Cold as Stone (3 Years Later)

Three years ago, our lives changed.  We blindly boarded a plane with a few suitcases and a one-way ticket to live on the other side of the world.

It’s hard to fathom that we have now called Switzerland our home for this long.  There are days when it seems surreal, and there are days when it is very real.  There are days when we feel grateful, and there are days when we feel the grind, and we complain (A lot).

This past Sunday, the exact date we left 3 years prior, I sat and tried to come up with something to think about, write about, or at the very least describe how I felt three years later.  Yet the more I sat, and the more I tried, the more fragmented my thoughts became.  Nothing coherent, just words.  Words that tried to explain feelings.  Deep feelings.  Feelings that together could maybe grasp the experience.

I guess I have always been someone who felt deeply.  Someone who thinks about feelings and why.  Someone who wonders about emotions and how.  Someone who questions life and who.  And yet, there are days when I wish I didn’t.

There are many days I wish I were “cold as stone.”  Living and experiencing life on the surface.  To live care-free and not allow the perceived negative, or shadows of the culture, others, and most importantly, myself to ever see the light of day.  It just seems so much easier.  Happier.

I guess in many ways; I used to think that way in my spiritual life as well.  Praying as if my shadows didn’t exist.  Relating to God as if He only saw (and wanted to see) my pearly self.  I guess, in many ways, it was an extension of my desire to live on the surface.  A desire to not think so much.  To not feel too much.  To not be.

Maybe it is easier…but it certainly isn’t true.

My experience here has been a mix of deep emotions and feelings.  The perceived positive ones don’t negate the perceived negative ones.  Both the positive and negative allow me to experience this adventure to its fullest.  (Btw, maybe the negative ones are actually more positive than the perceived positives.)

One of the ways we have shared this experience with friends and especially with our families is through social media.  It has been wonderful to be able to do that, and what a gift to do so.  But the pictures and/or videos certainly don’t show the whole experience, nor do I want them to.  (Not sure you want to see me clean the toilets and go food shopping every day.)  They are simply snippets of our experiences which I am not ashamed of nor feel bad about experiencing or showing.  It is what I am living.  It is a part of my life.

But not all of it.

The older I get, the words fail me.  They can’t describe exactly what I want to describe.  They can’t explain the feelings that I fully experience.  But in the end, words are all I have to try.

As much as I yearn to be “cold as stone” some days, I know that is not me.  I know that is not life.  I know that it isn’t true.  I know that it isn’t real.  I guess that is because the God I do know actually wants to be with me.  All of me.  The places of light and the darkness (and even Loves me there too).

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”

– Lao Tzu

I guess that is what gives me the courage and strength to feel, to think, to live, to love, to be… especially living around the world, trying clumsily to raise two young boys.

So here are some words that highlight but can never fully explain my experience for the last 3 years:

Blessed, Grateful, Adventurous, Scary, Uncomfortable, Lonely, Connected, Hopeful, Painful…Love.

And here is to one more year of “being” in Switzerland…