Steps towards joy

Six months ago, our family moved to the Middle East, lending a new meaning to the word “trekker” for me.

Noun: trekker  tre-ku(r)

1. A traveller who makes a long arduous journey (as hiking through mountainous country)

Parenting the Bean has been a journey.  Maybe in retrospect, many years down the line, it won’t seem as arduous as it has in the last ten months.  But long, arduous journeys are often the most rewarding.  Dr. Jay Gordon, one of my attachment-parenting gurus, wrote that parenting a baby is like opening your own flower shop.  For the first year, you are waking up early to go to the market, working long hours during the day, and worrying at night.  Maybe other people in your life think you are crazy for putting in this investment, but by the end of the first year you have a beautiful pay-off.  

http://drjaygordon.com/attachment/flowershop.html

I hope his words are true, because these first ten months have been quite a trek.

Now that we are learning a new language and starting again in a new culture, we are truly a Trekker family in yet another way.  The road to learning Arabic is long; some say that from English to Arabic mastery takes at least eight years.  The definition of language “fluency” is particularly slippery, but even so, it’s quite a complex language and cultural scene. Actually, to be honest though, my more recent concerns have been far more mundane.

Yesterday’s checklist:

•  Function on little sleep. 
• Stay AWAKE during language class. 
• Find time for language review while mashing up chicken liver for a hungry Bean. 
• Remember to communicate nicely with my husband  (or to apologize when I don’t)
• Make a grocery list, and try to find out where to buy the things on my list
• Look at the dishes in the sink and think about doing them
• Remember to keep in communication with Jesus, the One who I have a crazy-enough love for that I would follow him here, to this beautiful, unknown-to-me land where all that was familiar is no longer in view.  Find snatches of time to receive his grace when I am fighting a cold, dealing with a teething baby, and generally feel overwhelmed by life.

The journey starts small, with the little things.  Trekking is an act of discipline, of focus on the destination.  Both with parenting and language/cultural adjustment, we have to believe, like Jesus, that the joy set before us is worth it.  

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us,  fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.  Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. (Hebrews 12:1-3)

In the meantime, my next steps are to catch a nap and clean up those dishes.