Yesterday's joys

I travelled to our monthly mission meeting on the other side of Tokyo yesterday. The difference was that I was accompanied by our three boys (David had a staff work day). I think this may have been the first time I've done that long journey (three trains, a 40km journey that takes about 1 hr 10 min from station to station) on my own with them. I certainly wouldn't have attempted it, even six years ago. See my post about tackling Tokyo trains from October 2011 here.

It was fairly smooth, if I choose not to remember we were late for the first train I'd planned to catch because the guys couldn't get themselves organised and the grumpy attitude of one boy for the first half an hour of our journey and another grumpy boy for a portion of the trip home.

Because it was a public holiday we had a number of missionary kids who usually can't make it to these meetings (more than a dozen). We mums did a little bit of conspiring to get the teens there, but I'd best not say too much about that! Overall we had more than 50 people there, quite a large gathering for us.

There was much more food on this table at our
mission's headquarters yesterday, much to
our boys' satisfaction.

The meeting started with some fun games and was followed by a short, applicable-to-all devotion and some singing. Of course it involved food (a teenage boy magnet), coffee and other hot drinks (a mum magnet, especially after making my way across Tokyo on the trains :D), and socialising too!

We broke into smaller groups for an hour before lunch and the older kids (all boys) had a good time with one of our missionary men. In fact they'd had such a good time, that they barely took time for lunch. Someone brought Dutch Blitz and they played that way past the official ending of the event. As a result, I had lots of time to talk with people because it seemed that a number of others weren't rushing home either. It was delightful. I had a super time.

In the end, though, I thought we should start heading home and the most introverted of our family was heard to say, "You know we've been here for ages when Mum comes to get us to go home." (They were on the second floor of the building, and I'd been on the ground floor.) Apparently I have a reputation!

We had a good trip home. I was thrilled, though, to run into a friend and her son (best friend of our youngest) in on last train. We got to stand together (yes, typical Tokyo train travel) and chat for a good half-an-hour in the midst of our busy day. Girlfriend-conversation was just a bit more fun than the interactions I was having with the boys by that point.

It turns out that we were also able to solve a problem for her: buying wrestling shoes for her son who will need them at Saturday's middle school tournament. She'd been having various difficulties and it was very satisfying to be able to to help with that.

A very people-filled day. Perfect fuel for me as I headed into four days of computer-based work starting today.

Moving right along into 2017 at speed

Phew, the year is only eight-days old I'm already having trouble getting here to write! Seriously, if I don't write regularly I find it hard to tame my thoughts down to a manageable blog post.

Last Thursday school started again and I started back at my work in greater earnest. Since then life has sped up quite a deal, as our eyes turned away from the slow-paced winter holidays to the high-paced months ahead. Today feels a world away from last Sunday, New Year's Day.

In preparation for the upcoming weeks, I made a triple-batch
of chocolate chip cookies. Most of them have been safely
stowed in our chest freezer.

After the first day of school it was straight back into wrestling training for our two boys and David too, as assistant coach. David and our eldest didn't get home until after 7pm! I spent a lot of time catching up on email, and other matters related to the magazine that is in the design phase.

On Friday I spent a lot of time getting organised for the coming magazine issue as well as answering questions from our design team. In the afternoon I spent a couple of hours with my language exchange partners and then greeted our weekend guest at the train station. She's an OMF missionary based in Sapporo, who supports missionaries with children. She slept here Friday and Saturday nights, using us as a base to go out and meet a couple of other OMF families as well as catching up with us.

I'm very aware that this weekend is the last wrestling-free weekend until the last weekend in February! That is both scary and exciting. I can see a whole lot of stuff that needs to be done in the coming weeks and I'm going to get tired. I wish I could bank the extra sleep I got over Christmas and bring it out later this month when I need it! 

But on the other hand I'm looking forward to seeing our guys (our two boys as well as the rest of the 20+ wrestlers on the team) wrestle. One of the exciting things are plans coming together for me to go with the team to Korea in February for our eldest son's last high school meet. It will be a marathon: three days of wrestling! But I'm excited that I have the opportunity to experience it firsthand this time, rather than via disjointed messages and emails like I did last year.

Food for thought

Usually I share my own words here, but I've come across some good words of others in the last 24 hours that I want to share.

First is musings from the hospital bed of our mission's Japan director. He's battling two kinds of blood cancer. The post is pretty self-explanatory and very insightful.

Life in Limbo by David Ferguson
Most of us probably live our lives with a reasonable degree of predictability. There is routine. We make plans and generally they come to pass. We might even set goals and seek to fulfil them. Tomorrow will come, next week will come and while we know that things can change suddenly, generally life moves on with some measure of certainty. 

What happens though when that certainty is taken away? What if you don't know what's going to happen? What if there are questions but no answers - or at least no answers that are very definitive? Not easy if you're the kind of person who likes certainty, who makes plans and who wants to know what's going to come next. For the last months we've lived with that uncertainty - life is in limbo!

My particular case is rare. I don't just have one blood cancer (and that type is unusual enough) but another more aggressive one too which makes my situation even more unique and more uncertain. It's hard even for the doctors to predict and sometimes the answer is ‘we don't know!’ One doctor friend back home said this which sums it up well : ‘humanly speaking there remains a lot of uncertainty about what may happen - it's a high stakes battle and there usually aren't any guarantees’. 

So how do you deal with that and live in limbo? Well, one way is just to let go and accept that however much we might like to be in control of our lives and know with some certainty what's going to happen, that will not be the case. You have to learn to live with uncertainty. You need to take a day at a time knowing tomorrow might bring different news which may even just add to the uncertainty! All of that is easier said than done. We can know times of peace as well as times of anxiety, fretting and simply wanting to know where it's all going!

There is something else though and that is learning more and more to trust the One who does know the beginning from the end and who knows exactly what is happening and what will happen. Maybe one of the purposes of this whole time is simply that as a family we might learn that valuable lesson even more. There is a great verse in Proverbs which says - ‘Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails’. Sometimes it is like opening both hands to God, one crying to him with our heart’s desires and the other saying ‘may your will be done’. And in the midst of it all trusting in our unchangeable and faithful God is the only place to go if we want real certainty. ‘Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see’. As a follower of Jesus, there may well be many things in our lives we don't understand or for which there don't seem to be answers but as we lift our eyes to our God and fix our eyes on the unseen things, we find a certainty which will never fail us.

Wise words from the depths of a really difficult situation. We've had situations of waiting and "limbo" before, but none that have been life-threatening. Our biggest time of limbo was when we were preparing to come to Japan. We spent a couple of years waiting for financial-clearance-green-light from our mission. We learnt much in that time of waiting that has stood us in good stead in the years since.

As the years go by, we've also prayed for many who have been in life-threatening situations. Some have had miraculous recoveries or rescues, others have instead had their lives on this earth ended. For those who were Christians, their miraculous healing didn't happen in front of us, but instead as they entered heaven. 

So, knowing that God heals and has the power to work in these situations can make it difficult to know how to pray. Here I found another couple of lengthy quotes as I read Prayer by Timothy Keller last night.

Augustine [a great theologian in the first millennia after Jesus] . . . argues that not only can we grow in prayer in spite of these difficulties but because of them. He concludes his letter [to a young widow friend who'd lost almost everything in the sacking of Rome in 410AD] by asking his friend, "Now what makes this work [of prayer] specially suitable to widows but their bereaved and desolate condition?" Should a widow not, he asked, "commit her widowhood, so to speak, to her God as her shield in continual and most fervent prayer?" What a remarkable statement. Her sufferings were her "shield"--they defended her from the illusion of self-sufficiency and blindness that harden the heart, and they opened the way for the rich, passionate prayer life that could bring peace in any circumstance. He calls her to embrace the situation and learn to pray." (p88)

These are again Augustine's thoughts on prayer:

Even the most godly Christian can't be sure what to ask for when we are enduring difficulties and suffering. "Tribulations...may do us good... and yet because they are hard and painful...we pray...that they may be removed from us." Should we pray, then, for a change in circumstances or just for strength to endure them? Augustine points to Jesus' own prayer in Gethsemane, which was perfectly balanced between honest desire ...and submission to God...He points also to Romans 8:26, which promises that the Spirit will guide our hearts and prayers when we are groaning and confused_and God will hear them even in their imperfect state. So, Augustine concludes, pour out your heart's desire, but remember the wisdom and goodness of God as you do so. (pp87-88)

Food for thought, all of it.

Toilet signs

I saw this today in a cubicle at our local station. I'm wondering why they felt the need to explain how to flush so many times.

This was next to the above. It's something I'm not sure is found in any other country: a recording of water flowing to cover up the sound of you doing your business. Apparently Japanese women are a bit shy about this. It's a water-saving device, some women apparently tend to flush prematurely to cover up their bodily noises.

Cafe outing

This is a kangaroo cup! Unfortunately for this lefty, it
is a right-handed cup! But it still tasted delicious. I did
end up with a bit of a buzz from both the coffee and the
chocolate, though.

On Tuesday we took the boys on an outing downtown. Ten years ago . . . hey, even five, a holiday outing for our family would be to a park or a playground. Now, the outing we can get the most enthusiasm for is a cafe or restaurant! I didn't see that coming. Life has indeed taken on a different hue as we move deeper and deeper into teenage years.

18 months ago we discovered a cafe downtown called Max Brenner. Actually while we were in Australia we discovered that Chocolate Cafes were a thing, and a "thing" that our boys really enjoyed, so we went hunting for something similar in Tokyo. Max Brenner is what we found.

We also found this sort of outing is much more expensive than a trip to the local park! But this Christmas we'd been given a financial gift by a supporting church to spend on ourselves, so we figured this was one thing that we'd all enjoy.

It nearly went wrong because the first branch we went to was shut for the New Year. But thankfully another one, in a more popular shopping area, was open, and only a couple of train journeys away. Such is the joy of living in a large city with several sizeable CBD areas and a great transport system.

We enjoyed a chocolate fondue at around noon. It took this long to get everyone out of bed, travel an hour by train to the wrong cafe, travel to the right cafe, and then line up for a little while. It was so rich that hardly any lunch was needed after that (though we did stop at the local convenience store to top up teenage tummies). Outrageously delicious!

The sky is often a beautiful blue at this time of year.
Something we rarely see in other seasons. This was me
playing around with my phone while waiting for the
guys to top up.

I'm intrigued by the clever ways Japan incorporates seating into their urban landscapes. This is especially important when you consider that it isn't considered polite to walk along eating at the same time. This convenient "railing" was outside the convenience store on the busy, famous shopping street (Omotesando). We stopped for a short while while the two big boys ate a "small" snack for lunch. The rest of us were coping with a sugar/chocolate overdose and didn't eat anything till we got home an hour later, and then we only ate fruit and nuts.

Great memories!

Calendars

I love calendars. My preferred schedule keeper is a full month calendar page, even the portable diary I keep in my bag is a full month to a page. I like to have a bigger picture in mind as I try to keep my and my family's schedule at a reasonable pace.

But I also love the changing scenes of photographic calendars: amusing, beautiful, nastukashii (Japanese for a good memory, nostalgic), inspiring etc.

We scored a lot of calendars this year and I did a tour round the house to take photos of them for you.

This was a freebie from a local shop where we buy some of our meat. The cover sheet was entirely raw meat. Something that would cause my boys to start salivating! Thankfully this page is a little more balanced. And yes, I put it up in our kitchen.

An Australian friend teaching in Cambodia sent us this beautiful little prayer calendar.

This is a standard in our downstairs toilet. It's a little cringe-worthy: why does a Japanese calendar have white kids on it? But it's useful (as is the one above) to keep in touch with the Japanese public holidays. CAJ's holidays don't often coincide and it's easy to get mixed up.

A lovely calendar with photos from our home state. This is a natsukashii-kind of calendar. It also has information on it about school holidays and public holidays in Australia, a little connection with "home".

A pretty one that I can see from my desk.

This we gave to our middle son and is in his bedroom, photos from Japan.

This is a new attempt to keep a track of our increasingly busy family. With columns for each member of the family (though the first column I am sharing with the "family" schedule).

And this is the most important calendar and sits on my right side next to my computer. It's the master copy of what's going on from my perspective. It's got my schedule on it plus family and school stuff. Most of what's on this is also on the calendar in my bag so that I can schedule things when I'm out as well. This year it is a Psalms calendar with photos from Israel. Excellent!

Looking ahead to 2017

I don't feel like I can truly start blogging this year till I've written this post. So here goes.

We saw the new year in just a couple of hundred metres from our house with friends. Friends who are also a teacher/non-teacher combo. Who also have kids who do the same three sports ours do. And who we went camping with in 2016. So in terms of people who we've spent the most time with in 2016, they probably are top runners. Long days at wrestling and athletics meets, plus long drives together to and from those as well as cross country. It is great to have friends with whom we have a fair bit in common with. Because for most of our time in Japan we've felt like the odd ones out.

When we arrived in Japan we went straight to language school. At the language school we were the only ones with kids for most of our time (everyone else was single or childless couples except for short periods on either end of our 2 ¼ yr time of study). It was a lean time in our mission, in terms of new arrivals, and so it remains true that there aren't so many around our age/stages. We're also Australian. There are relatively few Aussies in Japan or in our mission (though some younger ones have arrived in the last half a dozen years or so), and very few at CAJ. There are no other OMF staff at CAJ just now either.

To have other families around a similar stage of life and with similar interests as us to "do life with" seems to be something unusual for us and worth pointing out and being thankful for. Especially with teenagers, who, of all ages, seem to most struggle when there aren't people similar to them.

But I ramble. As we walked home from our friends' house at 12.30am on New Year's Day, we reflected lightly on what was to come this year:

• our eldest graduates from high school
• he also turns 18, the legal age for an adult in his passport country
• he'll apply for university later this year (you can't do it until September in Australia) and probably be preparing to leave home this time next year
• between graduation and potentially starting university in Australia in Feb 2018 he'll be seeking to work part-time in Japan. We're yet to see what that will look like, but possibly several different things.
• in September David and I hit 20 years of marriage
• our middle son will graduate from middle school and start high school (for the second time in his life—he spent six-months in high school in Australia at the start of 2015, where 7th grade is high school)
• our younger two boys turn 12 and 15!

Additionally: 

• an overseas trip for three of us next month to Korea for our eldest son's last high school wrestling competition
• we've got three potential camping trips planned across the year

Other than that, there isn't much drama "planned" for the year. Next year will be a different story, with a home assignment planned from June, but 2017 will hopefully be fairly stable (though predictably busy), though.

There aren't many changes that I'm planning to make. I'm not in the habit of making New Year Resolutions (see my post New Year's Day is just another day).

I'm going to strive to "keep my eyes always on the Lord" (Ps. 16:8a NIV). Praying that no matter what comes my way "I will not be shaken" (vs. 8b).