Looking ahead to 2023

I've had a full week to start the year, though perhaps not technically "busy". We spent NYE with friends playing board games and enjoying just being together again. These are our camping buddies and we've spent several NYEs together over the last few years. They hadn't seen our eldest son since his last visit here 3 ½ years ago, and we only got one camping trip in in 2022, way back in March. 

Then it was church on Sunday and recovering from "the night before"; I have never been good at staying up late. One Monday afternoon we welcomed a school friend of our eldest son, the only friend of his from high school who is around this area at the moment. Then just after lunch on Tuesday we farewelled them both—our son to Australia and his friend, well we're not sure when we'll see him again. 

It was great to spend 10 days with our eldest. We've kept in pretty good contact with him over the last two years, with weekly video chats on Sunday afternoons, but there's nothing like living together, talking over multiple meals, during car journeys and walks to really find out how things are.

Tuesday afternoon David took a colleague and his wife to the airport bus and then we headed into town for the evening to meet friends and see a big winter illumination on a race course. Wednesday was a recovery day, and then yesterday and today we've each spent time downtown with friends over meals. Oh, and there's been cricket since Wednesday too (when it's not raining in Sydney). I've been avoiding going back to work, but the deadlines are catching up to me and this morning I've had to finally get a bit more serious.

Therefore, it's taken till the sixth day of the new year to find the space to write this, though I've been thinking about it all week. 

Thinking about the future like this is
a little bit like looking at an unsigned path in
the woods. You have thoughts about where
it might lead, what you might encounter on 
the way, but you really have no clear idea
at all!

In fact, we've been thinking about 2023 for several years. It's the year that our youngest son finishes high school, which is significant for anyone, but for missionaries it can be massive. Juggling the education of our children as well as a specific demand of our job (that we periodically spend significant chunks of time in our home country) has gotten harder and harder as the boys got older. Australian and American high school education systems aren't super compatible, and jumping between countries with children isn't fun at the best of times. So, we've been juggling home assignments to try to minimise the disruption to their education. 

This year after June, for the first time in 20 years, we will have no one at school. I was asked yesterday what I was looking forward to in 2023, and my first answer was "my son's graduation". The lady who asked was surprised, she doesn't have children herself, but noted that many people don't look forward to their last child leaving school. So, maybe I'm weird . . . but I'm putting it out here anyway, because there are probably people out there as weird as me, but don't want to say so.

However, the whole process of doing a home assignment is no picnic, even if no one needs to be enrolled in school. It involves a lot of admin and planning, changing jobs, international travel, using up all the stuff in our pantry, and moving house. And in our case this year, moving out of the house we've lived in for 13 years, downsizing, and putting the remaining goods into storage for the year. Then, when we get to Australia, getting stuff out of storage there, finding a rental (which isn't easy at the moment in south-east Queensland), (probably) finding second-hand furniture and white goods, and settling into a new house for however many months we have left once we've done all that. 

During this 2023-2024 home assignment, instead of school issues, we also have the challenge of helping start our two youngest boys transition to independent life in Australia. A task for which no manual has been written . . . although we've done it once before, each young adult is different and it's not going to look the same for any of our boys.

Wow, I've just looked back at the equivalent post I wrote at the start of 2020. Pre-pandemic. Yep, none of us saw what was coming that year. I had an idea of what I thought the next couple of years might include, especially surrounding international travel and what my older two children might be doing. The ensuing years have made me much more tentative about making predictions about the future. However the one long-term thing that I did have in that 2020 post that seems to be accurate was going on home assignment in 2023.

It is the fifth time we've gone on home assignment. I now understand why more experienced missionaries don't like doing it (something I didn't get when I was in my first term and so, so homesick). It's a lot of work and thoroughly exhausting. But there's always mixed feelings about changing countries. In some ways I'm more comfortable in Australia, and there are special people there who I'm looking forward to spending time with.

So as I look at the first half of the year, I see a lot of hard work. I'll be continuing on with my usual job, but at the same time planning on how to hand that over to others. I'll also begin working on the admin of planning for the second half of the year: a lot of email as I organise different speaking opportunities and other things related to our move. We'll have to work on things like material to present at said speaking opportunities too. We're also still parents, so, in addition to supporting our kids emotionally, there are things like sports events to attend, and then various end-of-senior-year events too. Oh, and did I mention downsizing and packing?

Two "big rocks" in the first half of the year are:

• two-night women's retreat in March
• OMF Japan field conference in June in Hokkaido

I've also got couple of "big rocks" tentatively in the calendar for the second-half of the year.

Plus a big birthday milestone in April, one that seems like it should apply to someone else a lot older than me . . . but then I do have a 23 year old son . . . 

We're also hoping to go camping at the end of March, and maybe in July also.

Close friends tell me I tend to be quite "regular", as in, I do hold to a fairly steady schedule of my own volition. My life is fairly full and I'm pretty happy with what I've been doing, so I don't see the advent of a new year as a need to change much. And so things that I plan to continue to do as regularly as I can in 2023 are:

• regularly walk with my husband
• study Japanese
• read lots of books
• listen to English sermons at least once a week
• stay in touch with close friends regularly, and when I can, in person
• bake
• writing (though I've got a project currently, beyond that and this blog, I don't have a specific writing goal for 2023)

I've picked up my long-term cross-stitch project during the last three weeks also, but I think I'm probably reaching a little if I think that that's going to be something that I do much of in the next six months . . . though it would be nice to get it finished before we come back to Japan in 2024 (Lord willing) as a couple for the first time!