Fresh Perspective

 Today I took my longest sharpest knife and attacked the bound roots of a potted trailing ivy plant, determined that I would win and divide it into smaller pieces.  Liberating this ivy into bigger spaces. I intended to hang it off my balcony railing in two different window baskets.  I was reminded that moving transculturally is likened unto tearing roots from a bound plant and replanting it into new soil.  It seems and feels destructive.  The results are new growth, more plants, and broadened horizons.  Also, things are happening that are unseen and unknown to us.  Perhaps this is the most exciting thing about being uprooted. A few weeks ago, I am taking in the first Christmas concert of the season.  I was enjoying the traditional music, the new to my ears Arabic Christmas music, singing in the choir and my husband sharing a message.  I was immersed.  Suddenly, somewhere between English and Arabic translation my mind wandered.  I w...

  The guys are bowling tonight, and I have intentionally stayed home to try and find words to describe what is going on in this season of our lives.  Afraid that too many weeks have slipped by, where I have failed to pen about life in the Middle East, during a Revolution. Many of you wonder what living in a Revolution is really like, as you glimpse snitches and snatches of news from the media and question our safety and/or our sanity.  For the most part we can live life mostly unaware, up on our peaceful hill that looks upon the city of Beirut.  Fortunately, for the most part the protesting has been persistently pleasant and not violent.  How we feel it is when the banks closed for the better part of a total of three weeks and now American dollars are scares and highly valued (but 4 months ago, they were common, and we were even paid in them).  This has affected all the trading and in turn has impacted the prices, causing food to significantly rise in pri...

Saturday at 2 p.m. found friends and I at a meal put on for us by some dear Iraqi refugees.  The table was loaded with stuffed onions, stuffed eggplant, spring rolls, amazing colorful and seasoned rice, hummus, and much more.  Their joy.  Their hospitality.  Their laughter.  Their generosity.  Their hope.  Left me feeling both full and hungry.  Full at their example.  Hungry in my need to learn from them. In complete contrast, today found me in a Syrian refugee home.  Five girls.  One son who was tragically killed in an accident a year ago.  We were in their “new” home, which they moved into, literally in the middle of last night, because they could not afford the rent in the last place.  The girls were chattering away to me about how much better this place was because it was so much bigger, and the rent was cheaper.  I saw nothing “better”.  I saw only dark broken steps leading up into their apartment.  D...

 As many of you already know, tension in Lebanon is on the rise.  This matches the look that many of you gave us this summer as we traveled the United States and were given many eyebrows rising and dropped jaws opening.  All summer long we repeated the same story, “Everyone in Lebanon, tells us they feel safer there than their own home country.”  Honestly, we have felt safe here.  Even now with the turmoil that is present we don’t feel threatened, but we are having to be more cautious. Last weekend, Darron and I needed to get to some meetings in the mountains about 35 minutes away.  On Thursday many of the young people had started lighting tires around the city to protest how they felt about rising taxes and many other issues.  On Friday at 11:00 a.m. we headed out and were 10 minutes from home when we had to turn around, due to a roadblock and much unrest.  The sky was dark with all the tire smoke and the air quality was so poor that we closed ou...

 Now the air holds a crispness in it, each morning and evening.  Occasionally, we are beginning to reach for layers to keep us warm.  The leaves are changing colors and the days are getting dramatically shorter.  It is distantly familiar to us but seen with fresh eyes after not experiencing this for nine seasonal years. We are two-and-a-half months settled.  This means we now have cellular service, internet in the home, fresh drinking water being delivered to our door, a car with insurance, residency permission, and a bank account.  While these may all seem like simple tasks, each one took extra effort, learning, time, and help.  The reality of settling in a foreign country makes us quite dependent and we are indebted to the team that helps us arrange all these details.  Darron and I have also begun learning Arabic.  Our minds are being stretched as we try to understand, absorb, and sound out the guttural “haa” sound, (that requires saliva i...

 We are six weeks newly planted into Lebanon.  We have survived the 90+ F degree days, that left one thinking what was the coolest garment one can possibly wear?  The last two weeks have brought a noticeable relief of temperature drop where at night there is a hint of coolness and in the day, one could consider wearing blue jeans.  There has not been one drop of rain since our arrival, which is normal for this season.  However, I just went outside to visit a new friend and a few scattered drops fell.  Not enough to make us run inside, but those few drops were refreshing and a hint of more to come. The refreshing raindrops remind me of something I have wanted to share with you since this summer.  I had four different outings with dear friends (my parents included) where significant things were shared with me.  Not coming prepared to write and not wanting to pull out the barrier of my phone, I grabbed a napkin and a pen and wrote down some of these...

                                                Asar* is a seventeen-year-old man-child who is wiggling his way into our lives. I call him a man-child because circumstances have made him much older than he really is, and yet there is still this young boy heart inside of him that longs for more innocent happy care-free days. His story is full of tragedy and protection.  Blessings and disappointments. Five years ago, Asar had to flee Syria with his family.  He shares at our dinner table about almost dying twice prior to their escape.  He describes the nerve-racking bus ride that carried them to the boarder and about the elderly lady whom the check point guards threw away all her medicine, to simply be mean or show their power.  Miraculously, a man was at the border who Asar’s father had worked for m...

 New beginnings are good for it forces us to open our eyes, ears, senses, minds, hearts and take in everything that seems foreign and unknown.  Creatively, we were made to adapt and grow and there is nothing like moving to push us out of our comfort zone and into this great “ opportunity ”.  As we are almost one month into our new assignment, I like to call it the "gleaning phase".  Perhaps I am a bit old fashioned and like to relate to Ruth in the Bible.  When she moved, she gleaned.  She gathered all the left-over grain. So, as I am being taken shopping, by many gracious women, I am gleaning from them.  The best place to buy local food, and imported food, and this person’s preference over what this person has learned and liked.  Gleaning.   Gleaning requires learning much.  For example, my entire life bananas have been one of the cheapest fruits.  Believe me I am a banana-using-expert to the point that they have become a Boy...

 We stood around after church talking in small clusters. He walked up to me and handed me a white flower.  “A flower for you.” “What do you call it in English?” he asked through his friend. “A Gardenia,” I responded. A smile spread over his face.  “Gardenia!!!”  I could tell by his response that he knew the word. The friend filled in any chance of miss understanding.  “The flower has the same name in Arabic and English.” I high fived my flower giver.  A joy filled acknowledgement that we both knew a word in each other’s language. We drove away.  The white flower in my hand.  A gesture so simple yet meant so much.  What motivated him to give me that gardenia?  Was it his mutual understanding of knowing what it means to be relocated?  Was he remembering a special friend, mother, or sister that he wished he could hand a flower to?  Was he simply trying to show kindness? I tucked the flower into a tiny bouquet that I had pl...

 We are just over one week into landing our leap to Lebanon.  Our feet are steadfastly planted. It is hot and the grass is only green if watered (so don’t be thinking it’s greener on our side of the fence….haha). We ’ ve unpacked o ur 15 boxes that we managed to get here and done several shopping trips to get us by until our sea crate arrives (in about 3 months).  Anytime I feel sorry for our simplistic lifestyle, I remind myself of the many refugees who would be grateful for just a fraction of what we currently have.  The stores leave my mouth hanging open after Papua.  I’m still overwhelmed at the abundance.  I write this for my friends who are still serving in Indonesia.  There is everything from American seasonings, to Jell-O and chocolate chips, an abundance of many kinds of cheese, and real maple syrup and any other syrup you can imagine.  It. Is. Here.  I am sorry, to those of you who are reading and still living in the land of “k...