We're at the six-month mark now. Six months since we left our home for an adventurous lifestyle of itineracy around the world.
There are times when the best description for that decision is, "it seemed like a good idea at the time."
Adventures are wonderful to read about, but quite uncomfortable to live, I now see.
It is an adventure to go somewhere exotic and get a very large intestinal parasite. It is an adventure to go for a hike in a wood and get stomped on by an anxious mother moose. It is an adventure to go ice-climbing, have a rope break, and slide down a glacier into a crevasse. The Donner party had a heck of an adventure. So did the passengers on the Titanic.
Adventures are traumas we wish upon ourselves.
Now, all this seems a bit silly. We haven't moved to a jungle or desert. We've moved to a town south of London, in an area of 'Outstanding Natural Beauty.' The harshest thing one can say about the climate is that it's grey a lot of the time. Oh, woe is me! I'll have to carry an umbrella!
The food is conveniently available in ordinary ways (grocery stores), mildly exotic ways (outdoor markets), pricey ways (boutique shops), and very pricey ways (in restaurants). I have not had to dig up and cook grubs, process the poison out of cassava roots, or eat unidentifiable body parts from unidentifiable animals.
Transportation is easy and very western. You can buy a car and whiz around in it to your heart's content. You can go anywhere you want. No check-points, no armed drivers, and plenty of sat-nav signal. No camels, no rickshaws, no canoeing into leech-infested tributaries. If you want to bike or bus or take the train and tube, you can. And you can walk all you like, anywhere you like. There are sign-posted and mapped walking paths all over the place. They offer an alternative travel experience - on the paths you can go where cars aren't allowed. It's like traveling through a system of rabbit's burrows or worm-holes through space.
And shelter, while outrageously expensive, is entirely adequate. We live in a 3-story town-house sort of thing, mashed between many identical units. We've got hot and cold running water, functioning toilets and drains, heat, windows that open, all the mod-con appliances, a door that locks, and a tiny patch of grass and ornamental plants surrounded by a high wood fence.
So what's all the hand-wringing, whinging and catastrophic thinking about?
Simply this: I don't like change. I like familiarity. It's comfortable. I like for variety and adventure to be my-sized; I like to choose it and decide when it starts and stops. I like CONTROL.
I've lost control.
The list of things I don't know stretches for miles. The answers I get when I ask questions are not always accurate. The pathways to where I'm trying to go are obscure, wiggly, and frequently interrupted by blockages and detours. This is both figurative and literal. Ever since we've moved here there have been road works and building construction happening all around our house. We never know from day to day where the road will be blocked, reduced to one lane, or pitted and lumped by excessive traffic and wear. Leaving home is a journey into chaos.
I've never been easily quick. Some people learn their way around in moments. They know where they are in space; they notice the names of roads; they intuit signs and signals I never perceive. They move quickly and with assurance through space and time while I trail along, assaulted by unfamiliarity and traveling on trust rather than any form of knowledge.
This is HARD. I'm scraping the last bits of plucky courage out of the big jar I brought over here. Amazon.com doesn't carry it. I'd cash in my chips and become agoraphobic, but that would make things difficult for John and the boys. Plus, I told a bunch of people I'd do a bunch of things, and I really hate backing out of commitments, however optimistically made.
So the only thing to do is to get up and face each day on its own terms. I will learn someday, I hope, to meet myself half-way. I will allow myself to be scared witless by each change of terrain without telling myself to stop being such a ninny. I will give myself credit for the fact that even though I didn't know what I was getting into, I made it through and got back home again - late, rattled, and cursing rather hysterically, but in one piece.
To any of my friends who take the time to read this - I want to thank you simply for being there. For reasons that mystify me you take an interest in the welfare of me and my family. I'm struck with awe again and again at how each of you have reached out in just the right time, in just the right way - without the slightest notion that you were doing so, probably. While I'm too skeptical of my own motivations to see God's hand at work in my actions, I look at what you do and I see His providence and guidance. I watch you, my friends, to see what He's up to, and I can't believe how clever and creative He is. Please keep in touch.
