Keeping In Touch

One of the most challenging things for me is obviously missing my family and friends at home and trying to keep in touch.  It has been difficult to balance being "all in" here where the Lord has us now, and trying to keep up with our loved ones on the other side of the globe.  The irony of our situation is that I have already been through something very similar when I was about Grace's age.  I grew up in a relatively small PA town until my father's company transferred us about 2 hours to DE, where we had a lot of family living and where my parent's grew up.  I remembered being devastated, even in 7th grade, because I had gone to school with the same friends since kindergarten. I tried to keep in touch with  a few friends that I was closer to, but as months and years went by, and I went into high school and became more and more entrenched in our DE life, those friendships faded.  Of course, this is normal.  But after five years of living in DE, my father's job moved back to that small PA town...and so did our family.  There is obviously much more to this story, but the long and the short of it is even though I went to school again with all the same people I did for the first seven years of my schooling, I felt like a "newbie" again.  It was even a little awkward...people looking at me and I could observe them thinking "didn't she live here before?" Now most circumstances then were much different but I must admit that I wished I had kept in touch a little better with certain people.  This has been a regret...yet, who would have known that we would have moved back?

Now we are doing the same thing to our children....but with the luxury (or disservice?) of knowing, Lord willing, we will be moving back in three years. Granted, it's only three years and not five, but it still feels the same.  And to explain the previous statement...I say luxury since we know what the plan is supposed to be, but it could be a disservice if it prevents us from really living here in Hong Kong.  Even my nine year old asked me the other day, "Will my friends still be my friends when we get back, or will they move on without me?" I try to encourage her not to worry about it, but what can I really say to her?  She will be a different person in three years, and so will her friends.  Now, that particular daughter has deeper friendships than the average, so it wouldn't surprise me if she stepped back into what she knows.  But she voiced a concern of mine that I hadn't let surface.  A good friend of mine mentioned to me that one of my biggest challenges would be that life moves on while I am gone...big events happen to those I love and I cannot be there with them.  My grandmother's 90th b-day, a very good friend's sick daughter, my mom's hospitalization...all things I have had to deal with very far away.  The struggle is this time difference.  I have such a desire (and I am probably more relational than normal) to call friends and family and keep up.  Social media is nice, but there is no depth and not a replacement for more personal communication. Unfortunately, my mornings are limited, especially if I have to take Abby in the morning...and my evenings are usually packed until about 9:00pm, and then I am exhausted and soon ready to go to bed.  So it is yet another aspect to this living abroad that I have had to leave in God's hands. I pray that I would follow the nudges of the Spirit...if someone needs a call or an email, I pray that I would take the time to do it.  Otherwise, my prayer is that people know that I miss them and am doing the best I can to keep up.  Being home this past Christmas was a weird feeling...we hadn't been gone that long, and not much had changed, so Hong Kong felt like a dream.  But this stretch will be longer, and I also can't spend my days always planning around my US relationships. So when we move back into life that is familiar, and we step into friendships that we already have, I have to trust the Lord that depth and history will make a difference and that people will still like the "changed Puffenbergers", because Hong Kong will do that to us. I will do the best I can to love from afar, while living in the here and now.  Like so much else in my life...balance is key.

Abby was "King Abigail" in her class's Christmas program

 

 

Guess who's new nickname is "Roly Poly"?

 

Josh and Emma had a great time with Dad building with Lincoln Logs on a Saturday morning