This Is Not a Holiday

I realize as I have occasion to talk with people from the States that I am not quite prepared to answer the question, "Are you having a good time?" Not that there is anything necessarily inappropriate about the question itself. But I would find such a query much easier to answer were I spending a week at the beach or a month in the mountains. Being here is somehow different. That difference is not simply one of duration. One can tour on holiday for four or five months and indeed find ways to gauge and describe a time enjoyed.

But being here involves other things. There is a sense of home here. Friends, some of whom we have had in our acquaintance now for 7 years. There are familiar smells and sights. Certain words have meaning and significance here which they do not possess over there. There is a home church, where there are now new friendly faces and a feeling of welcome. There are shared activities and shared purpose. The intensity of being here involves a significant investment in the being of here. And, of course, there is laundry and shopping and cleaning and daily obligations to be fulfilled. Occasional weekends away are punctuated by a feeling of relief at being back in our own home, in our own beds, with our familiar routines around us. The same floorboards squeak to us as we walk over them, and certain noises put brackets around the hours of our day.

For those who have been left behind in the States, there is some awareness of the great amount of effort and disruption which accompanied our departure. Things had to be sorted and managed, and we are definitely NOT there during these months. What may not be as apparent is that there will be some of the same feelings of dislocation and removal for us upon our return. We are living two parallel lives which, for the most part, do not intersect. And the shifting between them is much more than a holiday to be simply enjoyed. It is a life lived among others, in places which are as dear to us as the home which awaits our return.