Hopes and Fears

“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.*

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.