Jayhawks & Psalms (but not Psalms about Jayhawks!)

My cake for Gerald - fun to do! I'm just trying to prove that I'm making an effort to be a fan of what Gerald loves! We had a wonderful day of celebrating with Ron's crew in the woods - enjoying the leaves and the guys' last football game before winter sets in. Three of the guys turned 40 this year! I guess Kendra wouldn't say it was a good day. She fell into the stream while trying to wash her hands. It took some extra clothes and a long time for her to warm up!

As a gesture of sympathy for Karen's mother dying, the African choir Karen (our pastor) is associated with came to our beach service to sing. What amazing voices! Kendra said, "Mommy - I didn't know it was possible to sing like that!" A taste of heaven!

We had a wonderful church retreat on the beach a few weekends ago. We studied "Psalming our lives" and looked at how the Psalms have lament, thanksgiving, belief, and wisdom (recalling what God has done). Karen used an article by Perry B. Yoder from the MB seminary as a base - called "A Spirituality Shaped by the Psalter" where he talked about us needing all elements of the Psalms in our own prayer and worship. It was really neat to make our own psalms/prayers. The girls really got into it too and wrote their own "Pirate Psalm" with the help of some friends. Bet you've never heard that kind before! Ahoy! Then they wanted their own prayer journals as soon as we got home. I brought along a journal I had written during my year(s) of insomnia which is basically my own book of Psalms. How neat to read how God walked with me through that time and how much more I relied on Him when I was distressed!

Here's a Psalm I wrote during the weekend remembering last spring and inspired by our setting

Relentless Love

Endless ocean
The depth
The breadth
As endless as your love

Relentless waves
Pounding
Advancing
Never ceasing
As relentless as your love

Some build a wall
Out of sand
Out of fear
All along the coast

Hoping to keep out
The ocean

Attempting to stop
The waves

But the waves don't care
The ocean doesn't even notice

Do they not know it is impossible to keep out love?

Love as relentless as the waves

Halloween

Ron as a solar water heater :)

The pirate who saved the princesses - I'm sure there's a story about that somewhere!

Can we get them to sit for 5 minutes?

One thing I like about holidays here is that we make them what we want. I’m personally not a big fan of scary and evil creatures abounding on Halloween and since I end up in charge of Halloween every year, I get to chose what I want to emphasize. I have no competition. How do I always end up in charge of Halloween? Simply because I am the resident American. About in August children begin to hunt me down. “Please, Miss Julie, when is the Halloween party?” they ask in their cute accents. How can I say no?

So, back to making Halloween what I want. A fall dress up party. With candy. How can they say no? Actually, some parents still think we are pushing our culture and religion (!) on them so keep their kids away. But most come. The party has outgrown our house so this year we had it in a university lounge. We asked which apartments wanted us to come trick-or-treating and set out on a very lovely evening walking to 14 different apartments all right here. The teenagers don’t know they could be smashing pumpkins or throwing eggs. The little ones don’t miss the haunted houses.

Then it’s back to the lounge for an attempt to feed the children something healthy (it didn’t work), some very loud games, and releasing them full of energy, candy, and silliness back to their parents (that was the scary part). As the parents were leaving one said to me, “You are almost Moroccan! You mixed French, English, and Arabic all night long!” to which I responded, “I’ll take that as a compliment!”

One Shining Moment

Gerald turns 40 this Friday! Happily, his birthday falls on the Eid and Independence Day holiday so we have a few days to travel to Seville, Spain tomorrow night!

Cute start - look at those cheeks!

Gerald was blessed with a great foundation of family love & God's love!
Aspiring athlete

We have got to be the only ones in the world with three versions of "One Shining Moment" on our ipod! The theme song for the basketball championship is played at this house quite a bit. . . Like many boys, Gerald wanted to be a professional athlete when he was a little guy. Though always good at sports, he wasn't quite able to do it for a living.

But what he's accomplished in his life is way more amazing and wonderful than a career in sports. Not only is he talented in many areas - academics, sports, music, teaching - but he's a fabulous and godly husband and father.

So instead of "One shining moment" of victory on the basketball court, Gerald's life has been a whole series of "shining moments" where he has blessed and encouraged me and all those around him!

How thankful I am for his birth 40 short years ago!

Done!

Six years ago Gerald and I sat through a week of training for professors to go abroad. The information was extremely fascinating and helpful. But I did notice one area of training that was mostly missing: Parenting abroad.

Of course I was raised all over the world. But that didn't mean I was paying attention to my parent's wonderful techniques! And living abroad with children is very different than just being a kid abroad.

So began the process of reading, collecting stories, listening to advice, and remembering my own past to put together a simple talk for parents at the next conference. What began as a 'simple talk' turned into a survey project, a write-up, and a huge amount of information that I knew I couldn't fit into a 45-minute talk! Somewhere along the way I decided to do a website with all the information I had gathered.

Six years after that training week, I am finally ready with a (mostly) finished project that will probably keep evolving over time as more opinions and stories come in.

Although I am very excited to announce this site, It is a very scary feeling to tell 'the world' about it. It makes me feel vulnerable because so many of the stories and opinions are personal. There are also probably mistakes and glitches in it (especially the forum) that will have to be worked out as they become revealed.

Steve Engbrock (USA) and Reda Bouman (Morocco) have helped me tremendously with hours and hours of work on the website. When they speak to me about website design and use all their lingo, I just smile, nod, and pretend that I understand when really what I'm hearing sounds like white noise to me! I am so thankful for their time, their expertise, and their patience with me (I kind of deleted all the updates made last week by accident on Monday).

When I was moaning to Gerald last week about why this project was taking so long, I suddenly realized something: I've just written my first book! OK, so it has no editor and it's not in print, but besides those minor details - it's the size of a book and it's taken hours - days - months - years - to work on.

So with great trepidation and that huge and faltering introduction, here is my new website:

Parents of Third Culture Kids: Understanding and helping your TCK thrive
http://www.ptck.org/

Want to know what a TCK is? TCKs are kids who are raised in a culture other than their own. Want to know more? I think you know what I'll say!