Alive In France

“This is not very comfortable for me” is strangely one of first French sentences Andrew learnt to master early on in our marriage. The irony of this is that this sentence will sum up our first week or so in France!

But this story actually starts long before we arrived. Comfort is a topic I have been wanting to write about for weeks because comfort is one of our big reasons for moving.

In the months before leaving, Andrew shared some profound revelations he had had. He said something along the lines of: “My life is perfect. I live in a dream house, with the wife of my dreams. We have two dream children, and I am doing the most absolute best job that I could ever dream of. And not only that but I have an incredible community of close friends and am part of an amazing vibrant church. But… I realised that my dream for myself is not God’s dream for my life.”

“But I realised that my dream for myself is not God’s dream for my life.”

There’s nothing wrong with living the suburban life – if that is God’s plan for you. We lived three amazing years in Sweet Valley knowing that that was exactly where God wanted us, and we would have continued to live there a decade if He’d asked us to. But it’s a fine line between being in a place of abundance and being in idolatry of abundance. We are keenly aware of our current world’s idolatry of comfort. We gear our lives and make decisions great and small to make our daily routines seamless and perfect. TakeALot and Amazon have made their fortune on that drive.

So, for us, and particularly for Andrew, it came to a point where we knew that if we stayed, we would be doing it out of a place of idolatry. And Oh Boy! How we miss our comfortable lives now!

Since we moved out of our home mid-March, we’ve spent the last few weeks vagabonding around South Africa and now Europe. We’ve moved each week, relying on the generosity of family and friends. We’ve lived out of suitcases and our daughter is seriously starting to miss her toys. Gone are the days where I could cook a meal with the kids pottering in the full baby-proof back yard. The kids are bored and have to be monitored like a hawk lest they break something or themselves. The first two weeks in Europe have also been rainy and cold so we were stuck in small indoor spaces shouting at each other whilst I tried to call agents, apply for Andrew’s resident permit, and stop our son from electrocuting himself. Our daughter is also watched way too much TV. That’s not even mentioning how we’re having to ‘adult’ all over again in this foreign system, in foreign shops, (and all in a foreign language, for Andrew).

It has been a trying and testing time for us. And I can’t say that we’re dealing with it very well. Andrew and I are having quite substantial communication issues, my parenting has gone into a kind of survival mode with all my lovely Montessori ideals being thrown out the window, and we’re all quite moody and irritable. So, we do the only thing we know how to do in these moments: cling to Jesus for dear life, praying that He has mercy on our terribly sinful selves, whilst waiting for the storm to pass. God is clearly using these circumstances to kill our flesh and transform our hearts.

We do the only thing we know how to do in these moments, cling to Jesus for dear life, praying that He has mercy on our terribly sinful selves, whilst waiting for the storm to pass.

All in all, we’re not comfortable but we’re okay. We’re alive. and we’re alive in France. Ha!

To read up about the nitty gritty of what exactly we are doing in France right now, you can read We Have Arrived!

Prayer Points:

>That the Lord (rich in mercy and slow to anger) would transform our hearts and characters to be less siff.
>That there would be unity and peace in our family (marriage, parenting, all four of us together).
>That our daughter would have a revelation of contentedness that is way beyond her years (she’s really struggling with boredom and complaining all the time).
>That we would find our new home soon.