Memories of a lady

My grandmother passed away this evening.  While I’m thankful that she lived a good, long life and went before the Alzheimer’s got really horrible, and while I know that I’ve been slowly losing her for years, I mostly just miss her right now.   

She was the grandparent I was closest too. The one I saw multiple times per month growing up and every spring break in college. She was steady and strong-willed, in a petite little package. Feisty, in the best sense of the word. I went to college in part because of her absolute determination that her children and grandchildren should have the opportunity that she and her husband did not. Those memories of me playing a superhero were in her home on Mercer Island. I can see her reading on her chaise lounge or puttering around taking care of her plants. Her parents divorced when she was a child – a rarity in those days – so she understood me in ways that other grandparents could not. Over the years, I made her spend hours telling me stories about her life and showing me her old photo album. We would get to the two pages covered in wallet-sized photos of young men, and she would sweep her hand over the pages and say “and these were my boyfriends”. Flip. (GRANDMA!) 

I loved that she could laugh at herself – like when grandpa would tease her saying that she was getting so jumpy as she got older that he couldn’t walk up the stairs without things flying by his head. I loved how she took care of my cat for me, just like her grandmother took care of her cat once. Every time I talked to her, she’d tell me the cat bit her that day, but I think she was relieved that I didn’t ask for the cat back when I graduated from college. I loved how she got on the plane to come visit me in DC grousing about the trip and how old she was, but by the time she was part way up the Capital South metro escalator, she was WALKING up the escalator with her head turning left and right like it was on a pendulum. 

I will miss her.

What is that to you?

When I was in high school, I didn’t have a plan for my life per se, but I did have an idea of a good scenario – namely, go to college, work for about 5 years, then be married for a few years before beginning to have 2 or 3 children. The only thing that went according to that scenario was college. The older I get, the more it appears that I may never have a husband and children. There are more Christian women than men, so statistically speaking, a good number of women are never going to be married. All of the single Christian men I know who are around my age are getting married to girls 10(ish) years younger than me. Men who appear interested in me either lose interest when they learn what my job is or are nearer in age to my parents than to me (a line I’m not willing to cross at this time). 

Do I doubt that I am where God would have me? No. Do I doubt that where God wants me is the best place? No.Can I look at my life and see numerous ways in which I have been blessed beyond measure? Absolutely. Should I turn away from what I believe God is calling me to do right now and put my life into a holding pattern in the hopes of getting a man to love me? What a waste of my life that would be.

When Jesus appeared to a few of the disciples after the resurrection and told Peter that he would die a martyr’s death, Peter looked back at John and asked “what about him?” Jesus’ reply was, “what is that to you? You must follow me.”

I suspect that often my dissatisfaction with singleness is because I look around at apparently happily married couples with several children and wonder why I haven’t been given that. But, at least for today, that is their calling, not mine. I spend too much time looking around rather than looking up. Over and over again, God has had to ask me “What is that to you?”

There’s always something to be discontent about. If I was married, who’s to say that I wouldn’t struggle with infertility? If I had children, who’s to say that they would be perfect healthy little angels? We all have our struggles, some more visible than others. We have to fight discontentment. We have to actively choose joy, choose to trust God and rest in His peace.

A few years ago, I tried to go see Macchu Picchu. The problem is that, in order to go to Macchu Picchu, you have to go to Cuzco. People with asthma are strongly advised against going over 10,000 feet. Cuzco is at 11,000 feet. I’m stubborn. God is stronger than my stubbornness. Everything that could possibly go wrong (safely) with my trip did. After 48 hours of travel, I never even made it to Peru. I only got as far as the airport in Santiago, Chile. I travelled across a continent and got a blueberry muffin. But I never saw Macchu Picchu. Maybe it would have been a bad idea for me to go to Cuzco.

There are several times in the Chronicles of Narnia where Aslan tells one of the children that it is not for us to know what would have been if… But I look back at how I’ve grown over the years and I think maybe it was good that I didn’t get married when I was younger. And even though I still want to be married and to have children, I must choose to live in the present, to follow the path that God has laid before me, to fix my eyes on Him instead of looking around me and asking “but what about her?” For what is that to me? I must follow Him.

Please don't call me

One of the less exciting aspects of being a Foreign Service officer is when you serve as duty officer. Those are the weeks when all the after-hours “emergency” phone calls go directly to you. If an American gets arrested during non-business hours, you make sure they are treated no worse than anybody else in that jail. If an American dies, you try to track down next of kin. If an American is mugged, you help them contact family to wire them money. It’s an important and necessary job. But I would spend those weeks praying that I wouldn’t get a phone call, and especially not a phone call in the middle of the night. Or if I did, that I would wake up and answer the phone right away! (One excellent way to get in trouble is for the DCM to get woken up because you didn’t answer the duty phone. Praise God, that never happened to me.)

When I was in Brazil, more often than not, those “emergency” phone calls were not actual emergencies. On the rare occasion when it was a legitimate call, I was lucky enough to have them fall under other consular jurisdictions, so all I had to do was call the duty officer in Rio or Sao Paulo or Recife and pass on the info. Hallelujah! But the majority of my phone calls were not emergencies, and I had to tell the person that we couldn’t help them or to call back during business hours. Tokyo, on the other hand, is a major city that actually gets a fair number of American citizens, so I suspect I will not get off so easily when I am stationed there. In an effort to make my life easier, here are just a few tips to keep in mind before you call up the Embassy after hours if you or a loved one are in Japan sometime between September 2012 and August 2015. (And PLEASE remember the time difference!)

* The fact that you are leaving for the U.S. tomorrow and you just realized that you forgot to get a visa for the nanny is not an emergency. (This obviously only applies to citizens of countries for which we require a visa.)

* The fact that your husband has enrolled your kids in school and declared that you will be staying is not an emergency. (People watch too many movies. The Marines are at the Embassy to protect classified material, not to swoop in on a helicopter to pull your teenagers out of school.)

* The Embassy does not have a fleet of planes waiting to be used by American citizens with various medical conditions.

* The U.S. government does not have a fund to fly friends or family to the bedside of somebody who got the flu/malaria/etc while in a foreign country. (I’ve gotten this one the most. Would you ask the government to fly you to another state? No. Under certain conditions, this would be a “welfare and whereabouts” call, where we would locate the person and make sure they are still living. That's about it.)

* While I don’t encourage people to get their pictures taken with alligators, getting your picture taken with an alligator while you are drunk and in the middle of nowhere is NEVER a good idea.