A Year Since We Returned, But I Never Came Home

It’s been a year since Emily and I left Grenoble France and returned to our native California. There have been a lot of ups and downs in this process of repatriation. It has been wonderful regularly seeing family; there is no substitute for proximity. Reverse culture shock is no joke.

We returned a year ago, but I never came “home” to the place I once knew. I came back changed and I came back to a changed California. Three years had passed, and though we had been back to visit, some of the changes were too subtle to notice during these short returns. It’s a bit like the uncanny valley if you are familiar with the term. There are idioms and pop-culture references we have had to catch up on. Our home culture did not pause while we were away.

Reverse culture shock is a strange experience. I have felt like an outsider in my home. I remember being surprised with how big the cars and the roads are here. My Honda accord would be a big car in France, and it is dwarfed by some of the trucks and SUV’s driving around our ten lane freeways. Also, there is always music playing. Everywhere. I remember feeling very unsettled when there was pop music blasting at the grocery store. Why is there music while I’m buying food? The worst is at restaurants. It is sometimes impossible to have a conversation because the music is not just present but drowning out all other sound. As Americans, are we so afraid of boredom or awkward silence? But as we have been back, these acute moments of culture shock have mostly subsided (a few weeks ago I did find myself confused why the store only sold 10-gallon trash bags instead of 30-liter ones).

I love being close to family and our friends here; we have missed seeing so many wonderful people. It has been wonderful to catch up on important relationships in our lives. I love where we live now, but my heart still longs for Grenoble. After 990 days of living in Grenoble, we had established our home, for the most part, in this city. We had our routines, our habits, and our favorite shops and cafés. We knew how to get around town and take care of various tasks. We loved living in Grenoble so much, and this beautiful city, capital of the French Alps, will forever have a special place in our hearts. I miss being surrounded by mountains. I miss our friends. I miss walking down the street to my favorite boulangerie and buying fresh pastries and bread. I miss being surrounded by people speaking French and the opportunity to be immersed in a new culture, though it was exhausting to be an outsider. Most of all, the opportunity to work and learn from Mark, Dalene, and so many others there, has changed me for the better. I will never stop missing these friends and our time together in the alps.

We left one home for another and returned to the first with my sense of home divided between these two locales. I don’t know if I can be fully at home in either place now. The answer is not simply move back to France (we are not), because I would miss my family, friends, and my home in California. But I am also not fully content to be here either. At first, this sense of wandering between homes left me feeling lost. I have come to accept it as my new norm, a part of processing and my life building upon our time in Grenoble. This realization has helped me accept the desire to only be where God has us for that time. So I am learning to be content with feeling like native and a foreigner, and being excited and sad to be in California and away from Grenoble. And I rejoice to live where God has for us.

To our friends and family, near and far, we love you. Our lives are richer because you are a part of it. I hope that you too will be content to follow God wherever He leads you.

January 1st and John 11

I don't know about you, but January 1st 2017 was a very hard day for me. We have been in transition since moving away from France last July and readjusting to life back in the US. We originally planned to join some friends doing college ministry at UC Berkeley, but in October, as we were struggling to raise the monthly support to afford Berkeley prices, we learned that the Berkeley group was ending and our friends were moving to work at another university. From our experiences visiting Berkeley and talking with our friends, we knew this was God's timing. But where did He have for us now? Surely He had not called us away from France only to have us fall through the cracks in California?

We met with some mentors and talked about our confusion, our options, and our next step. We spent November and December seeking God and visiting different college ministries to see where God was leading us. We prayed and fasted and sought the Lord. In December God told us 'no' to one campus, so we turned to the idea of going back to Sacramento where we had lived before moving to France. Less than a week before Christmas, I spoke with our friend Jimmy, who is the current leader of the college ministry in Sacramento, about us joining the staff. We had a great dinner with the staff, shared about ourselves, and they agreed to pray about us coming on with them. So we found ourselves waiting to hear what God would say to them.

Which brings us to January 1st. I woke up to this new year and realized nothing was what I had expected it would be. We were still living in the mother-in-law unit at my in-laws. We were waiting to hear if Sacramento was where God was leading us. To top it off, we have been trying to have a baby and that morning we had our hopes up enough to take a pregnancy test only for the results to be "not pregnant." 

We arrived at church and the chorus/bridge to the first or second song was "you[God]'re never going to let me down." And I could not sing it. I knew these words were true from an eternal perspective, but in that moment at church I could not say it. I was not angry with God, but I was deeply disappointed. Amidst repetitions of "you're never going to let me down," I was reminded of the story from John 11.

I love John 11 and the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. I love that from the beginning Jesus clearly knows the end of the story. He even tries to spoil it for the disciples by telling them "this illness [of Lazarus] does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it," (Jn 11.4). Then Jesus waits for Lazarus to die (Jn 11.6).

When Jesus finally arrives in Bethany, Lazarus's sisters, Martha and Mary, each come to him and say "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died," (Jn 11.21,32).

And then Jesus joins with their weeping, (Jn 11.35).

Jesus already knows how this story ends, he gave it away at the beginning. He is God and he knows he is about to go call Lazarus back from death. But Jesus's eternal perspective does not prevent him from identifying with their sorrow. He empathizes with their pain. 

I love this about Jesus. He loves us and he is with us. He understands when we find ourselves in a dark valley surrounded by hardships. He does not reprimand us for our feelings. He cries with us. He feels our pain. Jesus's incarnation demonstrates how far God will go to empathize with us and show his love.

As I stood there at church, not singing "you're never going to let me down," I felt God tell me that I was being like Martha and Mary, saying 'Lord, if you had been here...everything would not be going wrong right now.' God then said "I understand your pain, I get it, and I am with you."

We came to the ending/outro of the song, which says "when the night is holding on to me, God is hold on." And I could sing this, because I know God is with me. Nothing had changed, we still were not pregnant and did not know where God was leading us. God never promises life will be easy, but He does say He is with us. Even when the hurt and the sadness are not yet resolved, God still holds onto us. He knows the good end of the story, He knows His will and timing, and He identifies with us now.

Praise God we can be open and vulnerable with Him, we can share our feelings, and we can have hope in who He is.

The song quotes come from “King of My Heart” by John and Sarah Mcmillan