Thoughts on Re-Entry

Well folks, it looks like we might just make it to Australia after all. I know many have doubted! However, with the completion of Jason's medical recently, we expect that his Religious Worker Visa might be granted by early December. The medical was a slight ordeal and a major rip-off but thats a story not really worth retelling.

December 9th we will travel to Houston to have an interview for Ella's Australian passport. An in-person interview is mandatory for all first time, child passports in the US and Australia. The US passport is easy - just go to a post office. But the Australian one has to be at an Embassy - hence the trip south. The passport is then issued about 10 days later. Once that is done, we will have all the paperwork we need to get on a plane and enter Australia legally.

I left Australia on January 31st 1999. I was fresh out of college, and on my way to China and Japan with college friends to celebrate our graduation. I intended to look for a job teaching English in Japan and was hired on my second day there. My poor mother. Since leaving in 1999, my longest trip back to Australia was three weeks (for our wedding), and our most recent trip was two and a half years ago.

I wonder what it will be like to live in Australia again? Many quickly say 'oh you're going home'. True. Yet false. I grew up there. My family is all there. But for the past ten years I have lived and worked outside of the Australian culture and norms. Most of the 'firsts' of my adult life were in Japan or the United States.

I have so many thoughts about this thing called 're-entry'. They are difficult to define. What is my point? I am not really sure. I hoped to be a little more articulate but . . . Probably more than anything its just to ask for a little grace! Have mercy on me if I sound a little different, if I forget you can't do drive through banking, or shop 24 hours a day. If I call a dummy a pacifier or a nappy a diaper. If I fill the car up with gas not petrol. I'll do my best to fit in and adjust to the cultural norms. It might take a while. Someone likened the re-entry experience to changing colour. I was green in Australia. I turned a little yellow in Japan/America, and now I am blue. Like a square peg trying to fit back into a round hole.

Regardless of how difficult re-entry might be, I will commit to finding joy in it and being thankful. I am so thankful for the many blessings of the past ten years. (and the 21 years prior to that, too).