One Thing You Need to Survive Overseas

My hair was standing on end, I had no makeup on, and I was dressed in ragged jeans, an old sweater and a bare face with no makeup when the doorbell rang. I was feverishly trying to finish cooking for our house church, so I could go get dressed.

“It must be one of my daughter’s friends,” I thought.  “I’ll let her answer it. “ But when the doorbell kept ringing, I went to the door.  It was Nesrin, a woman I’d invited to visit our fellowship for the first time.  One and a half hours early.

I breathed in deep before I opened the door.  The last thing I needed was a guest one and a half hours early. I was already a bit nervous because we’d accidentally scheduled a skype interview with someone back home for the same hour as our meeting.

How to Get Spring into our Hearts

I’m driving my family insane listening to this song, “Take Me into the Beautiful.” It’s my spring song. What does spring look like in your part of the globe? Here’s why spring is my favorite season in Turkey:

Spring is a season of hope:

Have you ever lived through a winter that never ended? The weather never got warmer, birds never sang, the trees stayed bare, and flowers never bloomed? No matter how long the winter is, spring always comes!

Spring is physical demonstration of God’s promise to renew us and give us new life.  No matter how long you’ve felt spiritually weary or dead, renewal WILL come.  “Weeping may last through the night, but joy comes with the morning.” (Psalm 30:5) It’s a promise that I love to hold on to.

How to Keep on Going When the Road Seems Long

Do you ever feel like all your hard work is in vain?

You clean your house, but it’s dirty again the next day.

You strive to teach your children something, but it seems like they never learn.

You want to change a bad habit but fall back into the same trap.

You resolve to be more patient, but once again you find your nerves on edge and your voice rising.

Here in the Mslm World we share our faith and sow seed in hard ground, but few respond.  

Follow this link to the rest of my post on Cross-Cultural Mom's Companion

Health Food, Turkish Style: Red Lentil Balls

My Turkish sister and I have a new subject in common: cooking and recipes!  I grew up watching my mom and my aunts look at cookbooks and talk about food.  Cooking is an important conversation topic among Turkish women, but I never thought I’d live to see the day when my “career girl” sister and I would talk about recipes! Bahar and I always talked about books we were reading, God’s word, the joys and challenges of our lives, and everything under the sun, minus cooking. 

Now, however, she occasionally calls to ask for a recipe or cooking tip and gets positively bubbly when she tells me about the food she's cooking. I guess it just goes to show how getting married changes a person. J 

So grab a glass of hot tea with Bahar and I, and let me share one of my favorite healthy Turkish recipes:

Creativity Makes a Difference!

Some days I ask myself what on earth I got myself into when I answered the call to start a new fellowship in the Middle East with my husband.  In fact, I might have said no if I’d known ahead of time what a long, challenging road it would be. I’m not sure if it was love for God or plain ignorance that made me say yes!

Taking a Break Until Life Slows Down

I’m not sure how I get so busy when I live in what’s supposed to be a slower paced culture, but life is happening a bit too fast in my little Aegean corner of the world, so I’m taking a break from blogging until March 7^th.

I’m hoping to heed Jesus’ call to his disciples in Mark 6:31:

“Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.”

May the Lord give you grace and moments of rest, even during your busiest days.

Five Ways to Help Kids Growing Up Overseas

My kids with their Turkish abla, 2010

I still remember the circumcision party of my neighbor’s boy. My son followed all his buddies into the boy’s bedroom, and suddenly the door shut.  I realized the circumcision was about to happen behind that closed door, and without making a scene in front of our whole neighborhood, there was no way to get my son out!  I thought that was a pretty big step of independence for a 5 year old.  Just the other day my 13 year old daughter rode the bus downtown by herself for the first time.  Growing up always involves bigger and bigger steps to independence, but somehow that journey seems a bit more perilous when you’re overseas.

When It's Hard to Trust God with Your Kids

When I saw my minutes-old son kicking and screaming in the delivery room 15 years ago, I had no idea how much joy and heartbreak being a mother would involve. I had no idea that he’d go from speaking Spanish to English before learning Turkish and that he’d learn to navigate anywhere alone by bus, metro or ferry in our Middle Eastern city.  I had no idea that my biggest challenge living overseas would be agonizing over whether we’re messing up our kids by raising them here.