Changes

We recently returned from a two week visit to the USA to visit family and friends. It was a whirlwind of activity...lots of fun, but exhausting, too! People asked me what it was like to return to the States after being in France for 10 months. It's a great question to consider: how much really changes during an extended time away? And what changes take place within a person during that time?

I can say that we learned a lot about ourselves during this trip. For me, I found that I seemed to be able to adapt quite easily from one culture to the next. When we went back to America, I felt right at home. Yet when we arrived back on French soil, I felt like we'd never left. But I realize that this quick and natural transition from one place to another is not at all the normal experience. One of my daughters had a really rough time going "home." She'd built up how great it was going to be in her head, and the experience didn't quite match her expectations. She spent the first week worrying about returning to France, and wasn't able to fully engage in the experiences of being with friends and loved ones. This led to a series of deep and productive talks as a family, and we all learned to give each other grace and space: grace to process change in our own way, and space to do it in our own timing.

And speaking of timing, it often takes a lot of time for difficulties to surface. If you noticed in the paragraph above, I said it "seemed" I can adapt easily. Before we get to the rest of the story, a few brief observations. Very brief, because honestly in the last 10 months, nothing much has changed in America, except my perspective.

• Good ol' American Southern hospitality is sooooo nice. When we got off the plane, we were greeted by the customs & immigration staff with actual smiles, and we even heard "welcome to America" once or twice. Restaurant servers delivered us huge glasses of sweet tea and asked, "will there be anything else, hon?" It truly was my pleasure to hear "my pleasure" at the Chick-fil-A drive through.
• Americans are slaves to their cars. I couldn't believe how many hours we spent sitting in the car, commuting from one neighborhood to the next, from Walmart to shopping mall, from one side of the Charlotte sprawl to the other. This is nothing new, of course, but after months of being able to walk wherever I need to go, or taking efficient public transportation for long distances, I'm spoiled rotten.
• Guns, guns, guns. Again, nothing new: the gun culture in the south is everywhere. But I hadn't really noticed all the billboards for gun shows and bumper stickers defending the 2nd amendment until we came back. We even participated in it. Greg's dad took us to a range in Georgia, and my oldest daughter learned that shooting guns is....well, it's fun. I have to admit, for me, it's equal part terror and exhilaration. But I'll leave that for another blog someday.

OK, now back to the real lesson I learned about myself. A few days after we returned, I had a French lesson. And everything, EVERYTHING, had disappeared from the already minuscule French section of my brain. It was all I could do to hold back tears as I struggled to piece together a simple sentence. "What is wrong with me?" I wondered. The distress was short-lived, and thankfully most of the French came back quickly, but I realized that maybe I don't adapt quite as easily as I'd first thought. I stuff a lot inside and seem perfectly fine on the surface, I even feel perfectly fine, but culture shock has a strong hold on me. Going back and forth so quickly, and being frantically busy in both locations, is not ideal. It took several days of carving out intentional alone time to process my thoughts and come to grips with the fact that I don't live in America any more. France is my home now. I love it, I honestly do, but in many ways the change has been hard. 

So here's the real lesson: change is difficult. But change is inevitable. Embrace the changes in your circumstances, and embrace the changes within you.