that's probably the easiest thing I do for the magazine). I was also thankful to get our prayer letter off last week. 

I've got stuff I'd like to write here, but for today, I'll settle with just posting the first page of our prayer letter. If you're interested in receiving the whole thing (the second page includes more personal details and prayer points), please contact me. We send it out 11 times a year via a Mailchimp email. I also might get around to editing the video I mention here so that I can post it on this blog. I almost posted it here last week, but then I realised that the identity of our boys that I have carefully kept off this blog, was completely revealed in the video. So that will have to wait.

Crowded trains: more complex than you imagine

These last nine days my husband has again been in hospital. He had surgery last Wednesday for a skin graft over the area that they excised due to suspect skin cancer in September. His hospital is in Shinjuku, one of Tokyo's main city centres.

I've visited on five occasions so far, the final time will be tomorrow when he's (hopefully) discharged. The journey is an hour via two to four trains—often standing—and involves numerous flights of stairs and walking about 1.5 km. I love going to see him, but the journey really takes it out of me. 

Most of the trains I've been on have been okay, but on Monday I stayed for dinner and came home around 7.30pm. The first train I hopped on was not a fun experience. 

My first clue it was going to be difficult was when the train arrived and no one got off. It already looked full. But people in the line in front of me literally pushed their way in and I had little choice but to push in too (the next train was unlikely to be less crowded). The lady in this photo could have been me. I had to check to make sure neither of the bags I was carrying were protruding into the space where the door was going to shut.

But that was only the start of the "fun". Standing jammed in like that is technically fine as long as either:

1. the people getting out at the next stop are next to the doors, or 

2. everyone is getting out at the same stop.

But that is rarely the case in an inner-city line where there are lots of intersecting train lines (it was a different experience I described here when I headed into the city from the suburbs and almost everyone was headed for the end of the line in the city). So at the next stop I got "spewed" out onto the platform while the train disgorged itself of people who were buried deep inside and needed to exit. 

Then we repeated the previous action of pushing our way back on, except that this time I got to be buried deeper inside. Which is not necessarily better. 

Thankfully, though I am only 157cm high, Japanese people aren't as tall as Australians on average, and I usually get some air, but still, being jammed such as your body is touching four or five other people is not fun. You can end up in very awkward situations. I've had my hands jammed to my sides, so I couldn't reach my face, been stuck behind a lady whose long hair swept over my face and tickled my nose, and most commonly, had someone's elbow or shoulder or hip pocking into me. I am thankful that I've never experienced wandering hands, but in a situation like this, it does not surprise me that women are harassed.

Here is a photo I took the other day at a quiet moment on my way into the hospital mid-afternoon. This is the standard layout of seats on a Tokyo commuter train. In a crowded train there is usually three lines of people standing down the middle between the people sitting down and then a tonne squeezed into that small area near the door. That's where I got stuck on Monday.

The aforementioned cycle of "shoving into the train—travelling one station—people disgorging—people pushing back on the train" happened eight times in my journey of 16 minutes. I only got pushed out onto the platform once, but it was a great relief to get off the train finally and change lines to a train where I wasn't squished up against strangers nor having strangers pushed past me or pushing me so they could get onto the train. For a nation that can be characterised by generally "no touching" and "not being a bother to others", this pushing-shoving experience is quite strange.

It is all quite quiet too. Quiet enough for me to hear someone exclaim, "There's a foreigner here" when I first got on.

The other strange thing about it is how orderly this is (there are even arrows in the stations to help modulate the flow of foot traffic). Lining up, pushing on, jiggling around so we all fit, pushing off again. There's generally a quiet sense of order and no rudeness (though I have experienced rudeness beyond the general shoving required). Certainly being aware of people around you and doing your best not to take up more space than you have to is part of it. It is routine for people to wear backpacks on their fronts to take up less room.

What's interesting to note is that the culture of orderliness and taking care of others as best they can in such crowded situations on trains has spilled over into the use of elevators. My husband is in a 19-floor hospital and the elevators are very busy. They aren't as crowded as trains, but we've seen the same practice of people close to the door hopping off the elevator if someone behind them needs to exit.

Needless to say, I am glad that I don't have to commute every day in conditions like these. I will also be very happy to have my husband home again and not have to visit him in hospital again soon!

Borderlands: on the edge

Here's an excellent 15-minute video by a TCK that was originally a TED talk. It fits so well with my blog's theme of "on the edge of ordinary" that I just had to share it with you. Joshua Tan calls this edge "the borderlands" and explores the theme biographically, looking back over his 20-something years as a missionary kid and then as a young adult seeking to find his way.

He's studying a post-grad degree in Art Therapy. From about 13:00 (my paraphrase, not quite an accurate transcription): 

"I like this concept of the mental health continuum....we're not just well or unwell. We're constantly moving throughout the day, sometimes we feel a bit more well, sometimes we feel less well. 

I think this is similar to belonging, to moving through the borderland. We're constantly moving up and down through the course of the day. In each new group, we're going to be at different stages. Maybe we see a friendly smile in a strange place and we move up the scale, or a colleague makes a remark that makes us feel a little bit uncomfortable and we feel as though we don't belong as much in that workplace."

I'm seeing my own TCKs find their way through these borderlands, but at the same time have my own borderlands to negotiate. Living a cross-cultural life has a lot less security, in terms of belonging, than we otherwise would have experienced in our home country. I have to say that I probably "belong" most right where I am at present, being the longest I've stayed in any one place since I left home at 17. We certainly don't belong as much in Australia anymore, though that would grow if we stayed there for a length of time.

I do like the way he ends:

It's important to know that you are not alone...The borderlands aren't a bleak wasteland...they are rich with potential, filled with the colourful vibes of so many other people. You will find your own place in your own time.

This is true for adult TCKs, it's also true for us. The borderlands are a constantly changing landscape, but with keen eyes it is possible to see and appreciate all the beauty of the diversity and change there.

Ups and downs of parenting teens

This is a flash back post. I wrote it two years ago but never published it, probably because it was a little too revealing about my guys at the time. With that much distance, though, I think it's okay (and I've edited it to make it even more anonymous, noting that at the time I had three boys under 19 in my house). 

_________________
[Written in 2017]
I've been known to grumble about my teenagers. I was known to grumble about my kids when they were younger too. But in August one of my boys had an exceptional day, and I wrote about it at the time. And yes, it was a pretty rare event. Actually on Sunday I was "writing" a blog post in my head about the horrible times I'd had recently, but when I sat down to write it I found it really hard going. Mostly because this is a public forum and, though I'm having a hard time of being his mum at times, I'm not about to take revenge on my boys by spewing their shortcomings out here.

Parenting teenagers can be super hard. I know that that is probably general knowledge, but the reality of it is harder emotionally than I ever imagined.  I hate conflict, and having one or more people in your home who are liable to blow up at you at any moment for something you may or may not have done, is horrible. It makes being at home with them sometimes very difficult to bear. They don't often drive me to tears, but they sometimes make a coffee shop seem even more attractive than usual.

In writing this post I do want to encourage you. Parents tend not to write about the challenges of parenting teens as much as they write about the challenges of younger children, and that can mean that parents who are having a tough time of it feel isolated. So when I tell you about the amazing day one of my teens had, it's not to make you feel horrible because your teenage son has never had a day like that. Read between the lines! I write about it, because it was such unusually congenial behaviour.

I saw the shock on a friend's face when she witnessed one of my sons in our home show his annoyance through his actions (and actually it was a very slight amount of annoyance that he displayed, nothing like we get when he has no witnesses). So I know that though it's known that teenagers can be horrible, most of their horribleness is saved for their parents (at least in this house) and is therefore unseen by most people.

Thinking back over the last couple of weeks, I can tell you that I've experienced things like,  "What, are you deaf!?!" shouted at me, when I asked the "wrong" question.

I wrote this last year:

I can't tell you the details of the bad or even much of the good because I respect the privacy of my boys. It is harder as they get older. Yesterday morning when I was feeling particularly exhausted by parenting, this article called "Help for parents who want to give up" that popped up in my newsfeed on Facebook, especially this:

There’s support groups for moms of preschoolers, but where’s triage for the moms of teenagers? The older our kids become, the greater our isolation can become, because while mothers can instagram and commiserate together over the Terrible Twos — but mothers struggling through a stretch of terrible teens can suffer alone.

Yesterday we saw good come out of the bad with one son whose earlier bad choices led to him making some better decisions that are hopefully a sign of better things to come. 

Parenting is such a long-term event. So much persistence, patience, and resilience is required. Oftentimes I feel like we take two steps forward and three backward. But periodically we are rewarded with gold. I got some rare compliments on my parenting yesterday from one of my boys. GOLD!

I wrote this in August of the year before (2015):

In recent months our family has seen more emotional ups and downs in a day (or hour), than we've ever had before. Some of it is the transition, but not all. There are hormones at work. It's hard! And that's saying it nicely. . . . 

Back to teens. I've seen other difficult teens grow up and become well balanced adults (just not experienced it as a parent). So I'm clinging to the hope that this present pain is but a passing stage.

Trying not to embarrass him, but I want to mention some unusual things that one of my boys has done today.

He looked bored this morning (happens when you are woken early and don't have plans for the day), but he didn't default to electronics. I suggested a bike ride . . . he went for a bike ride.

Then he defaulted to playing Minecraft for a couple of hours. After lunch he took the initiative to go out and buy school supplies, all on his own and without any prompting. He didn't default to watching videos online, as he so often has in the past.

I've had conversations with him!

Tonight he's cooked dinner for us (it's in the oven as I type, but I'm sure it's going to be superb), as we'd planned that he would. His attitude was positive, even when things looked a bit grim.

I wish every day were like this, but I know that realistically they won't be, at least not yet. Days like this give me hope, however. Hope that the boy I'm raising will one day be a useful member of society and will be able to interact with people and look after himself.

________

I can say in hindsight now that things have improved. Our eldest son has moved out and is, indeed, living a fairly independent life as a respectable university student (doing his last university exam for this academic year tonight). His brothers are still teens and we still have bad days, but I'm not sure that they are as frequent as they used to be. The truth is, teenagers do get through this stage. It is a stage, just like the "terrible twos" and "horrible threes" were. It takes a lot of patience and perseverance, just like the rest of the parenting years do. There is very little instant gratification in this job. But delayed gratification is much more satisfying. The joy I get in seeing these boys maturing is something that can easily bring tears to my eyes.

My advice to mums at this stage is to find someone safe who you can talk to about your parenting struggles. I sat with someone at CAJ's bazaar a few weeks ago and we shared our pain from recent years. We were safe people for one another at that moment and it was a very special connection. 
It's important to have people with whom you can say, "My teen said this to me the other day and it cut deep." 
And have them say back, "That happened to me the other week too, I really hate it when they treat me like that."

I also want to note that mental health is something we've struggled with on top of teenage behaviour and it can be difficult to discern whether some behaviour is just "horrible teen" behaviour, or whether it is something more. If you have concerns, I recommend that you talk to a professional about them.

Friendship goal—12 months later

One of the things OMF missionaries in Australia are required to do on home assignment is debrief with a psychologist (possibly other places too, I can't generalise, though, because I don't know). We did that as a family last July, but OMF encouraged us to go back again if there were things we'd like to go deeper on. I sat on that encouragement for a couple of months and then decided to give it a go.

You see, I'd been finding myself hit harder and harder with the losses of life. The missionary life has more losses than most people encounter (see this post I wrote about the colander of expat life), and I was finding that even small losses were hitting hard. If you've been reading here a while you'll have probably noticed that I've talked about that over the years. Anyway, we've also seen people knocked off the mission field by burnout and knew that if I could avoid that I wanted to try.

So I went to a psychologist and talked to her. This is what I wrote not long after that:

She asked a lot of questions about my friendships and realised that though we have worked in the same organisation for 18 years and in the same location for the last 12, my friendships have had a lot of change over the years, even people who seemed that they would be there for the long-haul have had to leave for various reasons.

Even the other day I realised that many of the people I interact with now don't know the people I was interacting with, even two years ago! Between being in cross-cultural ministry and involved at an international school, we've got a lot of people continually moving in and out of our lives.

The psychologist made several suggestions, but the one that stuck out for me was to gather four friends around me who were less likely to move out of my life and make them the base of a pyramid. I realised that I'd been avoiding investing deeply in relationships in Australia because of the distance, however the truth is that my friends in Australia are generally more stable than the ones I'd been making in Japan. The friends I have in Australia are long-term ones that I keep seeing when I go back there.

Finding friends at a different level
So I set myself the difficult task of deciding which of my friends I'd ask for this deeper commitment of and then steeling myself to ask them. It was not easy. I felt like I was back in Primary School vulnerably asking someone to be my best friend! But I'm here to tell you, one year later, that it is making a difference.

Two of the ladies I asked happened to be good friends with each other and I texted them, almost impulsively, one afternoon in October last year. Asking if we might not join forces and become a support group for each other. That was the start of something I could never have imagined. They both messaged me back within a couple of hours, almost jumping out of the phone screen with enthusiasm. I was blown away—it truly was God's timing. We continue to remark on that very thing and give praise to God.

But that was just the start. I had imagined period Skype calls, but it's turned into almost daily contact between at least two of the three of us. Twice in the last week I've been at a coffee shop messaging with one or both of them (unplanned in both cases). It's almost like they're here with me! I've never experienced anything like it, outside of the friendship that goes with marriage, but even different to that, because they're women and they understand a woman's heart in a different way to a husband.

I also couldn't have imagined the sorts of things that the three of us were to go through in the months following that initial text. It's truly been an incredible, sometimes heartwrenching journey, and being able to do it together has enriched and strengthened each of us.

I have two other good friends who are committed to staying in touch, though we don't chat as often. But I know that I can go to either of them with honesty and bare my heart, or ask them to pray about something very private. And I'm pretty sure they know the same about me.

Having these four friends helped me through the vulnerable time in June at the end of the school year, when so many goodbyes are "I don't know if I'll ever see you again" goodbyes. They've also given me the courage to not hold back from making friends here. It's a temptation you need to fight after a few years of saying goodbye to friends you've invested your heart in.

What might I have done differently?
I'm not a fan of those "write to your 16 y.o. self" letters. However, pondering this journey I've been on now for 19 years makes me wonder what advice I'd give myself on friendship when I left Australia to become a long-term missionary in November 2000? (And no, I wasn't 16 at the time!)

I don't think I'd advise "daily friends" in Australia. I think it is important for new missionaries to leave their home country and friends and do their best to cleave to their new country and the people they find there. But in 2000, we didn't have the advantage of free messaging or Skype calls. However, maybe I'd advise writing/emailing more regularly to a couple of good friends?

I might advise me as a new missionary to be aware of grief and what it looks like, and not to downplay small griefs. You don't need to lose a parent or a spouse to experience grief. To be aware of how many goodbyes I'd already made and how to process that a little better. To have more realistic expectations about the relationships I'd make in Japan with expats. To make sure I had a few more things in place to help me be more resilient?

Thankful
Our home assignment last year was really hard in so many ways, yet there were things that were good about it, and this is one of them. I'm so thankful for the psychologist who advised me and for these four women who have taken the risk of being friends with someone who isn't even in the country most of the time!

Much to be thankful for

Sometimes on a Monday it sometimes seems easier to write here than it is to do other things. . . I've got much to be thankful for today. David's been away at a conference in Malaysia since Wednesday and I've coped fine. That may seem a strange thing to say, but it's not always been true when he's been away from us. He's back with us today, but still recovering from the overnight flight and the usual over-full head that a conference will induce!

Field of cosmos.

In the meantime I've had a rather lighter schedule than usual. There has been a welcome lull in the magazine production process, so I've been able to spend more time away from my computer than is usually possible (or advisable). 

On Thursday I took most of the day off and rode to a favourite coffee shop via my favourite park. It had been a long time since I'd taken a long ride, and it was most refreshing. I didn't even take work to do at the cafe.

Not many flowers in the park at this time of year. I can't remember
what this is, but it was one of the last standing.

Lunch enjoyed in cozy spot in the "loft" of this coffee shop.
It's not that long ago that lasagne wasn't on many menus
in Japan, let alone a non-Italian coffee shop's. I had
to learn how to make it myself so that I could enjoy
it periodically.

A rare public telephone in a rare telephone box,
donated by Rotary. This I found on the edge of
a small, but leafy park that I'd never seen before.

On Friday my day was filled with a school prayer meeting, going to the gym, grocery shopping, and a much needed time of language exchange (two of the three of us have been so busy we haven't gotten together for two months), followed by an enjoyable evening watching rugby union.

This is a strange historical building, also found at this small newly-discovered park.
 My Japanese is not good enough to read the sign, but I'll put it
below for anyone who could enlighten us. Google Translate tells
 me it was built in 1781 and was a storage warehouse for ? firewood.
It is quite small, so I can't imagine that it stored much at all.

We are between sports seasons so the weekend was blessedly quiet. On Saturday afternoon the two boys and I went and got our flu injections. A point of praise that I managed to both schedule and complete this with almost no assistance from my husband and his superior language ability—"almost" being the important word because he did help with filling out the forms via a video call.

On Sunday I woke up with a Wry Neck (aka stiff neck) that turned ugly after church—I was gasping with pain at small adjustments in my posture for several hours. Thankfully I managed to see a physical therapist before they shut for 1½ days (today's a public holiday). Thankful too that I had few responsibilities for the rest of the day and the boys helped me out a little. My third point of thanks is for the prayer of friends and family. It's so helpful at times when you feel desperate and alone to have people you know you can call on to pray or help. There were other local friends I could have called on for both, but it didn't get that bad.

The other huge point of thanks really is a whole blog post or article all on its own. Twelve months ago I wrote this post about a friendship goal that a psychologist had given me. I will write a separate post about how this has been, suffice to say that yesterday I had a timely (pre-organised) video conversation with two of the friends who were part of that goal last year that not only fed my soul, but helped me through a rough afternoon of pain. 

I've woken up this morning after a good sleep and with just a stiff neck, not debilitating pain, so I am thankful for a timely answer to prayer.

So you see how much I have to be thankful for! It's been a quiet few days and I'm feeling a bit more rested than I usually am after David's been away. Indeed recently I've found myself flagging before 9pm at night, which is a bit unusual, but a good thing to take notice of.

November Marshall Musings

Here's something I've been working on in the last couple of days. This is a blog-version of our prayer letter. If you'd like the full two-page version that includes more family news, please let me know.

Baking—one of my loves

I've been thinking about baking recently. It's something I do regularly, as you probably know. I've shared quite a number of recipes here as well as wrote about my kitchen just the other week.

Cooking and baking is something I really enjoy. I find it is a soul-refreshing thing to do. I've always loved creating. My mum would tell you about the Childcraft Encyclopedias we had when I was young. The volume themed "Make and Do" was the most worn out. I was always pulling it out and making (or thinking about making) something. As I've gotten older I'm less likely to make things that are not of some practical use. I've had to move too many times and throw too many things out. Not to mention that I have less leisure time to fill these days.

However, baking is very practical and doesn't clutter up the house. And with teenage boys in my house, I have plenty of need to cook. However, what I do goes beyond what is needed. I love to make food that the guys love to eat. I enjoy planning meals that we will all delight in. It's so fun to tell them in the morning what that evening's meal is and having them exclaim positively (doesn't happen every day, mind you). I look forward to having time on the weekends to make snacks that will help keep them satisfied between meals in the week to come. 

I also love making food for others, when the need arises and I have time to do so. I even love helping others with their baking. In the summer I tried to help a friend learn to make a cake. Just recently I gave advice to another expat about the challenges of Japanese flour and biscuit/cookie baking.

I know that I'm starting to be settled after a move when I can begin baking again. I know that I've been too busy or too stressed if I haven't done much baking recently. It's like a litmus test.

There's been lots written about the benefits of baking for others. This article calls it a stress-reliever, a mindfulness activity, altruism, and meditative. Of course, if you don't enjoy it or never had the chance to develop some skill in baking/cooking, it isn't those things. For example, knitting and sewing are not stress-relieving for me. I can do the latter (simple stuff), but more often than not it's more stressful that I'm bargaining for. And don't get me started on knitting!

As I baked on Sunday, I was thinking about lots of things (as usual). Three rose to the surface:

• Baking is an act of creation, I'm made in the image of a Creator (See Genesis 1:26-27), so of course it is satisfying to create using well-honed skills. Much more satisfying that just going to the shop and buying a packet of biscuits.
• Baking always connects me back to my roots. My mum taught me to bake and quite a number of the biscuit/cake recipes I have are hers. I've also collected a number of recipes from other people over the years. So, on Sunday I made "Honey Biscuits" (also known as "Stamp Biscuits" by my boys, and pictured on the right), a recipe my mum made for me as a child, and used an old cotton reel that she gave me many years ago to make the patter on the top. I also made a newer recipe given to me by a missionary colleague. Making these recipes is an act in remembering those relationships.
• Baking gives me time and space to reflect (that is noted in the article above). It's a structured activity that I'm relatively competent at, so while it keeps my hands doing something practical, my head it often partly somewhere else, processing a conversation, or thinking about a verse I've read, or considering a plan for a future event.

It is very common in Japan to talk about your hobbies. For most of my like I have not considered baking a hobby (it's too practical, isn't it?), but I think that is worth revising.

Feeling a little off-kilter

While I didn't particularly stop and ponder long here,
on Thursday—knowing that my To Do list was a little
lighter than usual—I took a detour of a couple of hours
to visit this old garden in the middle of Tokyo.

Today I'm feeling the usual Monday blues: not keen to get started on work. But it's bigger than that. 

When I feel out of sorts, I try to think things through a little to figure out if there is a good reason (and often there is, though I know that people who struggle with mental illness don't necessarily have that privilege). So I'm writing here today, thinking about this.

I've discovered a few things that are contributing to this current season of feeling a bit low and unmotivated:

• These last 20 months have been quite frantic in many ways: 
• our eldest son moved to Australia, 
• we've done two international moves (which of course involved changing houses and schools and churches and pretty much everything else), 
• the craziness as we tried to achieve our goals for home assignment in just six months, 
• plus some personal crises in our family that I haven't been able to share publically.
• My work schedule is such that June to September is a bit crazier than usual, due to an effort to keep our magazine production away from the busy month of December, plus extra family demands during the 10 or so weeks of school holidays. 

Both these "adrenaline-inducing" periods are over and it's the "come down" emotion I'm experiencing when things aren't quite so urgent.

It was drizzling, so not inviting to sit (wet
surfaces everywhere), but lovely for wandering.

• I've been doing this magazine editing for nine years now, that's the longest I've worked in any job, so I wonder if it's just an itchy-feet thing? I'm not really looking for something different to do, but still, emotions don't necessarily follow logic (interestingly I wrote about a similar restless feeling about this job in Feb 2013!)
• My social media job I've now been doing for two years and it is by no means dull (neither is the magazine), but it is relentless and that can get tiring.
• And then there was the news we received on Thursday that David will spend 10 days in hospital in November to get a skin graft to replace the skin he lost to surgery in September. Thankfully no cancer was found in all that was taken, but it is a long stay in hospital that will mean, along with two work trips earlier in the month, he will be away about 50% of November. I don't cope well with him being away and I'm sure the anticipation of that is affecting me.

Then yesterday we had almost a whole day without any children at home. They both left before 8am to go to an international cross country competition on the other side of the city and stayed overnight there. It was delightful, but also just plain weird, to have the day to ourselves. We had a great day. But it's going to take some adjusting to move from the busyness of intense parenting over the last couple of decades to couplehood living again. Thankfully the change will not happen overnight!

So, I've probably got good reasons to feel a little off-kilter.

I was challenged and encouraged yesterday during church by this passage:

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal (2 Cor. 4:16-18 ESV).

I've taken a bit of a look back this morning at some of the blog posts I've written in the last few years about the challenges of slowing down and not being totally consumed with the need to be needed or frantically busy. I found this one from March two years ago, it includes a quote from our Field Director, who passed away about six weeks after he wrote this. It talks about the importance of slowing down:

Many of us these days seem to live life simply moving from one thing to the next with little time in between to catch our breath, far less having time to reflect, meditate or even spend some unrushed time with God. And that can creep into family life, church life, corporate life, organisational life. . . But while we might desire to be ‘about the Lord’s work’ to use an older phrase, that does not seem to me to mean that we should simply be dashing around in a constant blur of activity.

Busyness can certainly help us avoid unpleasant emotions and rescue us from having to think too hard. But I don't think that's how God intends us to live. Live life with a passion and not slothfully, for sure, but not so busily that we can't keep our eyes fixed on him and lose any ability to hear what he's calling us to do. All that being said, I need to get better at living it.

But as for now: I need to get back to the less urgent (and potentially less exciting) bits and pieces of my job.

My kitchen

Inspired by a month of posts by expats about their kitchens by Taking Route Blog #thisglobalkitchen, I'm going to tell you about mine.

My kitchen is not glamorous, but it is functional and I love it. It's bigger than a usual Japanese kitchen, but nowhere near as large as a kitchen would be in the usual three-bedroom house in Australia.

Looking back to the dining room and my corner office from the kitchen sink.

When we first came to Japan, one of the biggest challenges at home was the kitchen. We were in a much smaller place (we were a smaller family then, just one boy less than two-years-old). What drove me crazy was no bench space (i.e. "counter"). It is pretty typical, we've discovered, for a Japanese kitchen to have little food preparation space. The only place we could prepare food in our first Japanese kitchen, was on the sink-drainage area. 

Thankfully this kitchen (and house) is much larger, though I'm not sure if I would have appreciated it as much if I hadn't had had to work in a much smaller space (that first kitchen shared a tiny room with the laundry and shower ante-room).

When visitors who know Japan come to visit, one of the first things they usually comment on is our kitchen. It has an unusual amount of storage room. These built-in floor-to-ceiling cupboards are unusual, what's more, a crafty previous resident has added tasteful internal curtains to these glass-doors. But there are other unusual elements that we've added.

This house has had numerous missionaries live in it previously. It is not owned by a Christian and was not purpose-built for foreigners. However, when we moved in the kitchen had a most unusual element: an ancient American gas oven/stove. It didn't fit, being far deeper than these cabinets were. In our small attic we found the original under-stove cabinet that was removed to put the oven in. A former missionary had brought an oven with them from the US!

I loved that dinosaur of an oven, even though we had to practically lie on the floor to light it. Its large four-burner top provided pseudo-bench space that was so valuable. Ovens are not usual in a Japanese kitchen. Most people use toaster ovens and microwave ovens with convection functions, which are obviously much smaller.

Alas, four years ago that oven started leaking gas. You can read about that drama here. The Japanese repairmen who came to look at it had never seen the likes of it! There was much sucking in of breath over the teeth (a clear sign in Japan that there is a major problem).

The end result of that drama was that we lost that old oven and bought this Japanese oven and three-burner stovetop to replace the dinosaur—that was not a cheap decision. We reasoned that we'd be living here for some years yet with our three growing boys (they were aged 10, 13, and 16 at that time). One of the things I love to do is cook and bake, I really struggled with the idea of going back to just two burners and only using my microwave/convection oven (even though it was the biggest you can buy here). 

This Japanese oven is the most spectacular oven I've ever used. It heats up quickly and cooks very reliably. I'm still holding out hope that when we move from here we can take the oven/stove with us to a new place, but know that that might not be a reasonable expectation as we'd like to move into a smaller place after all our boys move out.

We have underfloor storage. This is a cool thing about Japanese houses (not sure if they exist in apartments). A place to put food and stores under the floor is very cool.

Underfloor storage.

Oil, potatoes, and cereal in this side.

Breadmaker with rubbish "drawers" underneath.

Other elements of the kitchen that I love are the breadmaker (we make our own sliced bread), the chest freezer, and a large fridge with lots of compartmentalised drawers. All these make providing food for my family much easier.

You'll see under the breadmaker the plastic drawers that help us sort rubbish as we dispose of it. The top drawer is glass and tin, then "unburnable" (i.e. doesn't fit any other category), and the bottom is paper and cardboard. The rest is in the bin on the other side of the kitchen next to the stove: burnable (raw food, scraps, etc.) and recyclable plastics.

Look closely and you will see that the lino is torn in places. The mat in front of the sink helps to hide that. Also, there is a gas-outlet in the floor that we don't use, but it dangerous for foot traffic, so it's covered with a carpet tile! The wall tiles are an ugly green, and the trim on all the doors are hard to clean.

It's not a shiny, new kitchen with fancy appliances. It's not particularly space-efficient and it's challenging for two people to work in, but it works for us and I'm very thankful for God's provision. Not just of this kitchen, but this house. Next year it will be ten years since we moved in here. It's an old house that has it's flaws and quirks, but we've done the majority of our child-raising here and we're thankful for the stability and convenience it affords (it's close to school, church, shops, and the train station).

Japan is not an easy place to live and work as a missionary, but we have many things to be thankful for in terms of ease of living and stability of society. Indeed "The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places" (Ps 16:6 NIV).