Enjoying a temporary life

For the past four months we have been living a beautiful ‘temporary’ life back in our old home town in Australia. We’ve reconnected with family and friends and even met some family members for the first time. We’ve fished, played sport, enjoyed the beach (although an Australian winter is pretty tough for these long-term equator-dwellers), visited rainforests, been to the theatre, ate some pretty delicious food and read some fantastic books (albeit many of those were children’s books). How awesome are public libraries?

The best moments are not necessarily the deep conversations and moments of ‘connection’, however there have been a few of those, but just ‘being’ together with people we love has been so life-giving.

However this ‘temporary’ life hasn’t been all sunshine and roses. We’ve had to work over these few months (got to pay for those grocery and petrol bills…). I’ve picked up a lot of casual teaching work in a few local schools, and that’s possibly been the biggest culture shock of my time here 🙂 The best line I received from a teacher when asking her what strategies I could use for a challenging child in her class was to ‘build relationship with him’, well that’s great for a casual isn’t it!

This temporary limbo life brings with itself the ‘in between’ feeling: can’t put down new roots when they will be uprooted again soon. And difficult to invest in new relationships when we will be jumping on a plane again soon.

But for this week, I’m going to try to fool my brain and continue to enjoy the moments of our temporary existence down under.