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[Five Minute Friday] Tomorrow

When I started working a few months ago I was swamped with a set of letters only grown-ups get: ads from insurance companies, health insurance, taking care of potential accidents at work, an insurance if I break someone’s stuff, investing my newly earned money in a fond…the list was long.
So that’s what grown-ups do.
Taking care of insurances.
Taking care of the future.

In German we have a word for that: “vorsorgen”.
It means to take care of something in advance.
Even though I am glad for the German welfare system and the different insurances, this word left me wondering.
Vorsorgen has a second meaning: to worry about something in advance.
And this is rather a burden than a blessing. For our future, but even more for our present.

When we worry about the future and our safety, we actively keep our hearts in distress.
We unconsciously choose this state of uncertainty and worry because we don’t want to let go.
Even though, as much as we worry and seemingly plan ahead, we can’t control this world, someone else’s life or our own. We can create a certain framework, but we can never guarantee that tomorrow will be as planned.

If we worry about the future and occupy our minds and hearts with tomorrow, we miss out on something very important: today.
We walk by today’s nature and beauty.
We miss out on great conversations.
We overlook amazing people who want to walk life with us.
We forget to take a break for our bodies and souls because we are anxious to be left out.
We are left empty today because we chase the riches of tomorrow.

Take in today, share its joys and challenges.
Don’t miss out on today’s blessings because you wait for tomorrow.
This day will come anyway, no matter how much or little you plan.

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As always, linking up with Kate Motaung‘s Five Minute Friday today.

This Little Storybook that Holds My World

My passport expired a few months ago, and since I’m about to go traveling again I needed to get a new one. When the lady at city hall asked for my old passport I was startled. Did she want to take it away?
It left me wondering, Why do I care so much about this little booklet?

Among TCKs there’s a joke that the most valuable book you’ll ever possess is your passport.
This little booklet tells stories.
Stories of travels to foreign countries.
Stories of adventures in unknown cultures.
Memories of people, smells, and food so different from who you are.

Like the story when we were stuck at the airport in Entebbe/Uganda for hours because the officer wouldn’t accept our residence permits. We didn’t want to pay the customary “fee” (we would call it a bribe), so he made us wait in this unknown country. Our work and lives for the next two years would depend on this little piece of paper. When he finally let us go after lots of questions, it felt like a relief and the stamp of entry like a triumph.

Like the story when we traveled to Tanzania, a 10-12 hour bus ride. Crossing the border was a matter of hours again because the border patrol enjoyed talking to the only Mzungus (white people) on the bus in the middle of African bush land. Only when they were sure my dad was Jesus (because of his beard and longish hair), they let us pass, and we had a new stamp in our passports to remember this trip.

These stamps are not just stamps on a piece of paper.
They serve as a conduit to our memories.
Images of sun-drazed hills, humble yet elegant and amazingly friendly people, and the most
breath-taking sunsets come to mind when I flip through the pages of this little booklet.

Many pages are filled with visas, but in between there are also a few surprises. Like the entry stamp of Abu Dhabi I had not intended to get.
My flight to Johannesburg, South Africa was delayed, so I had an extra night to spend in this desert metropole. At immigration I was searched by a completely covered-up woman, which felt intimidating since she asked me to take off my clothes. As soon as I left the nicely cooled airport a heat wave hit me and made my clothes stick to my body. The cab passed by simple white houses in the desert, the skyscrapers downtown looming in the background. I was taken to a hotel which could’ve easily been the scene of a Persian fairytale and met some friendly fellow travelers.
The Arab letters in my passport remind me of my first encounter with the Oriental culture, even though it was just a peek.

To get a visa or entry stamp from the US is quite a journey which starts a few months before actual departure, when you go to the embassy, wait a few hours, and endure security protocol. Just to get a five minute interview in which you state that you definitely don’t want to emigrate to the US or have a secret fiancé there. The long line at the airport and a suspiciously looking border patrol officer in Charlotte, NC almost seemed like a piece of cake afterwards.

Passports tell stories.
Our stories.
Just like photo albums they take us back to adventures and memories of the past.
An invaluable treasure you don’t want to give up.

And yet, I guess that many TCKs might agree that their passports can be a burden for them sometimes.
This little booklet doesn’t just tell what you experienced, but also who you are.
Your place of birth, your family name, your nationality.
You’re a citizen of country x. You belong to the people of y.

But what if I don’t feel like it?
What if my heart doesn’t match what it says on that paper?
What if my soul is lost in the beauty of Africa, the hospitality and openness of people with a different skin color?
The allegiance of my heart cannot be described by one single country code.
I am German and yet I’m not. I feel African, but so many things drive me crazy about it.
I’m a mix of everything, which sometimes feels like nothing.
My passport reminds me of this cultural conflict I find myself in, this search for a sense of belonging, a sense of myself, a home.

After a bit of paperwork the lady at city hall handed me back my passport.
With “expired” written across the page in bold letters.
Even though my old passport has expired, my stories are not.
Because I’m still here to treasure and tell them.

A few weeks later I got my new passport – many more pages to fill with new experiences.
New memories.
New stories.

[Five Minute Friday] Relief

We just celebrated Easter, the fact that death does not have the last word. We rejoiced in resurrection and life. The triumph of light over darkness. The relief that the empty grave brought (and still brings) us.

The challenge we now face is to translate this Easter experience into our daily lives.
To not let this experience remain a story on the pages, a once in a year event.
So what actually happened that Sunday that we should allow to permeate our day-to-day routine?
Even before his death, Jesus said,

“In this world you will have trouble. But I have overcome this world.” (Matthew 16:33)

There it is. Once and for all, Jesus has done it.
Death is dead, life has won.
He has overcome, and calls us to do the same.
We tend to quote and rejoice in the second half of the verse, but there’s more to it. Jesus is not some obscure magician who just – Boom – finishes the work of the cross.
He promises trouble ahead. Why? Because he’s been through it before us.
He walked this earth and spoke to people.
He observed their struggles, helped their needs, shared their lives.
He experienced the trouble this world is so full of and he relieved it.
Not with magic, not from one moment to the next.
But he settled it once and for all.
He aligned himself with this world.
Made himself one with our hopes, our struggles, our hearts, our lives.
In the midst of our darkness he speaks words of life: I am here. With you. For you.

There’s still lots of trouble out there.
Often I am overwhelmed when reading the news. Political conflicts in so many countries, hostility towards other people in my own country.
But you don’t have to go that far to be troubled. Just listen to people, read emails from friends, meet up with them for coffee and just listen.
We might not even have to go further than ourselves to experience the dreadfullness of what life throws at us. Too much too handle and seemingly no way out.
Look into a stranger’s eyes and you’ll see it: trouble.
Broken hopes.
Despair.
Leaning towards death rather than life.

We are called to bring Easter back into people’s and our lives.
We are called to speak life into seemingly dead situations.
To not let dread and hopelessness and despair have the last word.
We are called to overcome.
Not with magic.
Not all at once, from one moment to the next.
But with ourselves.
We have time to spend and listen to others.
We have open hands to lift someone up.
We have powerful stories to tell.
We have scarred lives to share.
We have our souls to align with those who suffer.
We have words, simple words often: I am here. With you, for you. We are in this together.
Stepping down into trouble, staying with the troubled, and waiting till the storm is passed might be some of the greatest relief we can give.

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As always, linking up with a wonderful writing crowd over at Kate Motaung‘s Five Minute Friday. There are some great news about a retreat over there, go check it out!

[Five Minute Friday] Good

It’s Friday and as always we gather and write.
But today is also a special Friday.
Good Friday. What a name!
Doesn’t it sound preposterous, blasphemous?
Paradox?
Maybe even insulting?
A day full of tears, pain, suffering, desperation, death.
It’s over.
All wonders and miracles have come to an end right here.
Hope was in vain and now it has ceased.
Nothing is good about today.

I wonder if the people entertained such feelings as they walked up that hill so many thousand years ago. Following the cheering crowd.
Led by the man carrying the heavy cross and the sins of this world.
Seeing the savior, their Messiah, die.
The man, the God, they had laid all their hope on.
No, there’s nothing good about this day.

I wonder if we entertain such feelings as we walk through life with all its demands, struggles, desperations.
Suffering from disappointments, seeing hopes and dreams die.
As if there was nothing good about this day.

Good Friday. What a name!
The best name because there is so much good about this day.
There’s hope for a new, eternal life.
Death does not have the last word.
There’s encouragement for the hard-working, attention-seeking people. We do not have to do good, our savior has made us good long before we even began our day’s work.
There’s rest for the weary, exhausted soul.
His life wants to restore and renew yours. Every. Single. Day.

I’m so glad the story doesn’t end that Friday.
It is just the very good beginning of the world’s greatest redemption story.
Behind the shadows of the cross we can already see resurrection looming.
The beginning of new life, new hope.
May we see its coming light in our darkest hours, may we believe the good news it brings, even though it is so hard sometimes.

Happy Easter, friends! There’s good news ahead!

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As always, linking up with the fabulous crowd over at Kate Motaung‘s Five Minute Friday.

[Five Minute Friday] Break

On Wednesday, as I was sitting in the teacher training seminar, I took a look at my fellow teacher trainees. A colleague leaned over and whispered, “Is it just me or do we look more exhausted each week?”
He was right.
Dark small eyes glanced back at me. Bored and incredibly tired expressions on their faces, many of us worked really hard to not fall asleep during pedagogy class.
We’re exhausted and in desperate need of a break.

Do you know this feeling? Your body is exhausted, your mind is tired.
You just need a break.

If we take a closer look at the word “break” we find it’s actually a very active verb.
Breaks don’t come upon us, we need to take them.
Break up the routine you’re in, the spinning wheel you can’t get out of.
The clusters and circles you’re stuck in.
Break with the thought patterns you entertain every day. The worries and questions tormenting your soul.
Break free from things and people holding you back.
Break through to rest. Peace of body, soul, and mind.
We need it desperately. Every day.

Often it doesn’t take much to have a break.
Give yourself time to get ready in the morning.
Enjoy your breakfast. Food in general is good. 🙂
Don’t work through your break time at work.
Take a walk.
Meet a friend for coffee and allow them to encourage you.
Read a book. No notes, just for you and for fun.
Listen to a piece of music, really listen. Let the instruments and the lyrics sink in and resonate with the strings of your soul.
Be still. Seek silence. Seek Him who promised to bind you wounds and refresh your empty soul.

It doesn’t take much to have a break.
But it does take your first step. Break is an active verb.
Where can you take a break today?

Want to make break a routine in your life? Then join me at Shelley Miller’s Sabbath Society – for all those who are all in for Sabbath, God’s desginated break for us.

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Taking a break from work and writing for fun – this is Five Minute Friday over at Kate Motaung‘s place. There’s also a great video interview with my friend Liz over there today! Why don’t you join us?

[Five Minute Friday] Real

I like to play jokes on people.
Nothing really bad, just teasing. Telling little stories and seeing their unbelieving faces and their “really” expressions.
Some fall for it, they believe the fake story I just told them. Others don’t, they go deeper and ask for the real thing, the truth.

In a world of fake IDs, fake relationships and fake products, the realty is hard to find.
Many argue there isn’t actually a reality, everything is constructed.
But what if realness is there – buried deep inside of us and often found in unexpected places.

A student struggling with depression is real.
People in Syria living in the rubble of what used to be their homes are real.
Christians all over the world fearing for their lives because of their faith are real.
A Christian couple in your church getting a divorce is real.
A spouse yelling at you and not understanding every single one of your problems is real.
A friend letting you down or telling you something unexpected is real.
An experience of failure making you aware of your own weaknesses is real.

Being real doesn’t mean being perfect.
It often actually means real pain, struggles, breakups, failure, tough relationships.

What if being real meant being raw?
Authentic?
With all its edges and cliffs and struggles?

A real diamond is raw at first.
It looks like a stone and nothing fancy.
Only the chisel of a skilled master and life’s changes bring out the true beauty.
A raw stone turns into a real diamond.

Being real means being raw stones, nothing fancy or glamorous.
It means pain and struggles and disappointments.
But through courage and honesty we discover a bit more of our rawness.
And all along I hope we experience the chisel of our master to carve us more into diamonds.
Real treasures he already sees in us.

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Linking up with Kate Motaung for Five Minute Friday. Five Minutes of flat writing on one prompt. Sharing with other wonderful writers. Come and join us!

Growth

I fight.
I struggle with the new reality called my life.
I wrestle with the challenges thrown at me day after day that often seem overwhelming.
My mind knows I have to push through, towards the surface, towards the light.
But sometimes I’d rather not.

Sometimes I feel like a seed in the ground.
I’ve been planted for a reason.
I’m expected to gro.
Life has taken good care of me, watered and prodded me from time to time.
Now it’s time to grow.

Yet the soil is comfortable and familiar.
I know my way around, I know the people surrounding me.
I know how to behave.
I know I am me.

I just don’t want to change.
Don’t want to evolve.
Don’t want to go through the painful process of birthing seomthing new.
Why not stay a seed forever?

Because I would regret it.
I would miss out.
I would never see what’s above the ground.
I would never get to delight in the beautiful blowers around me.
I would never discover the strength and beatuy that’s been planted in me all along.
I would never get to discover new and surprising sides on me.

Only if I push through, only if I wait for roots to thicken, for seeds to break open, for some of the old things to die – I will also harvest the beautiful new life that comes from growth.
It’s time to grow.

And so I wait.
So I push.
So I focus on the light above that’s to come and the vision of new life ahead of me.

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Linking up with Karen Beth and her writing group today. Thankful for prompt words that keep my mind spinning, my words coming together, and my fingers on the keyboard dancing!

[Five Minute Friday] Plan

I try. I try really hard.
I think and plan and think and evaluate some more.
I neglect old plans and come up with new ones.
I rethink every idea I have and I am careful to not miss anything.

And yet, nothing goes as planned.
Time is too short, material is missing, students come up with their own, unique ideas.
I have not taught a single lesson the way I had planned it.

And that is totally fine.

Working with people is never a full-proof thing.
You can’t choose to invest in people without taking a risk.
You can’t program others like you would program a computer.
You can give a certain input, but you can never be sure about the outcome.
Everyone working outside an office might be familiar with that.

We’re all little planners.
We plan our day. When to get up, when to do what, when to meet friends.
We plan our months and years. When to visit relatives, when to go on vacation.
We ultimately plan our lives. When to get married. When to have kids. Where to live and how to pay off mortgages.

We experience success, happiness, and fulfilled plans.
But I guess I’ve never met a person who hasn’t also experienced defeat, disappointment, and loss.
Plans fail. Every day, in every life.

And that is fine as well.
Because at the end of the day it’s not about the plan.
It’s about the interruptions and my attitude towards them.
They might change my plans, give them a different direction, bring something or someone to life we’d have never expected.
That’s what makes life rich and beautiful.

So how interruptible are your plans today?

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On Fridays I plan to link up with Kate Motaung and a fabulous group of writers for Five Minute Friday. One prompt. Five minutes of writing. No editing. Come and join us!

I feel like I’m not myself anymore

I feel like I’m not myself anymore.
My life has been taken over by someone, something else.
The way I eat, work, and interact is dictated by the outside.
I don’t know when I last got enough sleep.
When I didn’t have to worry about the loads of work in front of me. Emails in my inbox pile up – messages from dear friends waiting for an update, and all I can give them is a “I’ll get back to you as soon as things calm down.”
But when is that?

My kitchen looks like a battlefield, I stumble through it in the morning to make a cup of coffee and hope there’s still some food left in the fridge.
I don’t even want to get started on the rest of the apartment.
Piles and piles of paper, clothes, pens.
The air smells of heavy thinking.
I look at this mess everyday and think, “I really need to get some order into this.”
And yet, time runs by far too quickly and I have no energy left to pick up a single sheet of paper.
I want to meet up with friends and share my struggles, but often I feel like I have no ounce of emotional strength left in me to carry a conversation.

I feel like a grandma when I see my roommate go to a party at 9.30 pm and I start getting ready for bed.

What happened?
Well, I started working.
Welcome to the life of a new teacher.

I haven’t moved, I still speak German, I still surrounded by many familiar things and faces.
And yet, I feel as if I had entered a new culture.
The land of adulthood and working.
The land where clocks ring early and demand full-on responsibility.
A whole new world of terms, people, schedules.
And it takes time to learn them.
There are courses to prepare you for birth, marriage, driving…but why does no one ever

prepare you for work and all the changes it brings to your life?

Another transition.
Not geographically, but mentally, cognitively, and emotionally.
My sense of time, sleep, work, and social life has been uprooted and replanted into a new environment.

There’s the honeymoon phase.
I do enjoy new experiences, like meeting friendly colleagues, entertaining students, teaching epiphanies, and earning some money along the way.
There’s the depression phase I wrestle with at the moment.
The overwhelming feeling of defeat, exhaustion, and hopelessness.
The impression of being lost in your day’s schedule, tasks, and identity that no longer seem to be your own.
The inability to manage my life around this new omnipresent force called school.

And eventually, hopefully, there will be the readjustment phase.
When my roots are firmly replanted on this new soil of adult work life.
When I find the right balance between work and social life.
When I learn to say no to things so that I have time to enjoy the things and people I have said yes to. When life has found a new routine and I can carve out space to let in joy, peace, and people again. When I discover a new sense of anticipation for what will come next.
When I listen into myself and find that I am still there. I might have been lost for a while, but my identity – my self – has always been there after all.

[Five Minute Friday] Visit

Teaching isn’t always easy.

Passing on content you’re not really interested yourself can be challenge.
Speaking about things you’re really passionate about can be a real struggle.

I enter the room and 25 more or less interested students look at me.

Expectantly, hoping I don’t do grammar with them.

No, no grammar today.

A question instead: How many slaves work for you?
Blank faces.
Surprise.
Question marks.
A joke about mom doing their laundry quickly dies when I ask them to do research.

They get onto the computers, visit the first websites.

They read stories about child labor in Bangladesh to produce clothes the students are wearing everyday.
They look at pictures of Chinese production lines and people working day and night so that people over here can get a new phone every year.

They encounter the term human trafficking for the first time and are shocked that prostitution and organized crime exists right in front of their eyes.
Ninth grader cockyness turns into surprise, horror, shock.

I can hear quiet murmurs, people exchanging facts and questions.

Slavery is real.

It happens right in front of you.

In this globalized world this is our burden.

Today is “Shine a Light on Slavery” day.

The 27th of February – speaking up for the more than 27 million people in slavery.

And I hope that my students don’t just visit these websites.

That they don’t stop at talking about it.

That their shock and surprise turn into action.

And that I may join them.

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As always I am linking up with Kate Motaung and other fabulous writers.

If you want to know more about this topic, start with Slavery Footprint.