Reflections of a Resident Alien: Five Years In
It is five years ago to the day that we arrived in our new home in Austin, Texas.
I have never cried the way that I did when our Uber van pulled out of the driveway of Sue’s parents house to take us to OR Tambo International Airport. It was December 17th, 2017, and the Lester’s were moving to Austin, Texas, a mere 14,867 kilometers or so away. Sue and I were overcome with a nauseous mixture of grief and hope which we had been keeping inside through the tenuous restraints of months of packing busyness, to-do lists, account closures, farewells to loved ones, and the unwaning desire to not upset our children by letting them see that their parents were actual people who feared they might be making the biggest mistake of their lives.
We knew those ropes couldn’t hold.
They snapped in that Uber, with our slightly bemused driver, Moses. How fitting. Perhaps he could lead us to a land of promise.
The rare privilege of feeling all of what we were feeling was quickly interrupted by the wonderings of our young daughter who seemed to think that mommy and daddy were upset because the TV in the seat of the airplane might not have Disney Junior. That is what she was upset about after all. I could feel Sue tying some of the frayed ropes back together. I guess parents (and especially mothers) don’t really ever get the chance to fully feel their own feelings, and maybe that is a grace … of sorts. I don’t know.
I looked up from my tears as the M1 swooped around the south of the Johannesburg CBD. The skyline to the north and the mine dumps to the south stood like guards of honor for our departure, guards who had stood for the coming and going of many who hoped for a better future either within or away from this city of gold. I couldn’t help but notice that these guards looked more than a little weather-worn, almost defeated, like the discouraged loyal troops who represent a realm that had never quite lived up to its potential, never been able to keep its own promises.
The emotion shifts once you get to the airport. There isn’t time for reflection when all your worldly possessions exist in seven bags that need to be checked, and tagged, and sent on a conveyor belt together with your kid’s car seats. Gosh I hate car seats, and I really hope we have all the paperwork.
“Another family leaving us hey?” asks the customs and immigration officer. I want to tell him how we aren’t really leaving something but rather going toward something else but he doesn’t seem to care and I am not sure if I do either at this point.
“When will you be back?” he asks, feigning interest.
”I … I don’t know. Hopefully soon?” I say as I do all I can to keep the final ropes from snapping.
Hopefully soon. Probably not. It would be four years till I stood on that same soil.
We arrived in Austin after 27 hours of traveling and via a long layover in London. Daniel had watched every age appropriate show that British Airways had to offer. Katie had had just about enough of being in a confined space and was now also beginning to question if her parents had made the biggest mistake of their lives. She had also decided that she would no longer wear shoes. It was a decree that we had little desire to protest. They say you pick your battles as parents. I think you actually pick your losses. Picking your battles suggests that you might win some. You won’t.
We spent 90 minutes getting our bags, persuading US Customs and Immigration that we were in fact legally allowed to be in the USA, and then being “randomly selected” for a deep search of all of our aforementioned earthly possessions. It is quite a thing, after 27 hours of travel, to stand in a small (and yet still public) room while a stranger searches through your undergarments, interrogates the purpose of your 12 packs of Rooibos Tea, and casts a deeply concerned eye over your unshoed two year old who has now had a little lie down on the US governments very own conveyor belt. I genuinely didn’t know if we were going to have to report to the CIA, FBI, Homeland Security or Child and Social Services. Fortunately the officer found the consistency of our undergarments and the mundanity of our Woolies stash to make for a compelling case of an exhausted immigrant family just trying to get to their new life. He decided to let us go.
What he released us to was an act of love that was so deeply moving that the tenuous knots we had managed to place in our previously severed ropes stood not chance of holding what was inside any longer. About 30 people from our new church had waited for more than an hour on the other side of the door of our interrogation room. They would become some of our dearest friends. They welcomed us with a warmth that was so disarming that we actually treated it with a measure of suspicion at first. After 5 years here, our suspicion has gone, their warmth has not.
As they drove us towards our new home in Northwest Austin, we again split two guards of honor. Heading West on 71 and then North on 360 we saw the glowing lights of the ever expanding downtown Austin skyline to our right, and the rolling green hills of the Texas Hill Country stretching out to the horizon on our left. These guards had also seen many come and go from this place. The glow of the lights from the city was like the nod of a head from the sentinel acknowledging our arrival and welcoming us to put another light in this place. The setting of the sun over the Hill Country was like a sad sigh from the guard who no longer recognized the place he had watched over for so long. We were one of about 130 families who arrived in Austin that day, and the guard knew that our added light would demand more of the precious dark sky he swore to protect.
That was five years ago. It feels like thirty years ago. It feels like yesterday.
Every season of life is full of lessons. There aren’t any that don’t offer the opportunity for growth and education. Below are some of the more obvious lessons we have been learning,
You Cannot Replace Old Friends, But You Can And Will Make Amazing New Ones
Our farewell party was full of decades old friendships, ones that were forged in our most formative years. Friendship is different when you are older and life is full of kids, and mortgages, and job demands, and so it is unreasonable to expect the same sorts of connections with people that you were able to form in childhood or adolescence.
You cannot replace old friends, so don’t try. Let them continue to hold the distinct place in your life and story that they alone can, and then find the room for new friendships in a new season. We have met some of the most wonderful people, and it would be an unfair burden on them to expect them to be like old friends, but they have loved us so well and allowed our group of friendship to grow wider and deeper than we ever imagined.
To Be Somewhere Means To Not Be Somewhere Else
This sounds obvious but it is actually a painful but liberating realization. As a human I am bound to time and space and that is actually good for me. God alone gets to transcend those boundaries, and so I shouldn’t try. This means that you will miss moments and events that you wish you could share in, and you cannot live as if you can be in two places. You can’t. We are in Austin which means we are not in Johannesburg and as painful as that is we cannot let our heart reside somewhere where we do not.
Home Is More Than An Address
This will sound like it conflicts with the point above and it does. Life is full of collisions that look a lot like contradictions.
I noticed this truth the other day though when a friend at work asked me, “When was the last time you were home?”
”This morning” would have been the most accurate answer as our house in Austin definitely feels like home, but I knew that she meant Johannesburg. She is a fellow immigrant and the lilt and longing in her question meant that it could only be answered by our place of origin.
Austin is home. Joburg is home. Heaven will be home.
I have the privilege of living with more than one.
People Are Fascinating
Caricatures and cultural assumptions really do deny us the opportunity to know people as they really are. Sue and I have tried hard to get to know people with an insatiable curiosity instead of with a prejudicial presumption. Everyone has a story and most people have compelling reasons and background narratives for their foibles, beliefs, cultural norms and even weirdness.
America Needs New PR
Now to be fair, the US hasn’t been a victim of anything here. She is her own PR machine, but the versions of herself that she spews out through the monstrous channels of Hollywood entertainment, reality TV, and 24/7 fear monger news networks really does her no favors. I have always struggled with the USA’s bravado on the world stage. It comes across as so lacking in any sort of self awareness or humility. But behind all of that, there is a story of a miracle of a nation, made up of a diversity of people that very few other areas of the world are trying to get to coexist. A nation of immigrants who have found roots on this landmass. Their stories are collectively and individually mesmerizing.
Everyone Overestimates The Importance Of Where They Live
When I lived in Joburg it felt like you were living in the center of a major historical moment. Apartheid fell, a new nation was born, the potential of a new global city emerged. It all felt so globally important but I am realizing it was most probably reduced to ninth page headlines (at best) and moments of passing interest from around the globe, and then people moved on with the importance of their own lives in their own contexts.
The same is true here. The influence of Austin feels outsized and significant. A read an article the other day which called Austin the last throw of the dice in America’s quest to create truly global cities. And yet, none of my friends in South Africa know or really care, and they shouldn’t.
We play such small (but real) parts in the great story, parts that really do make our self-obsession seem laughable. Where you live and what you do matters! But just probably not as much as your daunting stress levels and haunting sense of self-worth suggests.
Life Goes On
It just does. It goes on for you in your new place and it goes on without you in your old place. None of that speak to the value of you and those who used to share those moments with you, it just goes on. You will miss thousands of things you wish you could be at. People will look at your family photos and be sad that your kids are so big. And life, it goes on. That isn’t a cruel shrug, but rather a submitted humility to creaturely restraint.
The World Is Really Small And Really Big At The Same Time
Social media, text messages, phone calls and even the advance of jets able to fly us across the globe will bring about a sense that your former life is really close and accessible. It’s wonderful. But when crisis strikes, or a moment of significance calls for your physical presence, you will remember that 14,867 kilometers is still really far away and there is no real way to reduce that. Flights are long and expensive and disruptive and can’t be made on a whim or too frequently. I love that technology makes beloved people feel close. In reality though, they are really, really far away.
Homesickness Will Sneak Up On You And Steal Your Breath For No Reason
It still happens, and I am never ready. A smell, a sight, a sound, a memory … something sets me off and my mind and my heart are in Africa. I have learned to enjoy these moments now when they used to rob me of joy as if I was being deprived of a life I longed for. Now I celebrate the life that I have been gifted to live and the story of that life that I get to tell in the life that I now live, which I love.
In the truest of all senses, all of us are homesick, and will be until our feet touch that celestial shore of our true always and forever home. In the meanwhile, the pang of sickness isn’t a curse to be endured, but a longing that we all get to lean into and a reminder to not sink our roots too deeply in any temporary place, as marvelous as it might be.
Grace Abounds
Wherever you go, there is grace there. We may be limited by the constraints of time and space, but the Holy Spirit isn’t. No matter which time zone the sun rises in for you there are new mercies that await, more than sufficient for the day that must be lived.
It’s all grace. All grace.
As I write this, the sun is rising over a cold Texas morning and I cannot help but think of how similar Texas winter days are to Johannesburg winter days. Frosty ground on dormant grass, with big blue skies overhead which seem to reflect the cold rather than offer the warmth that the unhindered access to the sun would usually afford. The day is just beginning here, and I know that it is ending for my friends across the globe. The Lord made the day for me just as He did for them, and He gifts the grace and mercies that we will need to begin this day as He does for those whose day is winding down.
What a big and small world. What grace to call more than one place home.
We press on.
