I feel like I need to update this blog since my last post was more than 4 years ago. I should’ve kept this journal up to date, but life has been busy to say the least. And the time spent on getting my thoughts in order and putting them into sentences seemed almost selfish that I placed it way at the bottom of my priority list.
A lot happened since September 2018. In short, my time in Bahrain was great. I wouldn’t say wonderful, but I’m proud of myself and my family for persevering through the changes and being able to come out the other end a better family. Not perfect, just better than it was. I learned a couple things while living there.
The importance of community is a big one. When you don’t have family to fall back on, you kind of have to huddle together to get through it. Before moving there, I didn’t entirely understand the importance of being present within the military spouse community, but now I do. In February 2019, I caught double pneumonia and had to be hospitalized for 4 or 5 days, I can’t remember how long exactly. But I do remember feeling scared and the idea of dying in a foreign country creeping into my mind. I remember feeling oddly relieved to be able to rest and have somebody else take care of me for a change, even if it was in the ER of a local hospital with a questionable reputation at the time. I cried tears of relief laying on the table with the crinkly paper. However, I do also remember my friend Tina and her husband coming in to visit me multiple times, just sitting with me in the room or delivering me some oranges that I craved. I also grieved the fact that even in the hospital, my husband couldn’t stop his job to take care of me. But in my absence at home, he was forced to take over and thankfully came to realize that my days were just as hard–only in different ways.
The other lesson I learned is knowing how to be a good leader in my home. And much of that came from clinging onto God with my life. There were many times where I’d be driving around the kingdom and all of a sudden I’d have this out of body/existential thought like, “What am I DOING here?” I know I’m bravely driving around this country I barely know and keeping up a sense of normalcy here, but I’m also feeling like a lost sheep. Powerless… passive… reactive. But starting in those days, I prayed and I clung. Hard. I clung to Jesus. I clung to God. I asked for courage, strength, all of that. I let go of the unrealistic expectation that my husband could provide me the emotional support that I needed. I learned instead that our spouses come back from work with empty emotional baskets that they’re wanting us to fill too. So no human could give me what I needed in order for me to be who I wanted to be for me and my family. And that’s when my relationship with God/Jesus began. Paradoxically, you would think that praying about a dysfunctional family would lead God to change the other person, but God changed me first. I began to see my own inner brokenness, that I wasn’t “mom”ing quite as well as I thought I was, and that it was up to ME and not my husband to start turning things around. And things turned around. Not completely, but enough to change the trajectory.
Life in Bahrain changed me. I never wanted to go, but I did. And now I wouldn’t trade those experiences and the things that came of them for anything less. I was where I was supposed to be at the exact time and at the exact phase of my life. The pottery, the turquoise waters, the scent of perfumes, the delicious Arabic cuisine, the wooden fishing boats, the Islamic call to prayer, the beautiful rugs, the smell of the dust. All of that.
♥ Little Things Noticed ♥ 