Culminating events

Before we came to the Christian Academy in Japan in 2005 I'm pretty certain I'd never heard the phrase "culminating events". I'm not even sure if we had a phrase when I was growing up that collectively described the various events that happen at the end of a school year.

In any case, last week we were in the middle of culminating events at school, and, of our last son graduating from high school. The week looked like:

Monday—last day of classes

Tuesday—final assessment in the form of a formal presentation about his year-long project about mental health and exercise in adolescents. The audience was a panel of two teachers, plus around 10 middle and high school students. We, his parents, were also invited.

Wednesday—parent-organised banquet for seniors and their parents (plus siblings in some cases).

Thursday—graduation rehearsal and farewell parade through the school in graduation gowns and caps.

Friday—graduation before a gathering of about 400 people in the school gym. 

Tuesday was full of emotion as we watched our youngest child finish his last assessment. It was all over by 9.30 a.m. and I came home, not quite ready to start work, so I made a cake. Emotional cooking? It was very satisfying to do, and we've all enjoyed the fruits of it.

Photo by Megumi Nakazawa

Wednesday night was the school's traditional banquet, organised by a small group of mums. We got dressed up and took the trains downtown to a Brazilian BBQ restaurant. The meal was spectacular: all-you-can-eat meat cooked in a rotisserie, plus an amazing salad and dessert buffet, plus soft drinks and juice. Of note for some were the whole pineapples, also cooked in the rotisserie. It was a late night, however. We travelled home on crowded trains between 10 and 11 (yes, Tokyo trains at that hour, mid-week, is a sight to be seen). I only got five hours sleep that night.

Thursday was quiet for parents, but the students spent the afternoon at school, rehearsing for graduation and doing a final walk-through of the school (dressed in graduation gowns and hats). Parents were left to their own devices, which for me meant making final decisions on the Summer issue of the magazine before it went to the printer, as well as editing work on the next one, the Autumn issue, plus work on social media posts for the upcoming weeks.

Friday was an emotional day. I tried to fill in the morning with tasks that needed doing but didn't need too much brain. We had significant rain all day and through the night, maybe as much as 200mm, so there were no lovely photo opportunities in the school's lovely courtyard. Also, because there is only a small car park, we walked to school (as usual). I'd already thrown away my rain boots, so I wore sneakers and socks, changing into my black flats when I got there. It was an emotional afternoon as we watched our last child walk across the stage, finishing high school.

The emotions are mixed, mostly happy, but also sad as our son says goodbye to good friends and a place that's been like a home-away-from-home all his life. 

I also think back to the last time we did this, two years ago. The differences are stark: last time was in the middle of the pandemic, so we were masked and sitting in little "islands" apart from one another, and the only people there were the graduating students and their parents, staff who didn't have a specific job stayed home. It had also been many many months since I'd been in a room with that many people, so it felt very odd. This time anyone could come (though the weather held back many, we suspect), so all the staff were there, as well as a number of other students and parents and community members. Though I felt there is another subtle difference that's resulted from the pandemic: there weren't actually many people I knew. I think that's a hole that's partly come from not having community events for a couple of years.

The other difference is much more personal and harder to write about in a public place like this. Our sons are very different in personalities and their journey through high school has been markedly different. Some of that is related to mental health and neurodivergence. Last time significant social anxiety was a very big unseen presence that came along to graduation with us and made just getting through the ceremony a big deal, and one that didn't garner any medals or plaques.

But now we're all quite tired, socially and emotionally. I've come down with a miserable cold and am struggling to get through the brain fog to continue working on my to-do list for this week.

An audaciously big question

I was recently asked to fill in a form for our organisation that included the question “What emotions characterize your last two years?” 

Yep, it’s two-year-review time. I’ve reviewed my attitude and just got on with filling out this form that includes lots of hard questions like this (I’ve been grumpy about this process in the past).

Last time I did this (2021) I also blogged about it. Here’s a portion of what I wrote:

“I don't think I got any surprises as I went through the questions this time, although the question about "What subjects have you thought about in the last two years?" always flabbergasts me: no one really wants a detailed answer to that! “

But back to what kind of emotions characterize the last two years? Words like sadness, isolation, and anxiety came to mind. That’s a different group of words than I usually have written on this form in the past (we’ve done this approximately every two years since 2000).

What’s changed? We’ve experienced loss, but not the sort that immediately comes to mind. I’m currently reading a book called A Grace Disguised (revised and expanded) by Jerry L. Sittser. This book is about how the soul grows through loss and is intertwined with his personal story of losing his mum, wife, and one of his daughters in the same car accident. That kind of loss makes most of us feel shocked and automatically we start comparing. He addresses this upfront in the chapter “Whose loss is worse?” I was encouraged by this:

"There is a different kind of loss that inevitably occurs in all of our lives . . . this kind of loss has more devastating results, and it is irreversible. Such loss includes terminal illness, disability, divorce, rape, emotional abuse, physical and sexual abuse, chronic unemployment, crushing disappointment, mental illness, and ultimately death. If normal, natural, reversible loss is like a broken limb, then catastrophic loss is like an amputation. The results are permanent, the impact in calculable, the consequences cumulative. Each new day forces one to face some new and devastating dimension of the loss. It creates a whole new context for one's life."

I’m so grateful this list includes mental illness and disability. These are the realm of loss that we’ve inhabited in the last couple of years. Not a sudden loss, nor one that has a clear beginning or ending. But a loss nonetheless. It’s helpful for me to acknowledge that this hasn’t been without consequence in my soul and the context of our lives has changed, even if it’s hard to see for the outsider.

I haven’t finished the book yet, but I’m looking forward to seeing where he goes with this. Part of the pain is related to struggling to see what the future holds. The dreams you had in the past no longer give comfort. Sittser writes:

“Loss creates a barren present, as if one is sailing on a vast see of nothingness. Those who suffer loss live suspended between at past for which they long and a future for which they hope. They want to return to the harbor of the familiar past and recover what was lost—good heath, happy relationships, a secure job. Or they want to sail on and discover a meaningful future that promised to bring them life again—successful surgery, a second marriage, a better job. Instead, they find themselves living in a barren present that is empty of meaning. Memories of the past only remind them of what they have lost; hope for the future only taunts them with an unknown too remote even to imagine.”

Some part of the practical, competent me says I’m being melodramatic, that this isn’t true of me, that what’s going on for us isn’t that bad. But then my body quietly whispers signs that I shouldn’t ignore.

I’m sorry if I’m writing in riddles here. I wish I could tell you more details about our story, but it really is not completely my story to tell, so I won’t, at least not right now. And that’s part of the isolation that I’ve felt. Not that I’ve don’t have friends who regularly ask me how I really am. But that I don’t have many people who I feel able to really open up to about how I really feel. I did dump some stuff on an unsuspecting friend the other day: someone I hadn’t seen for three years. She looked shell-shocked, and I realised that I’d overstepped an invisible line . . . Again.

Whenever I get to this point in a blog post I’m confronted by the decision of how to finish it off. There’s no obvious conclusion. But maybe back to the question of emotions that have characterised these last two years. I did have some positive emotions that I might have included in the list, like contentment and joy. Yes, I think loss can teach you that your soul can expand to allow you to experience immense opposites, even at the same time.

I highly recommend this book. In the “praise” section at the start, someone wrote:

“Our souls need stories of how other people have overcome challenges so we can believe that our own hard stories can be ones that testify to our overcoming as well.”

I hope that my blog can be also a vehicle for helping others, in a small way, to believe that they too can make it through hard times.

Good memories, no regrets

Is another wrestling post warranted? I do want to document that my youngest son was crowned Far East Champion of the 215 lb weight class on Wednesday. He wrestled very well and none of his opponents could find much of a chink in his armour. 

It wasn't our first rodeo, as you may know. We went to Korea to watch our eldest son compete in the same competition six years ago. Each of their journeys was quite different. Our eldest did a lot of off-season wrestling in non-school clubs, and also had a two-year rival who he had wrestled many times and not always won (though his rival didn't beat him during our son's senior year, he did make him work hard for the victories), so when they faced off in the semifinal and again in the final, the result was definitely unknown. 

Our youngest son hasn't been able to do anywhere near the same amount of wrestling during his high school years, for various reasons, including injury and a pandemic. He has spent a lot of time in the gym, though, building up strength and body mass. At the start of the tournament he was also unbeaten so far in the season, but it's also not his greatest passion, so in some ways the stakes didn't feel as high. 

Although no one told my body that. I had the same physiological reactions: lost sleep, messed up digestion, raised heart rate, general shakiness and difficulty concentrating. When I'm at a wrestling tournament, I can't read (and I'm a reading addict), nor can I even feasibly play a game; we tried to play Scrabble on the second day, but struggled. Two nights of waking at 2am and not really falling deeply back to sleep, plus two days of sitting in a noisy gym, really did a number on me. I was glad to not have an international flight and then travel on trains back from the airport like I did six years ago, but it's been hard to get back to work these last couple of days.

One way to tell that you're at a gym

hosting a wrestling tournament...

you find this on the back of the toilet

cubicle door.

It was fun to go away with David, even if it was for two days of wrestling! We enjoyed doing this together, and shared passions are important as you move towards a time when your kids all leave home. We made great memories and I have no regrets. Oh, and it was fabulous being able to support our son like this.

One fun memory centres around hair. Our son's hair is now wavy and long (below his shoulders), definitely tricky for wrestling, where you can't use anything but hairbands and product to secure it. His brothers have always kept their hair short, so we've never dealt with this before. I've never had much to do with my boys’ hair, actually! But on Monday one of the first things our son said to me when we saw him was, "Can you braid my hair?" Wow! I've had short hair for nearly 12 years and I can't actually remember if I've ever braided someone else's hair . . . I wasn't that kinda girl. 

Neither of us had a comb and my first go at it was straight after he'd warmed up, so he was sweaty! We didn't have hairspray and only two hair-ties, so it got messy pretty quickly after he helped a teammate warm up for a match (they use their heads quite a lot). He wanted me to redo it then, but we weren't sure when his first match would be, and I was already shaky. Braiding hair with shaky hands isn't recommended. 

I was particularly nervous that I'd get partway done and he'd be called up for his match. There's no waiting if you're called. It's something that new wrestlers (and their parents) have to learn about a tournament: there's no timetable, you simply wait for your name to be called, and it can be excruciating (and hard to figure out when to eat). Once you're called, you've got to hoof it to register that you're present and ready to go, with all the gear you need (in your wrestling singlet and shoes and warm-up clothes, plus a water bottle and headgear). This tournament was well organised and had wrestlers waiting "on deck" about three bouts ahead. A bout can last 20 seconds or over six minutes, but they don't tolerate delays.

In any case, I couldn't see myself doing a decent job of braiding his hair in that situation, so I went for a "first aid" solution. My networking came in handy: I knew the mum of one of the female wrestlers, so I went to find her and ask if her team (which had several girls with long hair) had any hairspray. She went right to work and found a girl quickly who dug around in her bag, pulling out not just hairspray but something that looked like mascara. It had a wand that you pull across the top of hair that is "done" to glue those flyaways down—I had to ask her how to use it. Her coach, who I also know, was sitting nearby quietly laughing as I explained how I only had boys and needed help here. She was great!

Well, it worked, and he made it through his first match without distracting hair in his face. Then we had time, and I had another go at braiding it and did slightly better.

The next morning when we met in the gym (our room wasn't near the team), I had a third go, before his final. This time I brought a comb I'd snaffled from our hotel bathroom and handed him some "action" hairspray that I'd bought the night before at the mall near the hotel, and instructed him on how to use it. Our boys haven't grown up with sisters, and he was only six when I cut my hair short . . . there are some things they just don't know!

It's a good thing the braiding was for practical purposes, not aesthetics, but I was pleased that because I was present I could do this one thing for him. In fact the whole couple of days was very much about being wholly present for our son (and his teammates). It was a joy to have the flexibility to do that.

Oh, and giving my sweaty son a shaky hug after he'd won gold was a highlight too. And he didn't pick me up, like he did his coaches!

These moments when we get to intensely invest in our kids are soon going to get more difficult to find. I'm treasuring them.

Looking back at 2022

The last three years I've used some interesting and challenging questions to write this last post of the year, so I'm going to do it again.

1. What makes this year unforgettable?

The context of the year (coming after nearly two years of a global pandemic) makes it both forgettable and unforgettable. Looking back even at this short distance at the pandemic and it's hard to remember what happened when, because we don't have big hooks to hang them on. There was a lot of "not doing" during 2020, 2021, and early 2022. However this year life began to change, moving closer to "normal", though masks are still a real part of our daily lives in Japan. We started the year not knowing when the borders would open again to tourists in Japan and end the year with our eldest son in our house (without a visa).

We will remember this year as the year we went to Australia in the middle of the year and did lots of fun stuff, as well as some hard stuff. August was a difficult month for me: I farewelled David and our youngest son at the start of the month, contracted COVID within a couple of days, and had some challenging times on my own with our middle son while living in someone else's house.

It was the year that our last son started his last year of high school. And we entered our last year of living in this house we've raised our family in since 2010.

2. What did I enjoy doing this year?

A sunset on a Queensland beach midyear.

A definite highlight was a week's holiday in June/July with two of my best friends and their families at a beach in Australia. Hours and hours to just talk and be together was like being in paradise. I also got to stay with one of them for ten days at the end of August, which was also precious. Plus I got one-on-one time with two other close friends, which I treasured.

Walking after dinner with David is occasionally a chore, but more often than not it's a joy, even when the temperatures aren't really hospitable. I really missed the regular catchup with him when we were in Australia.

We've enjoyed watching cricket again on TV, finally they've begun to provide ways for fans in Japan to subscribe.

3. What/who is one thing/person I'm grateful for?

David. I rely on him a lot, but he also leans on me. We make a good team and don't function as well when we're apart. This year marked our 25th wedding anniversary. I'm so thankful.

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

Again, I've really enjoyed listening to various episodes of the Undeceptions podcast.

I hit my target of 100 books read in 2022. But also discarded more than 20 books as "didn't finish", these were books that I'd invested time in (not just read a couple of pages). I'm getting more fussy about what I read, partly due to getting older, but also because I've got easy access to a whole library of ebooks. One of my loves is browsing in the library from the comfort of my own home (or, to be honest, bed...the place I do much of my reading).

Gentle and Lowly by Dane C. Orlund was a standout non-fiction book this year. I read it slowly over eight months (I usually read a couple of fiction books a week). I think I need to read it again. It's a balm to a weary soul. For example this sentence from Ch 4: "If you are in Christ, you have a Friend who, in your sorrow, will never lob down a pep talk from heaven. He cannot bear to hold himself at a distance."

Sacred Pathways by Gary L. Thomas was another really valuable book to read. I came across it through working on a magazine issue themed "Arts and Ministry". It showed me a few things about myself and my life experiences that I hadn't realised.

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

We had a prolonged passport/visa renewal situation that strung out over several months earlier in the year. In April we very nearly had an illegal immigrant in our household, but managed to dodge that by pleading with the embassy for an appointment. Flying to and from Australia is never fun, but it was pretty miserable this year. We had all our original flights to and from Australia cancelled by airlines. Our journey to Australia took 35 hours, which is more than three times the usual length. We also ended up paying more for peace of mind as we changed our return flights to ensure that we go there before our visas expired. Japan still required negative PCR tests and cancelled flights made that complicated. I worried a lot through all of this. I lost sleep, had headaches, reflux, and various bacterial, viral, and fungal infections, as well as asthma-complicated COVID.

I also worried about our eldest son's lack of employment. His savings ran very low this year before he finally found consistent work. This was very hard to watch. 

6. What is my biggest regret?

Hard question! The Merriam Webster dictionary gives two disparate definitions of regret. One is a verb: to be very sorry for (a mistake) and the other is a noun: sorrow aroused by circumstances beyond one's control or power to repair. 

There are things that happened that I regret, but I didn't have the power to change them. I regret that my family has sometimes caused pain for others, but much of that hasn't been within my power to change. I regret that others haven't understood us (sometimes because they don't have the life experience to help, or they have biases that mean they can't see the full picture), but again, while I may have tried to help others understand, their understanding is beyond my ability to change.

I regret some of the things I've said yes to and later ended up with too much on my plate, often because of things outside of my control or beyond my ability to anticipate what was coming in the future.

7. What's something that has changed about me?

I've begun to more strongly identify as a writer this year. When someone asks me what I do, I say "I'm a writer and an editor". That's an easy summary that doesn't overwhelm people. I haven't written a book, and don't (yet) have an ambition to, but that doesn't mean that I'm not a writer. Writing this post about life with mental illness was a bit of a turning point: https://mmuser.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-truth-about-journeying-with-illness.html

A close friend wrote this to me in early November: "Have been observing a really positive shift in you Wendy, from anxiety and feeling isolated to coming to peace with what is and inviting others into a space of being honest and vulnerable...which alleviates isolation for yourself and them also. Just thought you might like to hear from the outsider's perspective. God is good!! He's been at work and continues to be so." She connected a few dots I was too close to see, God has been good to me in giving me friends who will do that!

8. What surprised me most this year?

Some of the change we longed for during the depth of the pandemic was actually harder to adjust to than we would have imagined. I struggled to interact socially in a group at times this year, even in groups that I previously was fine with.

I was also pleasantly surprised by an opportunity to do an interview (for an article) with four Japanese people in the one afternoon, some of that was in English and some in Japanese.

9. What Bible truths impacted me this year?

A verse that has stuck with me arrived in my mail box in January last year (see here). It's Deuteronomy 31:8 "The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged." This was a great comfort, though I admit that in the midst of my worrying, I should have clung to it more tightly at times!

10. What meta-themes have I thought about this year? (in no particular order)

Life with non-physical illnesses and neurodiversity

Being a parent to adult children when they're struggling

Families as a microcosm of culture

Maintaining margin

My work always provides me with lots to ponder. I've thought about (and worked with) themes like honour–shame culture, rest, arts and ministry, mobilisation, prayer, women, fear of failure, missionary partnership development, nature, aging society, and Japanese festivals and traditions.

Highlights

• As I've already stated above: the week's holiday with friends.
• Being able to see our eldest son again and spend significant time with him. 
• We only got one camping trip in this year, and it was a cold one marred by debilitating pain for one of our friends. But still it was a highlight.
• Seeing gradual improvement and growth in our boys. But it's been slow, small steps.

Lowlights

• This year I've only written 39 blog posts, the fewest in it's 13 ½ year existence. So it's ironic that I'm thinking of myself more as a writer than ever before!
• Watching my kids struggle in various realms and wondering about their futures.
• Feeling tired as a parent.
• The start of the year I was stretched way beyond what was healthy, partly by work, partly by responsibilities to my family, and partly with what had happened in 2020 and 2021.

Other thoughts

For much of this year "it's complicated" would probably have been a good response to people's questions to how I was at the time. I've lived more than half my life doing things in ways that most people don't understand. A call to overseas missions leads to a loss of friends and a loss of potential friends, I learned this early on. It turns out that walking with mental illness and neurodiversity is similar and leads to much misunderstanding, even amongst those you thought would "get it". You'd think I was used to this already, but it turns out I wasn't, and probably never will be. I'm ever so thankful to those who do "get me" and have stuck by through all the challenges this year, even when they didn't understand us or our decisions.

My first post of this year was remarkable in the lack of concrete thoughts I could muster for the coming year (or at least that I was willing to commit to a blog post). I think my first post in 2023 will be quite different to that. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Camping in Tokyo again

It's been a week since we got back from our latest camping trip, so it's about time that I wrote about it. My days have been a bit crazy since then—I've visited the Australian embassy to renew a passport, plus I spent a morning taking my son to a medical appointment and a day packing magazines; not to mention time spent organising various other things related to our mid-year trip to Australia. After taking three days off to camp last week, it's not a surprise that my usual work has been pushed to one side a little bit, so I've been trying to catch up on that too. 

But the camping trip was worth it, as usual. It was also much anticipated, after we failed to secure a campsite last autumn. I still have this lingering feeling, though, that things we plan will get cancelled, so it was hard to get excited up until the actual day that we left.

We were a small group: just me and David, with two friends and two of their kids. It's a bit different camping with just six people (last time we camped with 11, three of which were teenage boys with big appetites). We're thinking about the future, though—for Christmas we bought a tent-for-two, which we enjoyed trying out. We also used less equipment, including a scaled-down kitchen setup.

Our new tent is lower in profile and includes an entry area which can be enclosed on all sides. It made getting in and out easier in the rain. The main challenge was figuring out how to get our bottom halves dressed when our airbed took up almost all the floorspace inside.

The campsite is only 46 km away (still within Tokyo Prefectural borders), but in typical Tokyo fashion, took over two hours to get to. Upside was that there were no toll roads involved, so it was a cheaper journey. In fact the campsite itself is super cheap as it's owned by the Tokyo government. This is actually the very first campsite that we ever used in Japan, back in 2011. We camped there one more time in 2012, but haven't gone back since, for a few reasons. It was fun to return, even if we didn't have our boys with us this time.

It was chilly, though. The forecast on Thursday, our only "whole day" there, was 20C, but I reckon if it made it that high, it was only for about 30 minutes. Mid morning the temperature started dropping and rain set in by mid afternoon and continued all night. We narrowly missed getting snowed on, as you can see from this photo taken from our campsite on Friday morning, snow fell on the slopes above our campsite.

Our friend brought his and his son's mountain bikes and did a couple of rides, but he was frustrated by the strict rules about where they could and couldn't ride. The second night we had to lock both bikes in our van as we were prohibited from keeping them at the campsite and had to put them in the separate car park a few hundred metres away down the mountain.

Food is one of the main events of camping—at least that's my opinion. When we camp with our friends we share meal preparation, which makes it easier, and even a bit more fun. We did one dinner and one breakfast each and took care of our own lunches. The dinner we provided was potatoes in foil with BBQ chicken drumsticks and onion, served with mixed vegetables. Oh so yummy! It was pouring rain at the time, we were very thankful for the solid camp kitchen that gave us even better shelter than our usual tarpaulin-covered kitchen.

Common sassafras

We were up in the mountains, so there were less signs of spring than in warmer Tokyo, so it wasn't a terribly picturesque camp. However a few lonely flowers were out and some trees had leaf buds about to pop.

Hairy bittercress, smaller than my little 
finger nail.

Early on Thursday afternoon we walked down to Lake Okutama to see what we could see. But there wasn't a lot. The wettest part of the year is still ahead of us, so the lake was fairly low and therefore the inlet at the bottom of the campsite looked a bit like a moonscape. We had to walk a long way to get to the water. We have memories of bringing the boys here in summer, really early in our camping journey, and playing in a fast-flowing, shallow stream that feeds into the lake. There wasn't much evidence of that play-place this year. We did find a cool-looking rusted out old jeep, though!

There was moss everywhere.

It's been a while since this access hole was opened!

It's moss, not grass!

Pathway "paved" in moss.

Tall, straight trees lined the mountainsides all around.

Our campsite on Wednesday afternoon, while the sun still shone.

I really didn't take many photos. This trip was like putting on an oxygen mask: much needed for recovery, but I was too tired to do much beyond the necessary.

We're planning a trip to Australia mid-year, so we won't get to camp again until October. Already looking forward to that trip!

 

Looking back at 2020

It's time for my end-of-year blog post. 

Last year on this day I used some interesting questions to reflect on the year: http://mmuser.blogspot.com/2019/12/looking-back-at-2019.html They were good questions, so I'm going to use them again.

1. What makes this year unforgetable? 

Sunset late in 2020 near our house.

• Well that's easy for 2020. But, unusually, probably similar to most of you: it's experiencing a pandemic, something we've only ever glanced over in the history books.
• For the first time I can remember in my life, I've been encouraged to stay home! All of us working from home during March-June was quite a challenge (though David did spend a good portion of that working at school, seeing as he has his own office only 300m walk from our house).

2. What did I enjoy doing this year?

• Baking. I've always enjoyed baking, but often it's been something that's squeezed in between other commitments on weekends. This year, with everything cancelled mid-year and not much to look forward to, baking was something I could not just plan for, but look forward to, and control. It even enabled me to give some small pockets of joy to others outside our family, in a safe way. This year, I also inherited a stand mixer. First time I've had one in Japan. That was also mostly due to COVID (the owners suddenly decided to go back to Australia when they discovered they were expecting twins).
• Camping. As always. But amazingly, despite the restrictions, we were able to go camping three times, with a couple of firsts: the first time in Gunma prefecture and the first to camp on our own without kids (we were camping with friends).
• Watching God work in unexpected ways. 
• One of those was related to camping. In April/May I had a short conversation with a colleague/friend whose teenage boys had had to suddenly evacuate from their international school in India when borders closed. Her boys were lacking connections in Tokyo, never having lived here. They are around the age of our our youngest son and I was pretty sure that, given the chance, they would be good friends. So, in a God-inspired moved, we invited them to come camping with us in July and they hit it off, not just with our son, but with his group of friends. Despite living on opposite sides of this great metropolis, they've managed to get together quite often. Amazing. 
• And that's just one example. I've heard other stories—one just the other day about a Japanese couple coming to faith this year, despite how hard it's been to meet together.
• A third is this story from March, when I sent a pair of earrings to a friend, and they arrived the day after her son died!

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

• I'm grateful to my two friends with whom I formed a trio over two years ago now. We've helped each other stay afloat with daily messaging through what has been a horrid year. 
• Technology, without which much of the above wouldn't be possible and we'd be a whole lot more isolated from one another. We attended church online from mid-March to mid-August this year. Without technology that period would have been much more difficult.

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

• Hmmm, a hard question, as it was last year.
• For the first time I've used an app called Goodreads to track my reading. So I know that this year I've read 108 (maybe 109 books, if I get my current book finished today). It tells me that that's 37,00+ pages with an average book length of 348 pages! Many of those have been crime/mystery type novels. I've always loved this genre and this year found reading to be especially calming when life around about us was in a turmoil. Last Christmas I received a Kindle Fire and I've used it extensively to borrow ebooks from the library, it's been a lifesaver.
• I enjoyed participating in a book club for the first time in my life. Naomi Reed spontaneously started a somewhat random Facebook-based book club to read through some of her books. We started with My Seventh Monsoon, then No Ordinary View, and Heading Home. I think she's done more, but I didn't own those books. The first two were especially interesting to do during the depths of the State of Emergency in Japan (April and May), providing some outside interaction that wasn't work-based.
• I read some books on first-person experiences of mental illness that were helpful in my understanding.
• It's interesting to note that the verse I cited this time last year has stuck with my through this year also: Ps 46:10 "Be still and know that I am God."

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

• Figuring out how to live with this new infectious threat has been a huge challenge. Just going out to get groceries (which was almost the only reason I left the house from mid-March onwards for several months) was stressful. Watching other people's reactions on social media was also stressful: for example seeing people go out and then ranting about how many people were out and seeing people declare that they won't get the new vaccine was also worrying. However, we've made it to the end of the year without dying, or contracting this new disease!
• I really didn't want the Olympics cancelled, ironically! We amazingly had tickets. But it did. We've still got tickets for the Paralympics, if they happen in September next year!
• Learning to wear a mask every time I was out was challenging, and I still haven't found one that I can wear for many hours at a time without ending up in pain.
• Unrelated to the global pandemic has been my concern for my older two boys. They are both on the verge of new things as their current studies come to an end in 2021. Neither knows what they want to do next. Our middle son is on the verge of adulthood and transitioning to life in Australia. There are many things that concern us about that transition. This has been a big worry for me that I've tried had to hand over to God regularly, with varying success. It remains to be seen how all this pans out, we probably won't know for several years!

6. What's my biggest regret and why?

• Hmm. Possibly, not being able to be with my friend in Australia when her son was dying. I think that was far harder than I'd anticipated.

7. What's something that has changed about me?

• I've enjoyed a new habit formed with David: walking three times a week in the evening. That's a new way for both of us to get exercise. It's been a good time to debrief from the day too.
• To think deeper than that...I'm not sure. This year we passed the 20-years mark, 20 years since we left Australia as missionaries for the first time. It's also 10 years since our youngest started school full-time and I started work in the publishing industry more intently. 2010 was a big year. It's been good to reflect on that journey during the year and see how far I've come. I'm gradually being called on more often to teach others about writing, editing, and other communication skills, rather than just doing it myself. I guess that's been something of a change of mindset over the last 12 months, or longer.

8. What surprise you the most this year?

• I think I was surprised by how much I need to have concrete things to look forward to. Having so much cancelled in March and April (and ongoing cancellations since then) was really hard. I was reduced to looking forward to small things, like looking forward to watching a favourite TV show in the evening, and baking on a Saturday.

So, after that focused reflection, here are some highlights from the year (some have been mentioned above):

• Our three camping trips and two family holidays in the mountains.
• Reading large quantities of books!
• Seeing the new prayer book for Japan published after 18 months of work.
• Successfully leading a series of three, online meetings that comprised our magazine's annual planning time.
• Good conversations with friends.
• Deepening friendships with some friends who were more like acquaintances before.
• More Saturday sleep-ins due to sports events cancelled.
• Finding the capacity to write some poetry/song verses to express deep emotions.
• Leading a writer's retreat weekend in March. 

Actually I think this year is more marked by what wasn't, rather than what was! So many things that usually make up the fabric of our year just didn't happen. Some we missed acutely, others not so much. On Jan. 4 this year, I wrote a hopeful list of things that I was looking forward to for the year. Three of the six things on that list never happened. I am thankful that three did!

Some lowlights of the year:

• My friend's son dying in March.
• In-person school being cancelled from March to June.
• Not being able to see our eldest son at all this year in person.
• Losing a few more friends in my expat "colander" life!

Today is the end of a remarkable year, one that will be a bookmark for the rest of our lives! 

I'm thankful that, through it all, I've been comforted by the one thing that never changes: our God. I reflected on this in April here, and verses like 

"We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure" (Heb. 6:19) 

and 

"The name of the Lord is a fortified tower; the righteous run to it and are safe" (Proverbs 18:10).

As I mentioned earlier, "Be still and know that I am God" has been especially important to me this year. A real sense that though I have little influence in this world, God knows what's going on and my role is largely to stop and trust him in the midst of the chaos. So, as the old year ends and the new year begins, I want to remind myself to do this:

"In the morning, Lord, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait expectantly" (Psalms 5:3 NIV).

My next blog post is going to be an interesting one, as I ponder the year ahead. It seems even more uncertain than a usual year, so how does one even do that? The first post I wrote this year I suggested that 2020 would be a quiet year (primarily with the thought that we might not engage in any international travel). I had no idea just how quiet it would be!

Hundreds and Thousands Slice

Most of us have favourite food memories from childhood. It's amazing how those memories stick with you. I love it that many of the sweet recipes I make have connections to various people who've been in my life over the years.

This is a recipe that my mum frequently made. I haven't made it so often over the years because coconut isn't the easiest product to source in Japan, but I've got some at the moment (thanks to iHerb), so I made these on the weekend. Yum!

Ingredients

½ cup (120g) butter

1 cup (210g) brown sugar

1 egg

1 cup (130g) SR flour (For non-Aussies, this is self raising flour and has baking powder included in it, very convenient!) If you arent' in Australia, just add a teaspoon of baking powder as well as the flour. For my Japan-based friends, I used "medium flour" or 中力小麦粉.

½ cup (50g) desiccated coconut

2 tablespoons of cocoa (20 ml spoons)

dash of vanilla essence

Icing

2 tablespoons cocoa

1 cup (130g) icing sugar 

3 (15g) teaspoons butter

1 tablespoon boiling water

hundreds and thousands

Method

1. Cream butter and sugar.

2. Add egg.

3. Add flour, coconut, cocoa, and vanilla.

4. Mix well (semi-dry mixture).

5. Spread evenly into a greased/baking paper-lined tin. I used a 23cm x 23cm tin.

6. Cook in a moderate oven for 20 minutes (about 170 or 180˚C depending on how fast your oven is).

7. Just before it finishes baking, mix icing ingredients together (except hundreds and thousands).

8. Ice while hot. Sprinkle hundreds and thousands on top.

9. Cut into squares when cold.

Debriefing

A rock in a river near a campsite that our sons have gone to
summer camps at over the years. It's a beautiful spot to sit and
reflect. I'm looking forward to sitting next to a river in a couple
of weeks (camping trip). I'm sure I'll be reflecting too!

A couple of weeks ago I was "guinea pig" for a peer debrief tool that our organisation has developed especially for use at this time when we're beginning to enter the recovery phrase after the last few months of "disaster mode". 

I've done debriefs before, after a term of service, after home assignment. I find it something of a scary sounding name, but the one's I've participated in really look more like an informal chat with a friend, with them asking about how things have been for you in the previous months/years.

The questions my colleague asked me were good, including...

• What memories do you have from the first time you heard about COVID-19 till now?
• Which three are the most emotional or important for you?
• How are you processing, or could you process, these emotions?
• What losses have you experienced?
• What things can't you control? What can you control?
• What emotions have you experienced?
• When you think about COVID-19 and its effects, what has caused you the most stress?
• How have you experienced God during this time?

I literally talked for two hours! So many memories. So many interwoven things that happened. It's weird, because it's a time that felt like it was full of sameness, but when teased out with questions like the above, it's easier to see that there was a lot going on, even if it didn't look that way and was happening without us leaving our homes often.

Incidentally, that sameness that many people around the world felt is captured beautifully in this three-minute film by a teenager in the US.

Losses

I've written earlier about some of the losses, I think the loss I most regret is not being able to say goodbye to colleagues who were leaving Japan permanently. 

The loss that was hardest to deal with on a day-to-day basis was the loss of solitude, especially for work. And even though the boys are now on holidays, I'm still dealing with that loss. My desk in the dining room is just not separate enough at times. In the end (hoping that will be August 20) I will have had six months of working within touching distance of one of my sons. That's wearing. This morning I retreated to the lounge room with my laptop for a break from his intensity.

Control

The question about control was interesting. It's something I've seen people wrestle badly with on social media—to the point where I've lost patience with people who go out to public places, find lots of others who have done the same, then complain about others on social media.

There were plenty of things I could control, though, for example, how much time I spent on social media, our family schedule, our meals, when I went to bed, and what I said yes and no to (see below re. accessibility). I was able to plan enjoyable, productive things like baking, family movie nights, and times chatting with friends via video chat. Though sometimes the unplanned provided pleasure too: the unexpected phone call from a friend asking how I was, or an unplanned decision to drop some brownies off in a friend's mailbox.

One interesting thing I learned was about life without Costco. I usually go there once every eight to ten weeks, but held off longer this last time. I had to do things differently, but we coped okay. The biggest loss was "block cheese", and what eventually drove me back there.

Emotions

But I've also found during this period that my emotions and motivation have been more fluid than usual. For example, our son in Australia turned 21 during this period. It's a time in a young person's life in Australia when historically many have a bigger-than-usual celebration with friends and/or family. But we never had planned to go back for it. My parents stepped up and took him and his girlfriend out for lunch, then hosted a small family party at their home over afternoon tea. David and I also spent a week putting together a compilation of videos and photos from his life for them to watch. We were included in the party via a couple of video calls and lots of photos sent to us. It was fun, but mingled with sadness in my heart. Sadness that probably would have been there anyway, at another time, but amplified by the general sadness of this period of time.

I don't think that emotional and motivational fluidity are things that just I have struggled with at all. But it's been challenging to work through at times. Because my workload didn't change much, and I had little about my weeks that was cancelled, I struggled at times when I needed to keep working, but didn't feel up to it.

I also struggled with how accessible we'd become. All of a sudden we were invited to pray in Zoom meetings with people in Australia, across Japan, and indeed internationally. We were invited to Bible studies in Australia, and church in a variety of places. We also had international Zoom work meetings that intruded upon family time. All this was hard to deal with when our workload remained about the same, yet we also had two boys at home who we were trying to support through online schooling. It was hard to receive all these invitations, but also hard to try to figure out where to draw boundaries without feeling guilty.

Experiencing God

How have I experienced God during this time? That wasn't easy to answer. "Experiencing God" is something of a nebulous thing. Psalm 139 comes to mind:

O Lord, you have searched me and known me!

2 

You know when I sit down and when I rise up;

    you discern my thoughts from afar.

3 

You search out my path and my lying down

    and are acquainted with all my ways.

4 

Even before a word is on my tongue,

    behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.

5 

You hem me in, behind and before,

    and lay your hand upon me.

6 

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;

    it is high; I cannot attain it.

God is always with us. I saw his hand encourage me in small ways and big ways. I'm glad I persisted in blogging through these months, as I can look back and see encouragements along the way. And, incidentally, writing here was a way that I processed (and continue to process) emotions.

I think one of the biggest encouragements along the way was taking things I could control and using them to encourage others, like baking and giving it away. Writing here about my struggles and seeing others encouraged by my honest words. Sharing positive things on social media was another way that I tried to bless others who I couldn't meet face-to-face. So I guess that was a way of experiencing God?

Future changes

One of the hardest questions was considering what changes I might want to make as a result of living through this time. One relates to fellowship and has raised questions in a couple of arenas that we will continue to wrestle with for a while longer, I think.

I'm glad that I had a chance to debrief like this with a friend/colleague. I hope that many more do also (all our OMF Japan colleagues are encouraged to take this tool and ask others to help them debrief). 

As part of this recovery time we've also been urged by our organisation to do a mini retreat. I'm not sure how I might fit that into these coming weeks. The weeks surrounding me taking holidays (as we are in July) are always busy, as my work simply doesn't stop when I'm away, not to mention that having boys on holidays tends to eat into my work time anyway. But maybe after everyone gets back to school in person in September will be the time I can take a short break and reflect.

If you're interested in doing a debrief yourself, or looking at all the questions, please drop me a line and I'll get them to you.