From Zee to Zed and Back Again

Pardon the upcoming soppy sentiments, but sometimes you gotta just go with it.  I haven’t posted a blog in ages. And ages.  I still find so many things here marvelous and a stinkin’ cute overload.  Like the echidna that decided to cross the road in front of me on my way to work recently.  Who knew they were early risers?  I didn’t, and finding one at that hour to encounter was super-cool – especially since I started my commute headachy, tired, and trending toward grumpy.  One echidna later and I’m headachy and happy!  Can’t have it all sometimes, but perspective is pretty darn important!

Not my early riser echidna. This one I saw in Adelaide in 2009.

So, what caused this spate of emotions and sentimentality?  Well, soon we will be saying ‘Zee’ instead of ‘Zed’.  Or afternoon instead of arvo.  Or writing dates as 2/13/16 instead of 13/2/16.  And the list goes on.  Yes, after going on six years here, we’ve made the decision to repatriate!  That it was a hard decision is a massive understatement.

I am full of joy at the thought of being closer to my stateside family and friends.  I am at the same time devastated and gutted about leaving my ‘Straya family.  Sheesh, I am a wreck.

We’ve been feeling the pull to head back for some time.  Increasingly, as we went on our annual Home Leaves for a visit, the unlived-life called to us.  The relationships we couldn’t do justice.  The house projects needing doing everywhere we turned.  The sense that what was is just a memory now.

It’s true, in many ways we have to start over.  We are different, and in some ways profoundly different.  We want to go forward living differently.  Much more like life here, but how does one do that when living in a large metropolitan area steeped in the US culture?  Most of our US friends have understandably moved on to new circles of friendships or the other side of the country!  In that case, surely, avoiding us would have been easier!  Ha!

How to live differently is a question we discuss often.  Like how to translate the specialness of here to there.  What we have here are very close and meaningful relationships with many people spanning all ages who are as much our family as any blood relative.  The climate and life here make it easy to have spur-of-the-moment get-togethers which are common here and part of the specialness.  We want that in Seattle, but know the weather won’t cooperate!  We plan on prevailing in spite of that!

We have about three months left here to crystallize our strategies.  That, and soak up as much more of this great life as we can.  I will miss it heaps and am trying hard to only think about the arriving part and not the leaving part.  Thinking about the leaving part only ends in tears.  I do trust we will see our Aussie family from time to time.  I fully expect and hope for a procession of down under dwellers visiting us in the years to come.  That, and à la Terminator, “We’ll be back!” is a statement we hope to make come true down the track.  Who knows what God has in store for us?  All I know is it will be better than I could have hoped or imagined!

Part of our Aussie church’s mission statement is “Love God, Love People, Love Life”.  That’s who and how I want to be wherever I am.  That’s how I’ve always wanted to be, but now I “get” it more.  So, look out Seattle, here we come!