“Are you CRAZY?!? Why would you want to move to England? Don’t you love your family???”
-My
Great Aunt
I’d been wondering where my
penchant for direct communication came from! Upon hearing our announcement, most
people have said things along the lines of “So exciting!” or “That’s my dream!”
or “Will your kid have dual-citizenship???” (The answer to that, sadly, is
“No.”), and I love those responses to our news, because they mirror our own
enthusiasm.
But on the other hand, what I
love about My Great Aunt’s response is that hers are the real questions. The questions that we’ve laughed and cried over,
the questions that sit there, staring us in the face, even when we try to avoid
them. I chuckle when they’re thrown at me, but the fact is that they are the hard questions.
They’re hard because I have spent periods of my life dancing
around the edges of depression, because my love of travel and adventure
originated in a young girl’s dream of escape, because there are few things more
difficult than explaining to your mother that you love her more than anyone in
the world, but that you’re almost certain that you will always be called to
live far away. Making the decision to
move was simple, but being content with it requires real answers
for these questions. Otherwise, my heart will go running off to the next thing
before I’ve even properly settled in the UK.
So maybe we are crazy, insane, off our rockers, nuts. But there’s more to it
than that! So, we’ve decided to share with you some of our fears and the hopes
that outweigh them, so that maybe you can understand a little bit of why we
decided to move.
Fears
1) Loneliness. The first year in a new place is
generally...pretty horrible. Exciting, yes, but when the sheen of novelty has
worn off, you’re left with something that is unfamiliar, uncomfortable, and
sometimes downright depressing. You realize that you have no local support
network and that, frustrating though your hometown may have been, at least you
knew how to make an appointment to see the doctor or where to go when your car
broke down. The deep and disappointing angst that accompanies this stage of a
major transition doesn’t last forever, but it’s pretty lonely. And when I’m
lonely, I tend to withdraw even more, neglecting to seek out relationships when
I most need them.
2) Being broke and stranded. In case you don’t know,
London is expensive. Very expensive—and we’re accustomed to budgeting for
Chicago, which has big city budget requirements of its own. Housing in
particular is especially pricey, and it’s also the budget item that requires
the most commitment. So, of course
we’re nervous about having enough money, especially since we’re living on one
income with a baby on the way. In Chicago, I always comforted my paranoia by
remembering that if Soren lost his job or if we came upon a high-cost emergency
situation, we could always try to find a subletter and stay with my parents
until we figured things out.
I think we’re going to need a new backup plan.*
I think we’re going to need a new backup plan.*
3) Culture shock. Culture shock is a process, and in order
to get to the end point (feeling at home in a new place), you have to go
through the exciting and painful steps to get there. Sometimes you can move
pretty quickly through the low moments, but you cannot escape them entirely. I
have to say, as much as I want to be able to call London home, I’m not thrilled
about what it’s going to take to get us there. That’s why we’d like to spend a
minimum of two years in the UK—one year to do the basic adjustment, and at
least one more year to enjoy our new home and to have the time and emotional
space to fall even more deeply in love with it.
4) Not actually getting to know non-Americans. Don’t get
me wrong–we are going to love meeting and spending time with other American
expats, and we’ll probably rely on them a lot! But given our many hopes for
this move, it would be a shame if we left the US only to completely surround
ourselves with other Americans. I don’t think we’d necessarily even be able to
pull this off, to be honest, but it’s certainly easier to meet and connect with
your own countrymen than to actually deal with the difficulty and awkwardness
of international friendships.
Hopes
1) We are excited to travel. London is a travel hub, and
from there, it is incredibly easy to travel around Europe! We already have a
visit to Oslo planned, and we look forward to being able to take quick trips to
Paris or Munich or Stockholm or Rome--and depending on how much travel Soren
ends up doing for work, we may even be able to combine work and play!
2) London is a very green city. Discovering Jackson Park in Chicago was a
lifesaver for me–I’ve never been an overwhelmingly “city girl”, but an evening
stroll in an expansive park lets you forget, if even for a moment, the
claustrophobia that can come with city life. And London has many such parks,
with plenty of smaller parks and recreational areas, too. We’re hoping to live
close enough to one of these green spaces that we can take walks and breathe
some fresh air on a regular basis.
3) ...And it has such a rich history! Castles, kings,
ancient streets, and long-time traditions are part of
life in London. As people who love to dig deeper, examining roots and observing
changes, there is such an extensively recorded history in London that we could
never reach the bottom of the barrel of fun facts, eccentric characters, and
life lessons in the pages on London alone.
4) There are churches and Christian communities that are
thriving in London right now, but Christianity is not widely embraced. This bears some striking similarities to what
we saw at UChicago during our time there, and we’re excited to see what God
does to us and through us as we face these familiar circumstances in a new
place and stage of life. We’re eager to get a better idea of how British
Christians grapple with their faith and what issues are most important to them.
We’re praying that God will give us plenty of opportunities to love our
neighbors and to learn from them, that we would be pushed to more fully
understand and marvel at and share who Jesus Christ really is.
5) We’re eager to connect with a new community in London
and to become “locals”. Living in London will give us the opportunity to see
beyond Buckingham Palace and Big Ben, to have a favorite pub that we frequent
or to master the use of “the Tube”. To stop putting “the Tube” in quotes.
Because that’s what it is–not someone else’s word for it, but ours. Chances
are that we won’t come back with exciting accents (although our impressions may
improve), but we hope that London leaves its mark on the way we think, the way
we speak**, and the way our little boy sees the world.
6) We hope that spending a few years living abroad will
really help us to think through whether international missions is what God has
in store for us, because I (Janel) have never actually resided more than 5 miles
from the western shores of Lake Michigan. Since I tend to be fairly vulnerable
to emotional lows, we really want to see how well we adjust to being
foreigners, and how well we handle the difficulties of a new life together. It
is our intention for Soren to go to seminary at some point after we finish
paying off our undergrad student loans, but we’d love to go in with an idea of
whether we’re looking at international missions as a vocation or not.
7) A British baby. Because why not?
We have never had any
real doubt as to whether we would take the opportunity to move to London if it
was presented to us. But once the move transitioned from a dream to our
reality, we began to realize all that goes in to making such a crazy (yes,
crazy) transition. The decision was simple, but the move is not easy. But this
is mostly speculation—once we get off the plane (in about 20 minutes!!), the
real adventure—with all of the misadventures therein—will begin!
*General Note: You may rest
assured that the UK will kindly
deport us if Soren does lose his job.
**Note to My Mother: Don’t worry,
Mom; we’re not planning to abandon our aversion to using American profanity.
