I'm starting to miss "home." I miss my friends. I miss my kids' friends. I miss having history with someone. I miss being able to have entire conversations with a look. I miss having Turkey as the thing around us, not the thing between us. My past and memories and experiences make up this huge space between me and everyone. When will it go away?
And so today I choose to focus on the good. These flowers in my front yard, planted lovingly by my gardening landlord, are beautiful! She is an artist and has used the front yard as her pallet. I get to benefit from this everyday and nothing I don't do seems to bring them harm.
Sophie sat in amongst them and tasted her first fistful of dirt (that I know of.) She is drawn to the dirt around the blossoms I can't get enough of. Aidan and Ella climb in a nearby tree and I am poignantly aware of the beauty that surrounds me in ways I desperately longed for in Istanbul.
Today I will savor the beauty and allow the desire for home to hang in the air, not wanting it to waft away, but unwilling to fully embrace it just so.
3 comments:
Your beauty oozes through your photos and your words. Thanks for sharing your life with so many, especially me!
Beth,
Thanks for the great post. I'm loving living in Richmond so far--things about being in a city that I think I wouldn't have gained an appreciation for if I wouldn't have lived in Istanbul.
I already find all sorts of ways I miss life in that crazy city and long to go back. I can't even imagine what it would be like after seven years there. But with your words you're helping me to look with more grateful eyes at the little gifts around me.
A few weeks ago, while I was visiting University Reformed Church in East Lansing, the pastor was preaching on Revelation 22. During his sermon he made the point that we ought always to have a longing for "home," for the "city with foundations whose architect and builder is God." This side of the Renewal we will never have all of God and all of life in his kingdom, so we are going to be discontent. And the more we see God and long for him, the more poignant that longing will grow. We may be in some ways "satisfied in Christ" and his abundant life, but it is ultimately a promise we are still awaiting (Heb. 11).
I know moving is hard, but I am glad you are back in the same country with me! I thought of you all this weekend when we watched the film Dirty Pretty Things -- a startling and beautiful movie about illegal immigration and the black market. One of the main characters is a Turkish woman. I think you'd appreciate the movie, and it sounds like right now you might relate to the lonesome feeling of it.
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