Processing Our Re-entry

We are back in California. The last six weeks were a blur of cleaning, writing letters (in French) to close our various utilities and accounts, and spending wonderful time with friends. We are now Day +8 from our departure from France.

It is strange to be back in California, and it's funny what moments of culture-shock strike us. Giant sodas with ice, free refills of drip coffee, restored cultural fluency; it has been an interesting reentry so far.

I miss Grenoble and I deeply miss my friends and community there, but at the moment I feel a bit emotionally constipated. I am sad, but not as sad as I expected. Perhaps I grieved enough leading up to our departure, or I am still too emotionally spent to feel much. Perhaps I think I am on a short vacation and will be surprised when our time in California does not end. Maybe I have been too busy/stressed/occupied to feel all the pent up emotions which will come bursting forth at a future moment in time. I don't know; I've never done this before.

But I am trying to place no expectations upon myself to feel a certain way, and I am working to provide myself time to feel what I want or need to experience.

The moments which have felt the strangest, when I have felt a bit like an outsider, have been when I spent time with friends I have not seen in three years. Of course their lives have gone on: jobs change, children are born and learn to walk, people grow, but when my mind has to catch up for the time we have been away, it makes me almost wish I had not come back. I was comfortable in the world of Grenoble where these dear friends, who I am now seeing again, were put on pause in my mind. I feel the weight of our time away most when I have to fast-forward three years of their lives to bring us to the present moment we are spending together.

I knew this day was coming and I grieved its approached. Now I also look ahead with excitement to what God is calling us to. Once again I am a maelstrom of emotions; sad and excited simultaneously. The process of re-entry will take the time it demands and I will allow myself this space. I am both home and away; resident and alien.

The idea which scares me most is when these feelings of being the stranger fade and I am fully acclimated back into my culture. Nothing will be the same, I am forever changed, but it feels a bit like I am losing my time in France. So I cling to my memories of Grenoble as I re-connect with friends and family. As we have come to say a lot these last few months, "life is weird."

Processing Our Coming Move (Part 2)

Time waits for no one. It steadily moves forward whether we want it to or not. Our time in Grenoble continues to dwindle. Already our friends, Djakou, Yao and Elvia, have left on trips home and will not return to Grenoble until after we have left. Their departures, as well as others who will be leaving soon, has both heightened and dissipated my emotions for our own journey. We are sad to be saying good byes already; I was preparing for this in July but we are finding we have less time with people than expected.

My emotions continue to be turbulent, but instead of being carried along through this season, I am choosing to engage with it. I have decided amidst the emotions to be thankful. On May 30^th, the day I posted Part 1, I also created a Word document where each day I am writing one thing I am thankful for in Grenoble. There are so many reasons I have to be thankful. We have wonderful friends, a fun job, and live in a beautiful city nestled in the Alps. It has been helpful actively choose thankfulness. Rather than only being sad at the thirty-six days remaining, I am reminding myself of the incredible nine hundred and fifty-three days we have already had. In the end it will amount to forty-five days of thankfulness.

I am still riding the roller-coaster of emotions, but I’m trying to lift my hands and cheer.

Processing Our Coming Move (Part 1)

Our time living in Grenoble is drawing to a close. We leave in 45 days to be exact. That date seems far too soon. For months now, I have been "pre-grieving" our eventual departure from Grenoble. Looking at the mountains surrounding town, walking home from the boulangerie, drinking chocolat viennois with friends on Friday nights, I have been cognizant of the coming end to each of these. It has been an important process for me.

About a month ago, I moved emotionally into a time of wanting to "rip the band-aid off." The move is coming, it is going to hurt, let's just get it over with. Now, when I think about leaving, it makes my head spin. I feel sort of dizzy at the idea.

Have you noticed how emotions are not mutually exclusive? We can sometimes have this immature idea that feeling one emotion, like being sad to leave Grenoble, means I cannot simultaneously feel a "contradictory" emotion, like being excited to move back near friends and family and start a wonderful new job. Praise God that He made us emotionally complex enough to feel a myriad of emotions at the same time. I am both deeply saddened to leave Grenoble and our wonderful community here and very excited for our adventures ahead in California.

The only difference is that at this moment in time, while still in Grenoble, the emotions about leaving are much more tangible than the ethereal thoughts of what is to come. Also, our community around us now is experiencing the sadness of our leaving and it is important to identify with them in their sadness. It is always harder to be the one left than the one leaving; leaving has novel excitement, remaining only has loss. So for those of you in California, our time of rejoicing together will come, but for now I am grieving in Grenoble.

It is also hard that we will leave Grenoble with work left to be done. Granted, there will always be more friends and university students to hang out with no matter when we leave, but it is sad to go when there are so many wonderful people here now. But the idea of ever leaving a place with “mission complete” is a fantasy. Aside from very finite projects, life is never “complete.” There are still numerous things we want to do in Grenoble and in France, but this only means we will have to come back to visit.

Grief in France and thoughts on Charlie

            I first became aware of Charlie Hebdo when I heard about the terrorist attack on January 7^th. My initial response was unattached; twelve people dead is tragic, but tragedy happens all the time.

            But for my French friends around me it was not something to be unattached about, it was personal. It was an attack in their nation. It was the targeted assassination of well known and dearly loved public figures. I think this is inpart why the cry for solidarity has been “Je suis Charlie” (I am Charlie), because so many people can identify with those killed at Charlie Hebdo. I have heard stories of people who grew up reading comics and articles by those killed, whether published by Charlie Hebdo or in other magazines. Satire and the idea no subject is too sacred to escape mocking is a deeply held French value; it seems to date back at least to the writings of Voltaire and the Enlightenment which are both at the core of the French identity. Regardless of opinions concerning this freedom of speech, the attack on Charlie Hebdo feels like an assault on French values and culture. France is not my country, but it is my host country. French culture is not my culture, but it is my friends’ culture. So I want to stand with my friends and grieve this attack.

            My concern now is what the backlash will be. We panic when something as foundational as our culture or worldview is threatened. France is characterized by a unique brand of militant secularism known as laïcité which seeks to restrict the expression of personal beliefs in a public setting. This philosophy confronted with the large North African Muslim population now living within France has made anti-immigrant sentiments and questions of religious freedoms into hot topics of debate since before we arrived in France. I fear this new attack will only fuel the view religion is fundamentally incompatible with French culture, and spur a rise in actions against immigrants, specifically North-Africans, and Muslims. Already laïcité and Islamophobia place restrictions on religions of any sort.

            The Muslim community in France is as deeply grieved by this attack as the rest of the French people, but now bears the added weight put on them by political powers and mob mentality. Extremists, both those who plotted the attack as well as the National Front (the ultraconservative, nationalistic, and Islamophobic political party), want to use this attack to divide the people of France and further their agendas. They want to force Muslims to say either they condone Charlie’s images against Islam and condemn Wednesday’s attack, or they condemn the images and condone the attack. But this is a false dichotomy, and many Muslims feel caught in the middle. A Muslim friend of mine said he has been hurt three times now: first when Charlie Hebdo published their cartoons, second was the attack on Wednesday, and now a third time when people began saying all Muslims are terrorists.

            People have also begun spreading “Je ne suis pas Charlie” (I am not Charlie) on social media as a reaction to those killed at Charlie being viewed as martyrs of free speech. In the wake of this attack people are questioning and responding to the previous published works of Charlie Hebdo. The tension which erupted with the attack is still lingering and everyone is in a reactive mood. It has been noted social media polarizes people and viewpoints; we either agree 100% or we are opponents. People feel the need to critique and comment upon every single point of deviation they may have with another person’s thoughts. Add this to something has volatile as Charlie Hebdo, and we get a potential social media storm with overly defined and simplistic battle lines dividing people.

            This is missing the true need right now. Whether the past actions of those at Charlie Hebdo were wise, disrespectful, funny, or imprudent is not the issue. Twelve people are dead in what was an attack on a cultural value. We do not have to agree 100% with Charlie Hebdo’s policies to be grieved by this attack or to mourn with those around us. “Je ne suis pas Charlie” at worst seems to say those who died deserved it, and at best invalidates the grief of everyone affected by the attack. It may not be meant as invalidation of others' grief, but it is perceived as such, and I cannot agree with that. Now is not the time to ponder Charlie Hebdo’s policies, it is a time to mourn together. If you do not feel comfortable changing your profile picture to “Je suis Charlie” don’t, but please do not nullify another’s grief. Division will not bring peace; it will spark only violence and fear. Our only hope is that we can love others and work together through this.

            Please pray for France: pray for unity, peace, and understanding.

My New Year's Resolution is Learning to Grieve Better (part 4)

The conversation about grief and learning how to healthily grieve does not end with the close of 2014. And I obviously do not know everything. But over this last year I have accumulated this list of blog posts and articles I have found helpful and thought provoking. I hope you too find these of assistance. If you know of or find other resources on learning to grieve, please post them in the comment section.

(Links are in no particular order)

• http://www.alifeoverseas.com/outlawed-grief-a-curse-disguised/
• http://sarahbessey.com/depression-fault/
• http://www.calebwilde.com/2014/02/should-we-medicate-grief-2/
• http://www.calebwilde.com/2014/08/grief-shaming-why-some-people-believe-your-grief-over-robin-williams-is-misguided/
• http://www.calebwilde.com/2014/05/if-youre-dealing-with-complicated-grief-seek-first-your-therapist-not-your-pastor-2/
• http://www.calebwilde.com/2014/06/when-is-the-last-time-you-had-one-of-these/
• http://sarahbessey.com/learning-obey-sadness/
• http://www.calebwilde.com/2014/03/10-reasons-we-are-not-vulnerable-with-each-other/
• http://www.calebwilde.com/2014/04/eight-examples-of-disenfranchised-grief/
• http://www.calebwilde.com/2014/03/grief-online-the-dos-and-donts-of-internet-etiquette/
• http://www.calebwilde.com/2013/12/11-worst-and-best-things-to-say-at-a-funeral-3/
• http://sarahbessey.com/lament-sandy-hook/
• http://www.calebwilde.com/2014/12/surviving-grief-and-the-holidays/

My New Year's Resolution is Learning to Grieve Better (part 3)

It has been a while since I posted about my 2014 New Year’s Resolution of learning to grieve well (parts 1 and 2 here and here), and with 2014 drawing to a close here is one of the last two posts. On this side of 2014 I still have a lot to learn about grieving well.

I am inspired by Jesus’ words and actions in John 11. Word comes to Jesus that Lazarus, a dear friend of his, is sick, and in verse four Jesus begins by telling us the end of the story. “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it” (John 11:4) are Jesus’ words. From the start everything Jesus does is rooted in His knowledge of how this will end. He knew Lazarus would live again and it would be for God's glory. So after the news of Lazarus’s sickness comes Jesus waits for Lazarus to die.

When at last Jesus arrives in the town of Bethany, and he meets Lazarus’ sisters Martha and Mary, he does not offer up vague platitudes. He does not make excuses or give well intended but empty words. He cries with them (John 11:35). Even though Jesus knows the sisters’ grief will soon be turned to awe, the Lord God Almighty-Creator of the Universe-now human, weeps with them. He is present with them in their grief. He is not bothered by their mourning or their lack of His eternal perspective, He is not uncomfortable with their emotions, He instead meets them where they are in their grief. And that is awesome. I want to be like Jesus for others. Just as the Lord has met with me in my times of grief, I want to be able to meet others too.

In 1 Corinthians 12:26 Paul writes “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it” and again in Romans 12:15 “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.” In a world where people are uncomfortable with each other’s grief, may we the Church incarnate the truth of being there with those who mourn, of grieving with those who grieve. May we be known as a Church who weeps well together.

I am still in the process of discovering how to embody this truth and follow Jesus in walking in the ways of His Kingdom. Will you walk with me? Can we as the Church walk together in our grief and learning to grieve?

My New Year's Resolution is Learning to Grieve Better (part 2)

This post continues my new year’s resolution of learning to grieve. I began writing about grief with my own grief because it is important first grapple with this before I consider engaging with anyone else’s. If I cannot process my own grief I am likely to be a burden to those around me who are grieving, and there are people around me who are hurting. This world is a broken place, it is inevitable we and people we love will hurt and grieve.

My experience is most of us do not know how to healthily grieve, at least not well enough. I want to learn better how to process life when it is horrific, and I want to be able to help others when they are experiencing the same. In grief, in the midst of our raw emotions, we need each other, and we have the unique opportunity to meet this head on. 

I think it is important we own our grief when it comes; to be willing and comfortable to acknowledge when we are in the agony of grief. We need to also be able to help others acknowledge their grief. In general I find we are really uncomfortable with other’s pain. It makes us very uneasy.

When Emily and I were first married a lesson I had to learn (and am still learning) is that it is okay for Emily to be upset. I cannot always fix the problem. Acting or attempting to resolve the problem and working until I have does not solve the problem. All it accomplishes is make Emily feel unheard, stifled, and controlled by my inability to allow her to be upset. Sometimes we need to be honest and upset, and we need to allow others the freedom to be upset. If this is challenging over minor issues, we know it will be amplified several orders of magnitude with grief.

Well intended words like "everything happens for a reason" and "she's in a better place" are garbage. They help no one. They only speak to someone’s discomfort with another’s grief. Good intentions are nice, but if we are serious about helping others, being there for others, we need to not settle for good intentions. God's Kingdom is not built with good intentions. When we have loss, when we have grief, we need to be honest and process through it. Well intended words invalidate the suffering and grief of others. Doing so harms the person and does not build the Kingdom of God. Emotional suppression is not healthy, and Jesus came so we might be "whole/holy". I do not mean to condemn those who offer up such well meant words, but I do mean to call us to do better and seek to truly help people.

Instead of offering vague words I want to be there. To sit with others in the midst of the storm, when everything sucks, and cry with them. No one wants my empty words. I think honestly the best thing I can offer is my presence. To be there. To listen. If they want to talk we will talk; if they want to sit in silence we will sit in silence. Maybe I can try making food, perhaps I should learn a few casserole recipes to have in my repertoire for when the need arises.

My New Year's Resolution is Learning to Grieve Better (part 1)

This year I have a new year's resolution, and it sounds odd, but I want to learn to grieve better.  Weird right?  It all started at a Christmas Eve service in a cemetery and Christmas day away from family.

I want to learn to grieve well not because I am necessarily poor at it (thought I do have a lot to learn) but because I have found grief to be among life’s guarantees (like taxes and needing to eat food even when I don’t want to).  Grief is nebulous, both in experience and its source.  My greatest experience of grief has been the death of my grandmother, but I am currently experiencing grief for the loss of my native culture and time with family.  It feels odd to admit this and to use the same English word and emotional turmoil to describe these two subjects, but my feelings are probably more indicative of my own immature views of grief than the nature of grief itself.

Grief is not a sign of weakness or unhappiness.  I have been surprised how much I have grieved living in France, especially this holiday season.  I mean we’re living in France!  If this is not a dream life I don’t know what is (and it is an absolute dream), but grief is not mutually exclusive to other emotions.  We humans must give ourselves credit for being complicated enough to feel more than only happy or sad or bored at any one moment in time.  I am coming to terms with the fact a grieving process is part of cultural acclimation.

Beyond grieving for the comfortable and familiar back home, where I can do mundane tasks like buy toilet paper without culture-stress, this holiday season has the added grief of being away from family at a special time of year.  We were visited by all the emotions and memories of Christmas past. 

For Christmas Emily and I spent five days in Salzburg adventuring in castles, cathedrals, and the Christmas market; it was a magical time.  I will always look back fondly upon this unique opportunity.  But we also grieved being away from our families this Christmas.  To help each other Emily and I traded stories of holiday traditions and memories.  While skype (even with a poor internet connection) was a huge blessing, there is no replacement for being physically present with loved-ones and there’s no point in pretending there is.  Such pretending is exactly the thing I want to learn not to do.

So we took time to be sad and allow ourselves and each other to be sad.  There were good reasons to feel so.  All this has me thinking about grief and how I handle my own as well as the grief of others (which I will explore in future blog posts).  I want to ponder and learn about grief this year.