Books I've read recently

I wrote back in October that our schedule was less busy than we were used to, that has continued. While we came back to Australia with some big audacious goals (the main one being getting our sons settled into living independently here, especially our middle son who has extra challenges), achieving those goals hasn't been a full 40-hr a week job each week. On top of that, for various reasons we've had fewer church and other groups to visit. We've also not been tied to school drop-offs and pick ups. And then our sons moved out in February and we discovered that we had even more time available to us (meal prep and clean-up took less time, for example). And then, obviously, we had two months of leave! It's been a really different home assignment.

So I've had to figure out how to use my time meaningfully when it's not full of the daily deadlines that were the reality of my work in the last several years in publishing. And with all of the above changes, there has been many a day when I've woken up wondering just what I was going to do to fill my time that day.

A few possibilities for how to use my time were taking on further study or volunteering more of my time to our church or another organisation. None of these were ideal because of the lack of consistency I could offer. Particularly with two months of long service leave thrown in there. We haven't been at our church every week because we have had to speak at other churches some Sundays. We've also only got one car, and some weeks it's been pretty busy as David helped each of our sons get the necessary driving hours to qualify to take a driving test, or been helping them with other tasks.

So in the end I haven't volunteered much anywhere. One thing I have done, however, is read. I have read more non-fiction than I usually do, as an attempt at personal growth. Some of the non-fiction books I've read during our HA include:

• Trusting God by Jerry Bridges
• The Bible Jesus Read by Philip Yancey
• A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World by Paul E. Miller
• Writely or Wrongly: An unstuffy guide to language by Joanne Anderson
• How Writing Works: a field guide to effective writing by Roslyn Petelin
• First You Write a Sentence: The Elements of Reading, Writing . . . and Life by Joe Moran
• The Man Time Forgot: A Tale of Genius, Betrayal, and the Creation of Time Magazine by Isaiah Wilner
• My Dream Time: A Memoir of Tennis and Teamwork by Ash Barty
• The Container Victory Garden: A Beginner's Guide to Growing Your Own Groceries by Maggie Stuckey
• Australian History in Seven Questions by John Hirst

It's turned out to be a great way to use my time on those days that I have extra hours to fill. The three I have read most recently are pictured here (not in the list) and they've all been very good.

Bullies and Saints was an excellent overview of the history of the church from the perspective of the good and not-so-good things that people who call themselves Christians have done over the centuries. I love history and really appreciated the perspective that the author, John Dickson, was able to provide. It definitely provided perspective on our current cultural climate, and the place of Christianity in it. His podcast Undeceptions is also excellent and I recommend it for thoughtful, well-researched content that addresses many things aside from history, including really difficult contemporary topics.

David and I read the Keller book on marriage together after dinner for a few weeks. It's also given us a better perspective on marriage in several areas. I definitely recommend it to any married person along with singles, pretty much any adult, but particularly those interested in a Christian perspective on marriage.

I'm not quite finished the Carson book on A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers. It isn't the easiest book, but it's really good. For years I've used Paul's prayers in various Biblical letters to help me when, on our prayer schedule, I am allocated the task to pray for people who I barely know or haven't been in recent touch with. So this book about Paul's prayers has given me new insight and new encouragement to pray for people prayers that have more depth. For example, rather than  to  say "Please bless Sue", to pray that God would give her power to know his love deeper and to grow in her knowledge of God and love for others. 

To keep myself ploughing through the above book (and others before it), I've tried to set aside specific reading times. For example, a daily reading time over coffee mid afternoon out on my deck. Top tip: over the years I've found it easier to get things that aren't top of my priorities/joys done (like house cleaning and reading more difficult books) if they are tied to a schedule or some other marker.

Reading has many, many benefits. It's a great way to help you with conversation too: the number of times that I've brought up things in a book I've recently read could not be counted! A book like the one by Ash Barty is a great potential conversation starter in a variety of situations.

I'm grateful for the quieter weeks we've had this year, and the opportunity to invest in reading in a way that I haven't had a chance to do for nearly 25 years!

Constancy in the midst of change

I like to come up with one main thing that a blog post is about, it makes for easier reading (and writing). But this week I've been a bit stuck. And it's a symptom of transition. We are, day by day, growing less settled and more drawn into the depths of transition. Yes, it's what I wrote about last week and many times in the past. Missionary life comes with constant change. If it isn't us changing it's someone else. But in this case it's us.

This week we've become more embroiled in practical decisions about both sides of the equation:

Australia

• Meeting up with people "before we go"
• Finalising payments like rent
• Doing things that need to be done before we go, like medical appointments, final things to help our sons get settled
• Talking over logistical things like moving house and selling our car
• Starting to sort through boxes—I threw out many years worth of X-rays this week and found a photo of myself as an infant in the arms of my maternal grandparents.

Japan

This is the largest space in the apartment.
By Australian standards it's tiny, 
especially the kitchen, bathroom,
and laundry. But it's a lovely, bright
apartment and we'll enjoy the challenge
of figuring out how to furnish it.
Watch this space in August!

• We had the first look at photos of our new apartment and started to think more concretely about furniture
• Getting a couple of quotes for moving our stuff into our new apartment
• Finalising details on David's contract with the school
• Renting a car space across the road from our apartment (the apartment does not come with its own space) and thinking about what car we might like to buy
• Thinking about the logistics of that first week in Japan

And less immediately concrete details—I had a meeting with key members of my magazine editing team to talk about the future structure of the team and how I'd best contribute to that.

Along with all of that goes emotions, of course. But probably I'm feeling more excited and not too tremulous. This is the first time we've done this as a couple without any children, and it is significantly simpler (no schooling to consider, just for starters). We've also got the advantage of knowing that we've lived in Japan pretty successfully for many years now, so there's a lot that isn't scary at all.

Emotions are mixed because parts of our heart live on both sides of the ocean now. There are people in both places who we love. There are things about each place that we love.

But, I've written about this before. If you've read along for a few years, you've heard it before!

Change is constant in all of our lives. But as cross-cultural workers we've learned to expect a more frequent and larger changes. Therefore, this article resonated with me: https://velvetashes.com/the-constant-of-change/

The author reflects:

If I have learned anything in my life, it’s to embrace the highs and lows, clinging to the promise that God is with me, will never leave me, and will always provide for me in unexpected and incredible ways.

And she quotes one of my favourite hymns, which is very relevant at this time:

Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father,
There is no shadow of turning with Thee;
Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not;
As Thou hast been, Thou forever wilt be.
Great is Thy faithfulness! Great is Thy faithfulness!
Morning by morning new mercies I see;
All I have needed, Thy hand hath provided;
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!

I'm clinging to the one who never changes (God), along with experiencing the comfort that comes with remembering that he has provided all that I've needed and trusting that that also will never change. That is very soothing in the midst of the noise that echoes around in my head at transition times.

But I might not be a soothing person to talk to. My head is full of messy noise that can mean it's hard to concentrate sometimes. If you catch me in the wild, asking "How are you feeling?" might meet with any number of answers!