Round-About

After a long hot day with no air conditioning Rachel and I would trudge down the main street to our bus stop. On numerous occasions it included the humerous exchange:

R::"If we move here can we get one of those fun little motorscooters? Pleeeeease?"

M::"We'll have to see where we're living then?"

R::"So we can get one?"

M::"We'll have to see but you know they're not very good family cars."

R::"Oh...yeah...but maybe just one for me then!"

And on and one it went until the bus can squeaking down the street to pick us up and jostle us to our apartment. After our trans-atlantic flight and sitting up all night in the London airport, those busses don't seem to have such a terrible memory though! But now we're back, in a round-about sort of way. We spent this past weekend up in Canada at a wedding, in Michigan presenting our summer at FBC-SJ, and now we're in two separate locations for the first time in two months. So, though I'm home and Rachel's at her childhood home, we still don't feel like we've totally arrived yet. Soon...

Let me do two things with the remainder of this post:

1) recount our last few days of the summer

2) give some of our initial feelings upon being home (more to come)

We left off at the beginning of our last week, a week that turned out to be an intensely eye-opening bitterseet span. Our English students had to cancel on us for the last two classes. Rachel kept up working in the cafe but I was only allowed a few opportunities to meet with my tutoring students. I was preparing a sermon for sunday morning worship while Rachel worked on the packing. We wandered the streets of the city one last time, shopping and enjoying the richness of the setting. We even took two days to celebrate our anniversary at a nearby resort hotel (with a waterpark at Rachel's request!) But most of all the last week was about relationships...the real reason it's hard to leave. For all that we love about the culture and cuisine, there are substitutes here in the states. But for all those whom we love in the culture there are no substitutes.

Thus, upon arriving home there is a great sense of loss. It's the loss you feel when someone dear to you passes away because you can't have them back. It's the loss you feel when life circumstance change without your ability to stop them: a family move, a sudden job change or loss, a freind or co-worker who moves on to something else. It's that something you came to count on everyday which is now out of your life forever (or so it seems). It may be years before we are able to return but the loss feels permanent and needs to be grieved.

Meanwhile, life goes on all around us and often has but scant time to bear out our losses. So, we carry them to the Divine Ear that so graciously bows itself down to hear us at all times. Thank you for carrying our requests there all summer, keep checking back in future days for more of our post-return ponderings. Until then may your good-work be full of fruit and your spirits full of wisdom and joy in the King.

M&R