Summer holidays 2021

Well, we've been back nearly a week now and it's time to do some reminiscing and show you some "slides" from our time away. I didn't feel the slightest bit like writing while I was gone (though I didn't have a keyboard with me, so that was a significant deterrent for sure!). 

My days were spent in rotating between reading and eating, walking and sleeping, watching movies and doing puzzles, playing games and picking up cross-stitch again. It's truly amazing how much time can be spent on relaxing, non-work activities. 

We came back to Tokyo last weekend feeling very relaxed. I'm the only one properly back at work (David has one toe in the door, checking email and doing the odd task).

It was a great time to decompress. I thought I was doing okay before we left, except that my body was starting to tell me, in various ways, that it was time to take a break. It was hard to walk away, but so needed. We've had a rough year. It was especially great to take time away from making decisions. We'd deliberately set aside some pressing concerns until "after holidays" and we're seeing positive results from that now. Intentionally not talking about some things has given the space to think and process and make decisions that were too hard when we were stressed.

We definitely view ourselves as marathon runners in this work in Japan (and not particularly fast runners at that). If we're going to last the distance, we need to pace ourselves, and regular time away from work is an important part of that.

I'm glad to say that our "summer" isn't over yet. Not that I'm totally enjoying the heat (Tokyo's summer is oppressive and our house has poor insulation), but that the summer vibe in the house prevails, despite me spending office hours at my desk. Last night we went out for dinner and a movie (Black Widow). In a couple of weeks we're going camping for three nights. No school schedule is really nice! But I'm a bit sad that I'm not getting so much time to read . . . I read 11 books while we were away and it was awesome!

Anyway, here are a few tastes of the great outdoors from our holidays:

The front "gate". Yep, after Tokyo, it's very green.

Tiny "false" strawberry in the wild.

This is the mountain whose slopes we were situated on. We rarely saw it, though, it was cloudy 
much of the time. These fields, though, we feasted our eyes on all day long.

We were there in the middle of the rainy season, so there were lots of fun mushroom to find.

Putting my phone close to the ground, with the lens at the bottom,
I was able to see up under the mushrooms.

One day we drove 30 min north to Karuizawa, a popular summer retreat for the rich in Japan.
We almost always visit this outlet mall. It's a sprawling, luxurious place, with it's own lake and 
lawns. We caught it on a foggy day. Our purpose was finding sneakers in a larger size than you
can usually find in a Japanese store (for our tall teenager).

We happened upon this overgrown lookout while walking one day.
It wasn't well cared for, but had this interesting, and functional, water feature.

Venturing up the mountain, we walked this quiet, but well-maintained road.
It was blissfully quiet.

And yes, our usual haunt: the local park, with its park golf course. We spent three sessions here.

Another mushroom!

Green rice fields are beautiful (green being my favourite colour). We don't often get
close to them on foot, so when we walked past this one, I stopped for some photos.

In the cool of the mountains, the hydrangeas were still blooming, even as our Tokyo
ones were wilting in the heat.

Oh, and you can't have too many mushroom photos, can you?

Medley of thoughts before holidays

We're winding down here, on our way to family holidays. This weekend I'm walking away from my computer and email and other work messages for a couple of weeks. Oh, and daily language study too! A total break during which I can forget about what plate/ball I might have accidentally dropped. Ah, the bliss.

This is the park near where we'll be.

I've been working hard these last few weeks to clear my To Do list of urgent matters. It's quite a trick to managed when you are responsible for social media posts five days a week for your organisation, but I've got a good team and we've worked together to get the next month sorted ahead of time. I've also got a team working on magazine matters. Almost anything that arises in that realm can wait till I get back too.

And though I have generally felt okay recently, I think my body is sending me signals that it's time to take a break. It's been a very rough year for us personally, as you might have guessed (see this post about death and this one that includes a brief reference to the uncertainty we have faced over the last several months with one of our boys). 

On Monday we had our first COVID-19 vaccinations. So thankful! Japan is really getting a hurry on with these. Nearly 25% of the population has had their first injection, which three times what it was a month ago. The next day I had an unusual few hours of gastro upset. There were other factors involved, so it's impossible to say why, but I think it's time for a break.

We're headed to the same place we've had family (non-tenting) holidays twice a year in the last three years. I anticipate that our time away will be very similar to last year (see here). Which suits us just fine, especially the one who gets anxious about change.

We're also excited to have finally been able to book another camping trip for early August. We're staying pretty close to home, though, no new prefectures to add to our list, but still three nights in the mountains next to a stream sounds really good. It's cool today, but by then the stream will also sound really good (and they have showers too!).

When we come back the Olympics will be close to opening ceremony and it will be fascinating to watch that event unfold on Japanese TV. We no longer have our Olympic tickets; though we've still got two tickets for the Wheelchair Basketball and Paralympic Athletics in late August, in a couple of weeks we'll find out if we can still attend.

I've kind of dropped the ball on writing about "Come" (see my kind-of resolution from January), but I really don't think I have brain power to write anything on that today, so maybe later. Maybe I'll get an urge to write while we're on holidays, but I kinda doubt that. Usually holidays pass in a blur of reading, eating, sleeping, playing games, and watching movies with the boys. Generally taking a break from thinking about putting words together.

See you on the other side!

Let's review your life #10

I'd like to get back to this park soon, it's
a good place for reflecting! But the lead-
up to our family holidays the end of next
week continues to fill with new things to do!

I've written before about one way our organisation takes care of us: Two Year Reviews. Having published a blog like I've done, for several years, it's great to be able to look back at earlier things I've written. In 2013 I wrote about the Two Year Review (TYR) process here, giving some examples of questions we have to answer (and then talk about with a leader). I also shared in that blog post about why reviews like this are really important, as well as the things I struggle with about them.

I've added a few of the questions below (it took me a good couple of hours to answer everything, as well as do the goal setting that was required):

Do you have a day of rest each week?

What do you do to maintain your spiritual health?

In what ways has the Lord blessed you since your last two year review?

Here is a list of emotions. From this list choose the emotions that have characterised your life since your last review. Feel free to add any that aren't listed.

What subjects have you thought about or studied since your last review?

In what ways has your marriage been under stress since your last review?

What are your challenges and encouragements concerning your children's education?

What encouragements have you experienced in your relationships with your family at home (meaning your home country)?

Describe significant friendships in your life since your last review.

When I mildly complained this week about the process (mostly that my "head hurt" in trying to answer these broad questions about the last two years), a close friend quietly rebuked me and said that this was a privilege. She's right—most people don't get the opportunity to answer questions like these, let alone have a leader with time to sit down and go through them with you.

There's a few reasons why missions do (or should do) these kinds of reviews:

• Missionaries often carry a load of extra stress, merely because of where they live and what they do.
• They are often more vulnerable because when you live outside your home country your networks are often thin and it can be hard to access appropriate help.
• Missionaries can be lone rangers and stubborn (the flip side of independent and persistent, two valuable character traits for serving overseas). These two factors can mean they don't ask for help till it's too late.
• Missionaries are rare. There really aren't that many of them in the world, that makes them important human resources that make sense to retain in good working order, if possible. (Not to mention the importance Great Commission...)
• And there's probably more...

This is maybe the 10th or 11th time we've done this, so we're a little savvy. Many of the questions I could have written several paragraphs, or even a blog post about. But no one has time to read all that, let alone talk about it. I also think we are being asked regularly enough "how are you really" for lots and lots of detail at this time to be unnecessary, i.e. our line manager is doing a good job of caring for us. This TYR is like a screening test to pick up areas that need closer attention.

I also tend to be a reflective person anyway, and also fairly self-driven, so possibly this process isn't as important for me as it might be for someone else. However, it's still a good process to have in place, even if I feel a bit grumpy about it at times.

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! And as for "What emotions characterise your last two years?" Yikes!

Can you think of a question that you wish someone would ask you, but they rarely ever do?

Failure or success?

Here's a great post I found four years ago. I intended to use it as a springboard to write a blog post from, but never did. I have dozens of such links sitting in draft blog posts, a bit neater than a crafter's to do cupboard or room, but still could use some attention. 

Probably most overseas workers struggle with a feeling of a certain level of failure. I certainly do, in much more pervasive way than I've ever experienced in Australia. Japanese language is my achilles heel and the enemy is very quick to attack me on this point. In the last couple of years I've also struggled against a sense of personal failure in parenting.

Why are we quick to judge ourselves? And why do we choose results as the litmus test? Maybe because it's easier to say "an A is success, a D is not"? Is that something that school drove into us? Maybe, but I think it's human nature to want simple measures of what success vs failure is. And an A-E scale, or percentage scale is easy. Being able to put people (ourselves) into boxes is easy—that's why we love personality measures like introvert-extrovert, Myers Briggs, and Enneagrams. 

Dealing with messy is much harder. It's easy to make the false jump from "my child learned to read early" to "I'm a successful parent". Or from "I have this degree and a job" to "I'm a successful person". Or from "I have good Japanese" to "I'm a successful missionary".

It's much harder to know what to think about the child who struggles to learn, the young adult who—for whatever reason—struggles to live independently, or the missionary whose attempts to learn the language or to do evangelism appears to lack any results.

I think we often judge ourselves more harshly that we judge other people, simply because we know more about ourselves and the unspoken fears and insecurities that others don't know, or don't know the full depth of it. 

For example, I know the depths of my language inabilities, but most others don't. I remember the day that, at a meeting with our mission, we had a Japanese speaker and they offered translation for anyone who wanted it. I'd long "graduated" from full-time language study but knew that I wasn't going to be able to understand this important topic in Japanese. Because our mission values good language, the pressure to not join the translation group was huge (it was mostly for short termer and new workers). I did join it in the end, but got some funny looks from some of my colleagues.

I can't look sideways or even internally for affirmation of who I am and what I do. I need to look upwards to God, who made me just as I am. I like how the writer of the article I linked to at the start finishes her article, with this prayer:

God,
You know me. The life and talents you’ve given me are no mistake; they are not too much or too little. You know my fears, difficulties, and disappointments. It’s true that I would love success, but even more than that, I want to be found faithful with what you have given me. I want to be pleasing to you.
Amen.  

What's Wendy been up to?

So, what’s been happening in our edge of ordinary? A few things!

It's hydrangea season. We get to look at
this every day outside our lounge window.

School finished

I guess that qualifies as interesting news? Our middle son graduated on Friday, so for the first time in many years we’ll have just one child at school, and he’s only got two years left. Empty nesting is just around the corner!

Our middle son isn’t sure what’s next, so we’ve also walked into a period that holds a lot of uncertainty. Over the last several months we’ve agonised over this, but I think we’re at a place now that we’re a bit more comfortable with the uncertainty.

Being married to a teacher, also means that from now he starts to wind down. Our family holidays start in just under four weeks, so the next few weeks I’ll be busy preparing to walk away from work for that time (it’s especially tricky taking holidays when you’re involved in time-sensitive work like social media, but I’m committed to taking a break).

Uncertainty in Japan

We sit, not just with personal uncertainty at this point, but societal uncertainty. Tokyo (as well as several other prefectures) are still under a state of emergency, at least until June 20. Who knows if that will continue? We've been under SOE since the start of the year, barring three weeks in spring. Additionally, there is the uncertainty surrounding the Tokyo Olympics. 

The former mostly affects us in terms of making summer plans. We’d love to book a camping trip or two, but facilities in Tokyo are closed and facilities outside of Tokyo are closed to those coming from Tokyo! We've got a couple of leads for private arrangements that might be doable, so watch this space :-)

The Olympics doesn’t affect us much, though we do still hold Paralympic tickets. It was very sad, however, to hear that the director of the accounting department of the Japan Olympic Committee jumped in front of a train the other day in an apparent suicide. Holding the Olympics is a contentious issue in Japan and those charged with making it go ahead are sadly saddled with a lot of stress.

Editing a novel

Yep, I've been copy editing a novel over the last four months. The only way I could fit that into my life was to do it on Saturdays, which wasn't ideal, and meant it took a long time. I estimate at least 60 hours. It's my first time to edit a long work of fiction (actually the first time to edit any lengthy book), so it took a while to find my feet. But I really did enjoy it. The author is a close friend and his reason for writing is similar to my reason for writing on this blog: to explain to others a less-than-common life experience that we've each lived. 

I think I also enjoyed having a long-term project during this pandemic that I could look forward to doing on weekends. When the state of emergency stretched on interminably and there wasn't much to look forward to on weekends, having a spare-time occupation like this was very therapeutic.

In some respects it was a lot easier than editing short, non-fiction articles, like I do at work. Because facts aren't set in stone, but also because a short article has to have a pretty tight structure and be a complete unit in itself. So I was able to edit much of it a lot faster in the end. Oh, and I had a very appreciative author, that always makes work much more enjoyable.

What's next? I don't think I'll be taking on another extra-curricular editing job for a while, I don't have a lot of spare time and editing once a week does tend to disrupt the flow, making it not the most efficient way of editing a longer work. But if someone had a paying job, I might consider it! 

However, it does open out the possibility of supplementing our income some time in the future, as editing is something that can be done part-time and from my dining room, wherever that is. Also writing coach is something else that is a possibility. It is good to have this experience under my belt now, and know that the skills I have gained from short-article fiction editing do transfer quite well, especially to copy editing. Developmental editing might be a bit more difficult (think: story arc, character development etc.)

As for long-term weekend projects? I'm thinking about maybe picking up a sewing project. We'll see.

Seeking green spaces

This week I've found myself drawn to green spaces, perhaps more than usual. I've been struggling with head and neck muscle tension and it's cousin, headaches, and it’s often not been easy to do the work I’ve had to do. I’m pretty sure that I’m clenching my jaw during my sleep, and possibly my hands too. I’m also pretty sure that it is related to stress. My life is really quite good, but it’s been a bit of a rough year so far, and my body, typically, is showing signs of that.

We’re still under a state of emergency here. On Friday it was extended another three weeks. Nothing new here, we’ve been doing this for most of this year (barring three weeks, during which we managed to go camping). So, because I work from home (or, as I saw someone write recently—I live at work) I’m mostly only going out for essentials: groceries, medical, and exercise. 

This week I also walked to my favourite cafe and bought a coffee to go and sat in a park on the way home to savour it. I just sat, and thought about life. Our middle son graduates from high school next week. It’s been a long and, at times, arduous journey. It was interesting to sit and watch mothers with little ones in the park, thinking back over the years that I’ve taken my own boys to the park, and how far we’ve come.

It was one of those in-between-weeks when I have less urgent things to do. On weeks like that I tend to keep a close eye on the weather forecast, looking out for a few hours I can slip a ride in to the park six kilometres south of us. I nabbed that time on Wednesday afternoon. Taking an eBook, I hung out in the park for a couple of hours, luxuriating in being outside when it was neither hot nor cold.

Thursday was wet and miserable, a lovely day to stay inside and work. But on Friday, another beautiful day, I did my usual grocery-ride after lunch and decided, on a whim, to buy an ice cream and eat it in a small riverside park on my way home.

Three times in four days I sat in parks. No particular agenda. I didn’t read my Bible or do meditation or reflection. I didn’t write, or create poetry. I just sat and enjoyed life.

On Friday (over lunch), I also read the last few chapters of Ecclesiastes. The main conclusion of that book is that you don’t know how many days you have before God will judge you, but that you should enjoy the ones that you do.

Some of the phrases seem especially to ring true to my ears:

“Light is sweet, and it pleases the eyes to see the sun. However many years a man may live, let him enjoy them all. But let him remember the days of darkness, for they will be many. Everything to come is meaningless” (11:7-8)

And “Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come . . . When the doors to the street are closed, and the sound of grinding fades...when men are afraid of . . . dangers in the streets” (12:1, 4, 5).

Doesn’t the end of that last bit sound like this pandemic: closed doors, “grinding” a.k.a. usual work ceases, and dangers in the streets!

So, I was glad to be able to enjoy the “sweet light” and the sun this week. To remember my Creator by sitting quietly. To appreciate the life he’s given me, even though, like all lives, it’s got troubles.

Below are some of the scenes from my sojourns in parks this week.

This is the path between the river and my “Friday” park. We 
often walk this in the evening. These are gorgeous, shady
Cherry blossoms: yes, beautiful even when they aren’t pink.

This is one of the many pathways that cross-cross
Tokyo. I cross it to ride to “the big park”, but
took a few minutes to venture down it on Wednesday.

 

Me, in the “big park” soaking up the green.

A lady bug enjoying this flower.

A lily I found along the way to the park.

This is the park between my house and the train 
station. A convenient place to stop with a coffee.

Come for relief

We're in the last month of the school year here. That's something I'm still getting used to (i.e. it happening in May), even though David's been working at an American-style international school for most of the last 16 years now, and we've had students there since our nearly-22 year-old son transferred there in Grade 3. But, even though May may still seem a little odd to be “the end of the year”, my body's telling me it's ready for a break. The weather is gradually heading into warmer weather, which also tells me that summer holidays are on the horizon (though today I'm wearing tracksuit pants, a singlet, and jumper/sweater).

One of my geraniums I love to look at while
I’m cleaning my teeth!

We’re looking forward to July, when we have our annual holiday, but there’s a little way to go until we get there.

So this passage seems fitting for now (continuing my "Come" series):

"Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly" (Matt. 11:28-30 The Message).

Have you read this version of this passage? It definitely gives a different slant on it. Yes, I'm tired and worn out. I'm not sure that I'm "burned out on religion", but the invitation to come is very attractive.

Here's the ESV version:

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

The idea of taking a yoke upon you seems strange in this version, but I think that this would have probably made more sense to Jesus' first audience. I've heard it explained as being like Jesus inviting us to take his hand, that he will walk with us each step of the way. Bound together with a yoke, cattle can't go anywhere separately, they are bound together, and share the burden of work. Maybe even stronger than taking Jesus' hand, what about imagining his arm going around your shoulder and him walking hip-to-hip with you?

Pair this image with the words that Peter wrote:

Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you (1 Peter 5:7 NIV).

I love this image and often use it when I'm praying with others: asking that God would help us cast our burdens on his shoulders and that he would free us from the heavy weights that we brought to the meeting. 

In the first passage, Jesus says, learn from me, walk with me. One of the Biblical images that brought Jesus even more into focus for me as a young teenager was that of shepherd. I'd grown up at church, I knew a lot about the Bible, but I couldn't remember having that metaphor shown to me so strongly until it was the theme of a small summer camp I went to. 

BibleGateway says “shepherd” is used 118 times in the NIV. Of course not all those instances are using the metaphor for God, but there's a lot, if you go looking. Psalm 23 is probably the most famous, but also Isaiah 40:11, Zechariah 9:16, and of course the John 10:11 where Jesus says, "I am the good shepherd." You don't get much clearer than that.''

The book this blog series was inspirted by, Come for Closer" by Jane Rubietta, asks in the chapter devoted to this Matthew 11 passage: what are your burdens? 

"It is other people's expectations? Your own superhuman job description for yourself? Perfection? . . . Maybe your burden is the need to have a constant output of service and doings, always involved, running things, helping out, your finger in every pie . . . Though we may be unaware of our motives, winning others' approval and knowing they like us or need us keeps us working, keeps us doing, keeps us stretched far beyond our normal capacity." p. 81, 82.

She suggests other burdens too: fear, worry, regret, loss, anger, unforgiveness, bitterness.

What's been my burdens recently? I think probably fear and worry. Loss, is definitely in the mix. I think I do have a tendency to look to other's approval too, in some areas.

I don't think I'm stretched beyond my normal capacity in general, but at times in the last months my "normal capacity" has been reduced by various events. Those circumstances have certainly exhausted me. But let's not lose sight of the fact that we're human, we get tired, and there's nothing wrong with that. Taking rest is a natural part of life, indeed something that God has built into us and our world. 

But we make things worse when we don't trust God to carry our burdens. I think that's a constant challenge for me, probably for most Christians. We get so full of our own abilities that we think we can handle it all, and we also forget how trustworthy God is, so we take up the burden of worry about things and trying to solve them ourselves, rather than entrusting them to him.

I have been pondering this for a bit and wrote most of it yesterday. Today’s been full of meetings and out-of-office errands. But in two separate interactions the 1 Peter verse I mentioned above came up. It’s worth me sitting up and taking notice of. So as we head into a weekend, will you join me in “casting your anxiety on him who cares for you”? Let’s be open to receiving all God has for us: including a peace that surpasses all human understanding.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:6-7 ESV)