Coming Home

Home has been a loaded word for me through our many moves. I have come to terms with calling many places home instead of home meaning one location. Yet, as my plane circled the city of Sydney preparing to land three days ago, I found myself crying with the relief of coming home. Even though my parents have spent twice as many years in Australia as I have, they still joke that I am probably the most Aussie member of our family. I grew up here. So while many of my Mennonite Mission Network colleagues prepare to enter new cultures and understand themselves in new languages, I have come home to forms of speaking and culture that are instinctive to me. I have been gone for three years, which is the longest time I have spent away from Australia since I was nine years old.

On the drive home from the airport and on our numerous walks over the last three days I have been stuck by the slight yet significant differences I see and feel from the USA. The first two weeks in a new place always help me to see the place I left and the place I am coming to with a strange kind of clarity. The smells, sounds, sights and tastes of Australia are welcome to my homesick and longing senses. The sizes, shapes and colors of the cars and houses have differences that are hard for me to verbalize and yet they comfort me. I have to stop every once in a while and breathe deeply; flowers, gum trees, the ocean: the smells of home. I find myself giggling or calling out in joy every so often. The dusty grey-green of plants and trees along with the Aussie brands and labels in the cupboard, fill me with a girlish glee and whisper “home”. My eyes are filled with the sights of familiar little shops: bread, fish and chips, flowers, and surf boards. The ocean, so close to my parents’ house that I can feel the pounding of the waves as I lay in bed at night, stretches out with crystal blue vastness. The accents and languages I hear along side the tastes of kebabs, Jatz Biscuits for morning tea, Cadbury’s drinking chocolate, and leatherwood honey; I’m slightly overwhelmed with home.

What will this life hold for me? I am so full of hope and expectation. I am a young woman coming back as an adult to the culture of my childhood. Rooms of my heart that are normally closed to each other are open as I bridge these two cultures I hold so dear. I am at a crossing point, a portal, between my two worlds and cultures. Between being a child and an adult; between being at home and a foreigner in the same place.

Transitions, trusting and goodbyes

I woke this morning to the sound of little feet running on the floor above me. As I rolled over rubbing my eyes and trying to decipher what time it was from the amount of light coming in my basement window, I heard little voices above me “Auntie Riah”. Slowly, I stumbled up the stairs to be greeted by the smiling faces of my nephew and niece.

The two months between finishing school and leaving for Australia have given me a chance to spend a little time with my family here in the USA. Because I am continuing to raise support for my fast approaching assignment in Australia and not working, I need to lean on the support of family and friends. I have slept in 15 different beds since I moved out of my house at the end of May. Friends and family alike have opened their doors and homes to me and have been patient with me as I bumble through this time of transition.

I’m not used to asking for help. My Mennonite upbringing taught me to use little and to be generous, but in these last months I have had to rely on others generosity and to ask for money for now and for the 3 years to come. This is hard. I like to be independent and I have learned to associate wise judgment with financial stability. Yet I find myself in a place of following where I feel God calling me and this means financial instability. Is following God wise? Will I be cared for? I am asking hard questions of myself and other and having to trust in new ways while making myself vulnerable.

I am into the last leg on my journey this summer. I have a week and a half with family and a week of orientation and training before I fly away to Australia. Transitions and moving have been one of the most reliable things in my life over the years and so I keep thinking I will get better at them. But even when I know some of what I should expect from transitions and what I need to do to make them easier, they are still draining and emotionally charged.

In this time of instability I have the chance to spend a few days and hours with my family. Wanting to know my extended family better and to understand my roots was a major factor in my decision to come back to the USA to study. Most of the time I have had off over the last three years has seen me tucked in a car making the nine hour trip from Indiana to Pennsylvania to be with family. We all have gotten used to seeing each other on a semi-regular basis as I pop in and out. So, even though I have been telling my family about my assignment in Australia for months, many of them were shocked as I hugged them goodbye saying that I would be back in 3 years.

As I look at my aging Grandparents and my young nieces and nephew, I wonder what 3 years will look like in their lives. Here are young and old people that I love and who will be on the other side of the world from me. Three years in my life seems like a good commitment and not that long, but for grandparents and growing children, 3 years can make a world of difference.

So as I enjoy my time of lounging around and reading novels, I am also reflecting on where I am going and why. I have felt and continue to feel a strong call from God to go back to Australia. I wonder why God is calling me away from family and into times that feel uncertain. Yet as I look to the Bible I see others who were called to leave family and stability, to uproot and follow God’s call. Maybe I am in good company. I am not sure what the next months and days hold but I am trying to trust in the one who knows all and who is guiding my steps.