Almost Christmas.

It’s scorching; the curtains douse the sun streaming in through the sliding doors. I pour an iced-coffee to stem my headache and make sure the boys have water nearby. Husband takes a gulp of his chilled apple cider, and then places it in the condensation puddle.

The room is filled with Christmas music overflowing with joy, hope and that thrill of expectation. Husband sets up the tree as excited as our young boys to be finally decorating it.

I’m wrapped in twinkle lights trying to calculate how much of each string needs to go on branches weaving up to the top.

Taking out the Christmas decorations one by one, carefully unwrapping them and hoping that the fragile ones don’t drop onto the tiles from over eager four-year-old bouncing to help. One decoration is so old I can’t remember when I got it, a gift from a lifetime ago. Stars cut out of cardboard with coloured paper glued over top from our first Christmas at Rumginae. We didn’t have our decorations or even a tree. A cinnamon wood angel that fills the house with a scent that’s warm and filled with mouth-watering promises. Decorations that come from all over the world a reminder that Christmas is celebrated everywhere in different ways. Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus made out of wooden clothes pegs, a memento of our first Christmas in tropical Cairns.

Some decorations didn’t quite survive the year in their box—or the travel—and need to be super glued before being perched on their branch. I have my favourites: The white and blue ceramic heart that I picked up one shopping trip and couldn’t put down again, the brightly painted Balinese birds that colour the tree. Husband took the boys shopping today and they are eager to add their Christmas decoration choices to the tree; a silver sleigh and campervan complete with evergreen tree sprinkled with snow.

Curious six-year old wants to know when the presents will start arriving now that we have the tree up. The last gingerbread is halved between two little mouths, a cry of, ‘Mine’s bigger than yours,’ breaks the spell of generosity. Thankfully there’s no scuffle.

I sink gratefully into the couch, propping my wrapped ankle up on the stool. The lights get plugged in, the cheery glow of coloured bulbs reflects off the shiny decorations. We sit for a moment in the peace before antsy four-year old switches the calm lights to a strobing flicker. From now on the air will be charged with secrets and whispers, giggles behind closed doors and barely contained excitement.

It’s almost Christmas…

My Lily

I’ve been feeling rather overwhelmed with my writing lately particularly, the book that I’m writing. I got to the point where I just didn’t want to even look at it anymore. When I did look at it, I felt frustrated and just plain confused.

I thought that I’d done the hard part—writing it. But reflecting back, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Actually writing the whole bones of my children’s book, which from this moment onward I will be referring to as Lily, took me about six months—that was two years ago.

Lily is over 25,000 words and that might not seem so long for a lot of people, particularly those who have written novels with 80-100,000 words or love reading full-length novels, but to me it is enormous.

I got lost in the words, I didn’t know which way was up or what was right or inside-out. If you asked me what the theme of my book was, I couldn’t tell you because somewhere in the 20,000+ words and the two years I’ve been writing, it got lost. Why was I even writing this book?

I’ve had numerous people read Lily at different stages, all of whom have been so incredibly encouraging and also offering their opinions and suggestions, which have helped me to continue to move forward. Thank you!

A couple of months ago I printed Lily off again. Completely disillusioned with reading her on the screen I thought, if I have her on paper, then maybe I’d be able to make some more sense of this absolute mess I’ve made of her.

I started reading and chucked her down with disgust, I was bored after the first page! She went on the pile on the desk. You know, that annoying pile that keeps growing and nobody actually knows what’s in it.

I have a wonderful husband, he’d read Lily two years ago, when I triumphantly and incredibly naively, pushed back from the computer and announced, “I’m done!”

He took her up again and began to, in my opinion, labour through the manuscript. I couldn’t watch him read, so I left him to it. Walking in and out of the room on the days he was reading Lily, I could see him writing and marking things, circling and crossing out. When he finished, this is what he handed me:

 

 I couldn’t believe it. First of all, he actually read through the whole manuscript and then secondly, he said there were times he couldn’t even stop reading when he knew that he should stop and write a comment. What an encouragement.

I know that giving a spouse or someone who loves you very much something to critique isn’t the best choice, if you want an unbiased opinion. But really, I didn’t need an unbiased opinion I needed someone to say, “Keep at it. I enjoyed reading it. There is a lot more here that you can fix, but it’s fixable and I believe in you.”

So, here goes, another edit. According to my computer count it’s number 38 but really that was only after I actually started counting and we’ve changed computers and moved country and interstate in between.

Who knows where this next step will take me.

Do You Have a Favourite Reading Spot?

My favourite reading spot when I was about thirteen was a huge boulder, which sat on the edge of our hydro creek. The boulder was covered in moss and lichen, orchids and shrubs. The generator rumbled away in its little shack behind and the water gushing out of the turbine created a roaring waterfall, which fed into a small creek.

On particularly hard days, when I wanted to disappear for a while, I would take the dirt track from our house, climb over the fence and follow the stony pathway along the creek. This path was a haven for me. The sound of the creek rushing over stones and splashing down mini waterfalls, hedged in by green cushioned rocks and thick ferns was a fantasy world. The air around was cooled by the leafy trees, which stretched over my head filtering the sun. The path wound around bends, disappeared down little gullies and climbed small hills. It seemed to me that it could stretch on forever. Really, it was probably just my dawdling that made the walks take so long. I would stop to watch the creek, running my fingers through the icy water, imagining sprites playing in the liquid amber, listen to the birds and think how wonderful it would be to fly and wandering off into the bush looking for secret clearings.

Then I would get to my boulder and climb up the rough surface. Grabbing on to the flexible branches of small trees and carefully skirting around the orchids so as not to crush the delicate flowers to find the perfect place to sit on the soft moss. Making sure I was hidden from anyone’s sight below.

I could sit there for hours and get lost in my books. One of my favourite books at the time was, The Hawk And The Jewel by Lori Wick. The story was about Sunny Gallagher, a young English girl who was thought to be lost at sea when she was a baby but had been rescued and brought up by the emir of Darhabar, on the Arabian coast. At thirteen, Sunny is whisked back to England where she has to relearn all that she has grown up knowing. She meets her ‘real’ family, has to learn how to dress properly and eat English food. She has to figure out how to live in this strange new world, how to act, talk and even think like a proper English woman.

My confused heart related so well to Sunny and her struggle to find her place in another culture and learn to love another family. I soaked it all in while I sat on my boulder with the sound of the hydro generator thrumming through me, and the smell of damp earth surrounding me.

Reluctantly, I would come back to reality, often at the sound of kids running past and me ducking my head to keep out of sight. I would climb down from my hiding place and make my way slowly home; head in the clouds, dreaming of places I had never been. 

That walk home—along my haven path—was like a slow shedding of the fantasy and stepping back into reality.

 

How Many Lives Will It Cost Before We Open Up Our Hearts?

When I saw the picture of your lifeless body washed up on the beach of the Turkish coast, thousands of miles from here. I saw my son. And I can’t stop the tears because you were so young and so at the mercy of those around you and you were rejected and it cost you your life. 

Oh God, please forgive us our complacency and our love of comfort and wealth, which costs the world so much. It demands the lives of innocent children, sending them to their deaths. We who live in countries, which are so wealthy and vast cannot open up our doors and our lives to you who simply want a chance to live in a place where there is no conflict and no war, no indiscriminate killing and no hunger and abject poverty.

We have all the water that we want and the food that we want and all the space that we want and yet we do not share because we are afraid.

Dear little boy, it is true we in the west are afraid of you and because of that crippling fear we let you die. You, who only lived for three short years, you who will never grow up, never learn to read, never kick another ball, never make life altering decisions, never taste the freedom here on earth that the few of us have. Your young life consisted of growing up in a country filled with war and hate. All your family wanted was for you to taste the sweetness of security and peace.

We in the west have seen your picture, your image seared into our minds and I pray that it will open up our hearts and our eyes to understand what is truly happening in the world.

Here in Australia we like to think that we are a country of opportunity and that we give everyone ‘a fair go’—as long as they come here in the appropriate manner and are deemed acceptable.

We cannot comprehend what it is to only know fear and hunger and pain and terror. We do not understand true poverty, no clean water, no inside plumbing, no weekly rubbish collection. We have no idea what its like to run and run and run and never escape the guns and soldiers, war lords, kidnappers and slave traders.

We do not understand, so we prefer to close our eyes and not think about it.

We say, “That was irresponsible to try and go to a country so far away. Your parents should have tried somewhere closer.” Ignoring the fact that all the countries that surround yours are packed to the hilt and cannot support any more refugees.

We say, “Don’t come here, we are an island and you will die if you try to come.” Ignoring the obvious that you will die if you do not try. Ignoring the fact that there is no other way. Ignoring the fact that you and your neighbours have already died a thousand times. Like that time when the bombs first fell and the houses were blown apart. Or the time your friend, watched soldiers kill his father and older brothers. Then there was the time that the men came and took your nine-year old neighbour away to sell her as a sex slave. You died and died and died again.

And now I begin to understand why you would try and get as far away as possible and risk your very life for a chance of freedom.

Now you, sweet innocent have crossed a line in the sand and cannot be ignored. 

All our wealth will rot if we cannot give it away. All our comfort and security is false if we cannot share it with those who need it most.

May we learn, that no matter what the motivations of a few maybe, innocent lives are lost when we indiscriminately reject everyone seeking refuge because the do not fit the mold or follow the rules.

So, young one, you challenge me. I pray that I have the courage to move over, to share some space, to share my feast table—the blessings that have been entrusted to me so that I can in turn bless others.

And I pray, knowing that you are safe in the arms of the one who loves us all more than we can ever comprehend, that we will learn to love abundantly, freely and without fear.

Boatloads

I heard a disturbing comparison recently; that Australia’s dealing with asylum seekers and refugees coming by boat is comparable to what happened in 1939 to the Jewish refugee boat the St Louis. The boat, carrying 937 refugees was rejected at port after port before returning to Europe. A quarter of those passengers then died in concentration camps.

Time and time again Australia is turning way boatloads of desperate people who are seeking a land to live in free of oppression, free of torture, free of crippling poverty and starvation. A country where there is hope for a safe future. Not only that but Australia's actions are encouraging other countries to turn away those in desperate need.

As Australia we are blessed to have been born in this country.

It is not our right.

It is a blessing.

We do not have the authority to keep that blessing to ourselves and reject those who were not born here.

We don’t have a right to sift through people’s lives, their education, their job prospects, their bank accounts, their health, and pick and choose who gets to come and who doesn’t.

Our world has grown smaller and we can travel anywhere but we shield and distance ourselves from the everyday reality of the majority of our world’s people. We continue to put up walls, fearful of those whose ways are different, who speak languages we cannot understand.

What would happen if we could all see each other as; mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, children and grandparents who love our families, who get scared, who make mistakes, who want to protect those we love the most?

How many stories from history, how many books and movies have come out recently, which show what happens when one people, one country shut themselves off from those in need and lord it over those who are desperate?

We say, that’s fiction, that’s in the past, it’s never going to happen again; we’ve learned our lesson. But have we? Have we really? Or do the same lessons keep coming back again and again just in different forms?

It is horrifying to think that Australia could become a country responsible for the deaths of thousands of people.

Knowing now the horrors of what happened in those concentration camps, I am sure that those countries that rejected the people on the St Louis wish that they had accepted them.
Are we sure we know the extent of what asylum seekers and refugees desperately trying to get to Australia are escaping from?

We are a country vast and prosperous. We can and should accept those who want to protect their families and give a future to their children.

Home

“So, where’s home for you?”

Simple question, right?

My mind freezes and then starts to search frantically for some sort of recognition.

“I’m sorry could you repeat the question please?”

“Where’s home?”

“Ah yes, and what exactly is your precise definition of home, so that I may answer your question in the appropriate manner?”

The concept of home is a rather hard one for me to grasp. I grew up in a different country from where my family is from and where I was born. I went to boarding school for ten years and was away from where my parents lived for about nine months of each of those years. Most recently we were in PNG for six years then moved to Victoria for nine months and have now moved to Cairns. It’s all rather confusing really. My ‘family’ is spread over the world. My parents are in Indonesia, my younger brother lives in Queensland (same state!) and my older brother is in Switzerland at present.

I’m beginning to realise though, that as weird as I think I am, I’m really not that unusual. Cairns is a kaleidoscope of people from all over Australia and the globe. There are so many immigrants and refugees here. It’s a pretty amazing place.

Our next-door neighbours are a classic example. He is from Sweden and she is from Japan and their kids are growing up in Australia.

I have always loved Thomas Kinkade paintings of beautiful houses with glowing lights in the windows, a cottage by the sea; solid, comforting, secure.

 

So, where is home? For me, home is not a place, home is where Matt and Edward and Jack are. That’s what I can narrow it down to at the moment.

Deeper than that, home is a place I have yet to experience. I catch glimpses of it; in family, in friends, in places I have lived. That home; is why my heart yearns for a constant in this life of change, a place to truly belong. Eternity in the hearts of man.

What about you? Where is home?

I Love Christmas Carols

I love Christmas carols.

I love listening to them,

I love singing them.

I think we should sing them all year around and not just at Christmas.

One of my favourite things about Christmas is being able to

turn off all the lights,

sit in the glow of the Christmas tree

and listen to carols.

The other night I got to sing a few.

Jack, my three year old, was having trouble going to sleep.

A cockroach had fallen out of the air conditioner onto his bed earlier in the day and he was convinced that it was going to happen again.

I don’t blame him.

I can’t stand cockroaches.

Yuck.

His bedroom light was off and he was lying in his bed.

I started to sing Silent Night and O Holy Night and then O Little Town of Bethlehem.

As soon as I started singing

I was flooded.

You know; hope, anticipation, excitement, peace.

Like something amazing is about to happen.

Like I can start all over again, new.

And that is why I think we should sing Christmas carols all year around.

Because those feelings are for everyday and not just once a year.

Doing Re-entry

Re-entry

noun

1.The action or process of re-entering

- your passport country, culminating in:

The feeling of being a foreigner in your own country

Moving to a new country is hard:

You have to learn the language,

Get used to a new culture,

And figure out how to eat the food,
All the while, trying not to offend anyone by what you say, do or wear.

This can go on for years and years before you finally begin to feel at home.

Then you start to relax:

You can understand conversations without flipping through your dictionary,

You develop friendships that go deeper than surface conversations,

You begin to understand looks and gestures and adopt them as your own.

And then you move back to your own country.

It might seem like a rather simple thing to do, moving back to your own country.

After all that’s probably where you grew up:

Maybe your family is there,

And the best friend you’ve known since kindergarten.

You already know the language,

Love the food

And can’t wait to relax in a culture where you know all the rules.

But then you get back to your country and you find that it’s different.

At some point, while you were away, everything changed,

Including you.

Now, you walk into a room full of people you should feel comfortable around and all you want to do is disappear.

You keep listening to people’s conversations and wondering why you don’t understand what the heck they are talking about.

The food you loved so much suddenly isn’t so special anymore.

You feel like all the rules you knew so well and felt so comfortable with have changed And you don’t know how to react or what is expected of you.

Friendships that were so strong and intimate, now feel stilted.

There’s this huge chasm that’s opened up with no bridge.

I’m doing re-entry and it is hard.

It’s one of the most painful things in the world to live among people whom I feel so disconnected from.

We moved back to Australia two years ago. That’s quite a long time, not really so long in the re-entry time scale. We were away from Australia for about six years, so it might be another year before we start to feel at home again.

My normal has changed and I am way outside of my comfort zone. Maybe one day this different will be my new normal.

Maybe one day.

Book Review: The Edge of Tidal Pools by Michele Phoenix

On the remote French Ile de Batz, Casey Jensen is desperately trying to regain some sort of control over her life. Throughout the story we slowly discover why Casey is on the island and what it is that has triggered her emotional lock down. A highschool French teacher, Casey is surprised when one of her students reaches out to her, opens up to her and shares with her their deepest feelings. Ben spent the last five years in Tajikistan with his family and the ripple affects are tearing the young man apart. Now Casey is questioning everything in her life that made it seem so solid and secure.

This is a fascinating book, even more so if you are a Third Culture Kid or have a lot to do with MK’s. Michele Phoenix grew up as a TCK and has spent most of her adult life teaching TCK’s. She brings her unique perspective and insight to this beautiful book which acknowledges and honours the hurt and sometimes desperate struggle that TCK’s go through when trying to make sense of God, themselves, their parents decisions and the world in general.

Michele Phoenix has written a great book with real and deep characters. She does have some very strong opinions that come across loudly though not unpleasantly. Phoenix explores some very hard and often hidden emotions and effects of missionary life and choices made by parents, which have far reaching consequences in the lives of their children.

I would recommend this book to TCK’s, MK’s, PK’s, their parents and anyone interested in the inner workings of people who have gone through similar experiences.

Michele Phoenix has her own website with other information and resources for TCK's/MK's.   michelephoenix.com 

On Writing and Austen Novels

We’ve been on a bit of an Austen run lately. That is, watching the latest BBC adaptations of the novels. It started off with my favourite; Persuasion and we’ve just finished my second favourite, Emma. They aren’t the usual favourites and I really do enjoy Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility.

What I most enjoy about Persuasion and Emma are the characters. Anne Elliot is wracked with guilt and regret over her decision years ago to refuse Captain Wentworth and has resigned herself to being unhappy for the rest of her life. She could really use some good counselling! And Captain Fredrick Wentworth is determined that Anne will know that he is completely indifferent to her and thinks her weak and easily persuaded.

Emma is by far the most unlikeable heroine in all of Austen’s novels. I’ve read that Austen was quite concerned about how the readers would take to Emma, worried that she would be very much disliked.

In my opinion Emma, is Austen’s most honest character, her flaws are real and in view of the reader the whole time. She says things that make the reader/watcher cringe. She makes mistakes and assumptions, her behaviour is not always what it should be and her motivations are questionable. And, she’s the most frightful gossip.

Who doesn’t get filled up with dread when Emma takes her trip to Box Hill and we know that she’s about to say the most horrific things to Miss Bates?

“Badly done Emma, badly done indeed,” says Mr. Knightly. And yet, it is at that moment that he realises he loves her.

And I think it’s that wonderful quality of Emma and Persuasion, where characters have disappointed each other, they have made mistakes, they are hurt and have shown probably their worst sides, “Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant,” writes Captain Wentworth to Anne. And yet… and yet, they are loved.

When writing my own stories I have found it difficult not to make my characters perfect. It is easy to take out flaws that will make them unlikeable. To try and weave character traits together which make fictional heroes and heroines seem too good to be true.

I think is has a lot to do with my own struggle to try and look perfect to others, try and seem ‘all together’. But this is a great mistake because it is these very flaws that make characters in books relatable and real to us. It is these very flaws in myself which, when I am honest about them, draws out honesty and empathy in others.

A friend sent me this quote,

“The ache is where the stories come from, the art comes from… the truth comes from. To create, you can’t step around it—you fall into it.” Jonathan Martin

The ache within ourselves, whatever it is, flaws, you name it, is what makes writing and the characters we create real, with the ability to touch other people deeply. To be honest with where we are in life. To ignore that ache in us, to step around it and to have characters, which do not have an ache, is to be untrue to life, untrue to ourselves.

And no matter how flawed we are, there is always someone who loves us.

Grief

This river of grief that carves it way through me

Is deeper and wider than I know.

I feel its movement

with every breath,

Its strong undercurrent with every step.

At times it becomes a flood, a torrent wanting to sweep me away, crashing against the rocks in my life and overflowing the banks I have built.

Then it quiets--this monster, ebbing and flowing, strong and sure, continuous, seeping into every corner of me until it comes leaking out, silently.

It used to be hidden in the secret, dark depths of me, its unknown strength building, crippling my fragile hold on life.

Now that I have let it free, will it ever dry up or will it flow forever and forever to be replaced by some other grief?

This river that threatens to drown me

This river that shapes me as it changes course, changes my course.

This river that sharpens me,

Strengthens me,

Shines me.

On Being a TCK: Memories and Interpretations

I am lying on a rock, firm, solid, strong

The water around me crashes and swirls, exploding over rocks, roaring in my ears as it races down the mountain.

I can’t hear anything, except for the surging water all around me.

I am looking up, my vision is filled with the deep blue of the endless sky and slow clouds stretching up, floating by. Even though my ears are pulsing with the sound of the river, I feel safe, cradled on the sun-baked rock.

My emotions are a raging torrent; that matches the turmoil of the river around me. They rush around bumping into each other, crashing, spraying out everywhere and filling me with dread that keeps me pressed to my rock haven.

I am sixteen and my life is about to be flipped upside down and bashed inside out.

At home, it’s chaos, piles of things to pack, to give away, to leave, to sell. My life reduced to little scattered mounds of stuff, my history packed up and shipped off to other people.

I’ve said goodbye to my other family. We didn’t just go to school together, I lived with them everyday, 24/7. That’s what happens when you go to boarding school and live insulated in a small community.

Tomorrow, I’ll get my last glimpse of the mountains of my childhood, farewell my holiday friends, close the door on my family home—a home I would come to on the semester breaks, a sanctuary from the busy, outgoing persona I donned for survival while at school. Here I am, me, introverted, part-time loner, able to go all week and not see anyone outside of my family and be content. I can breathe.

Who will I be where we are going?

Will I have a choice?

Next week, I’ll have my last meal at my favourite restaurant, I’ll wave goodbye out of the aeroplane window and watch my world drop beneath me, the lake, the mountain, the jungle, gradually growing smaller until it disappears forever.

Who will I be without my past?

I’m going to a country with strange customs, strange accents, strange foods, big cities filled with millions of people, concrete stretching as far as the eye can see and houses piled upon houses. I will be lost in it all.

How will I ever find myself there?

I press my body into the rock, willing it to swallow me so that I can be forever in this solitary place, this place of comfort and security. This place where I know the rules, I know who I am or at least who I am expected to be.

Who will people expect me to be in my next world?

I slam the door on my thoughts, hold it shut with all my strength and let the firm foundation beneath and the eternal blue above saturate my soul.

Under Her Hair

I recently posted a picture of myself on facebook. It was a gorgeous picture and I was very proud of the way I looked in it, which is exactly why I posted it. The photo was taken on a date with my husband. Of course, it being a date I wore my favourite dress, which happens to look fabulous on me, thanks to a lovely friend who helped me pick it out. And I took particular care with my make up.

I got lots of lovely, encouraging comments and I thought to myself, “Is that why I posted it? So that people will tell me how gorgeous I look?” If I am honest with myself— of course that it why I posted it. I was proud of the way I looked in that photo and I wanted everyone to see it, to know that I can look beautiful.

Like most women I struggle with my appearance. I’m dissatisfied what I see in the mirror most of the time. I poke my tongue out at my reflection, scrunch up my nose and sigh dramatically to myself, “This is as good as it’s going to get.”

One of my particular problems is that I have a condition called alopecia, which has rendered me ‘hairless.’ I have no hair on my head, except annoying little white ones, no eyebrows, no eyelashes, no hair on my arms or legs (this one I’m not that annoyed about). I have felt quite inadequate in the looks department for a long time.

Lately, I’m beginning to realise that I am not the only one. For some reason we seem hardwired to want what we do not have.

I’m slowly coming to appreciate my two very distinctive looks. I can wear a scarf which is so much cooler, now that Cairns is starting to become somewhat unbearably hot. Or, I can wear my gorgeous wig that I finally had the courage to get and now wear comfortably. I still look like I’m on chemo at times but that’s not so worrying to me anymore. I’m incredibly grateful for wonderful friends who have encouraged me in my makeover and have been so excited for me as I’ve slowly made the transition from looking like I have a life-threatening disease to trying out make-up, getting tattoos and now a wig.

Having alopecia is not something that I am ashamed of and it’s not something that I bring up as I introduce myself to people. “Hi, my name is Linsey and I have alopecia,” is not the usual way of introducing ones self. Though sometimes I wish I would have the courage to do so. Usually it can be a bit of an awkwardly broached subject with people I haven’t known my whole life.

I don't quite have the guts to go out in public without anything on my head yet, maybe one day. That is something that I've also decided is okay. We are not all hard wired the same way, just as we do not all look the same (thank goodness).

As I posted the photo of me in my lovely wig on facebook part of me wanted to declare to the world that while I may look gorgeous in the photo, it’s not what I look like all the time and I am okay with that.

Beauty, as they say is in the eye of the beholder and I am so blessed to have a crowd of people around me who tell me that I look beautiful whether I wear a wig or not.

If you want to know more about alopecia there's a good description of it in wikipedia.