Leaning into Advent

When I was growing up, my family wasn't really into following the liturgical calendar. We're still not, really. 

But this year more than any year previously I have been appreciating Advent. 

Sometimes Advent is just seen as a period of anticipation, the run up to Christmas, a name for the weeks where we try to focus on remembering the true 'reason for the season' in amongst all the pre-Christmas busyness that seems to take over December.

As far as I understand (and I'm not claiming to be an expert on this subject by any means), that's part of it but not all. Advent is a season of waiting - remembering the long-awaited arrival two thousand years ago and acknowledging that we wait for the second coming now. 

And as we wait, we, along with all of creation, groan. We ready ourselves to remember and to celebrate the birth of the promised King, to remember that "the true light that gives light to everyone" came into the world. To remember that "the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it." 

The true light has come. And yet we still wait. We still see so much darkness in the world. There is light - hallelujah! As believers, we are light. And yet we await our King's second coming again, when he will be like the light of the sun, burning so fiercely as to extinguish every inch of darkness.

I like how it is put in this opinion piece:

"To practice Advent is to lean into an almost cosmic ache: our deep, wordless desire for things to be made right and the incompleteness we find in the meantime. We dwell in a world still racked with conflict, violence, suffering, darkness. Advent holds space for our grief, and it reminds us that all of us, in one way or another, are not only wounded by the evil in the world but are also wielders of it, contributing our own moments of unkindness or impatience or selfishness."

This year, perhaps more than any other year, I've been aware of the brokenness of this world. Of the ugliness of sin. Of the tragic effects of sin and the Fall. I've seen a lot of things to mourn and grieve over these last few months, and it is right that they be mourned and grieved over. 

And I'm deeply reassured that I don't have to rush into Christmas. Before we sing 'Joy to the world', we can sing 'O come, o come Emmanuel'. I can take time to pause and acknowledge that there is pain and loss and brokenness in this world. That the world is not as it should be. That there is depth to the darkness.

But it's not a hopeless mourning. It's an intake of breath, the expectant pause, before the music rings out. We are hopeful people - literally hope-full. As we look back and celebrate the amazing truth of "our God contracted to a span", we look forward to the day when there will be no more death, or mourning, or crying, or pain, because the old order of things will have passed away. 

I can look at the darkness and face it head-on because I know that the light has come, and I appreciate the light all the more for having first looked hard at the darkness. And I know that one day there will be no darkness, when the King comes again.

O Come, Thou King of nations bring

An end to all our suffering

Bid every pain and sorrow cease

And reign now as our Prince of Peace

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel

Shall come again with us to dwell

(Source)

It gets easier and it gets harder

A new foreign family arrived here a few weeks ago. They're staying for three months, thinking about coming to live here longer term. As they're new to the country, don't speak Turkish, are staying close to us and wanted to go to the weekly fruit and vegetable market, I offered to accompany them for their first market trip.

A confession here: I was scared of going to the market for the first year I lived in Turkey. It's usually busy and noisy. Everyone seems in a rush. Plus you have to communicate with the market stall holders - to check the price of something if it isn't displayed, know the difference between the stalls where it's seç al (choose the produce yourself) and the stalls where you ask for the weight you want and they give it to you, understand how much the total is and anything else the market stall holder may ask you. Market stall holders don't usually speak the proper 'Istanbul Turkish' but usually speak less clearly and have more of a regional accent. And then there's the shopping adjustments, such as knowing how much a kilo of strawberries is as opposed to a kilo of potatoes and knowing that you don't buy a few sprigs of mint or parsley but a whole bunch.

(An aside: when we'd been in Istanbul a couple of months, I saw there was a special rate on strawberries in the local supermarket and carefully asked in my best Turkish, "please can I have 200 grams?". The guy weighing out the strawberries looked back at me and said with a questioning tone, "200 grams?". I mentally double-checked my vocabulary and grammar and confirmed "yes, 200 grams." He still looked slightly puzzled, at which I also looked confused, but weighed me out 200 grams of strawberries. I looked at the rather small bag of strawberries he held out to me and realised in an instant that - for a change - I hadn't committed a language fail. No, my fail was a shopping fail and at a price of less than £1 a kilogram, no wonder he was surprised that I was only asking for 200 grams!).

So I found myself wandering around the market with this new family, inwardly cringing that I stick out enough at the market already with three small, fair-haired children and now I was walking round with a couple and their two small children who were also clearly foreigners. Not only that, but we were speaking English between ourselves. We stuck out a mile. I tried to gauge the right distance to keep - they needed to try and do as much for themselves as they could, to try out the few words of Turkish they knew, so I didn't want to do everything for them or permanently hover on their shoulder, but I also needed to be able to help if required.

They did great. But it looked exhausting for them. As I watched them, I was so thankful for how much easier my life is here now that we've been here a few years and speak Turkish. I know how the market system works, I can ask the price of something and know I'll be understood and I can understand the reply. I know the usual pattern of interaction so the transaction process is usually straightforward. When the market stall holder asks something else, I understand it - and actually I know what sorts of things he's likely to be asking anyway.

That extends to life generally here. It's not that life here is easy - but it's easier. There are still misunderstandings and different ways of doing things that confuse us. There are still niggles and stresses in how to get things done here. There is even more bureaucracy and new things to understand now L has his business here. But the normal activities of daily life are a ton easier than they used to be.

And yet at the same time it gets harder.

Every year we spend here, every anniversary we mark, highlights the fact that our roots are growing deeper in this country now. We've spent well over half of our married life in Turkey. Two of our three children were born here and the other can't remember living anywhere but Turkey. Turkey's in our hearts now.

And yet we know that as foreigners here, there's always a measure of uncertainty about how long we'll stay here. So we plant ourselves down firmly here knowing that it is right and good that the longer we live here, the deeper our roots will grow - and the harder it will be when, eventually, we have to wrench those roots up.

We hope that our roots in Turkey will go thick and strong. There are so many things we love about the Turkish people and culture. We care deeply about this country and pray that God blesses it. And we know that whenever the day comes to leave, whether in months or in many years time, it will be painful - and that will be a right kind of pain. And that's okay - what would it say about our life here if leaving wasn't painful in someway?

So it gets easier. And it gets harder. And the best thing of all - the Lord who was with us when we lived in the UK, and with us when we came to Turkey and every day life became so hard, and is with us now as every day life gets easier and our roots get deeper, will be with us every step of the way in the future too.

Pamukkale, Hierapolis and Laodikea

A few weeks ago, we set off on holiday. It was a 500 mile journey from our home to our holiday rental. We'd already been discussing breaking up the journey on the way and when we were researching our route beforehand and saw that our route took us within 15 miles of Pamukkale-Hierapolis, it was a no-brainer. How often do you find that your route takes you very close to a place that often makes it onto lists of 'top places to see before you die'?!

Our journey to Pamukkale-Hierapolis there took us all day and was a little like a tour of Biblical places in and of itself. We drove through Cappadocia, the city of Konya (known as Iconium in Biblical times), passed close by to the ruins of Pisidian Antioch, and also passed close to the unexcavated site of Colossae.

Driving through Cappadocia early in the morning

And then we got to Pamukkale-Hierapolis. We camped for a couple of nights right up on top of a hill overlooking the Colossae-Laodikea plain, within 5 minutes drive of Pamukkale-Hierapolis - it was as we were driving for what seemed like ages up a steep, narrow road that we realised that booking camping at a campsite called 'Hill Camping' should have been a giveaway as to the type of location. 

And sunset when we arrived

Very close to Pamukkale-Hierapolis are the ruins of the ancient city of Laodikea - which you probably know as Laodicea. Unfortunately sited in an earthquake zone, the ancient city got ruined and then restored plenty of times. We got there early enough that we were the only people there when we arrived at 8am. It's a large site and a lot of it is still unexcavated, but it was a fun place to wander round. As always, touring historical sites with small children is both a blessing and a curse. We love that we get to introduce them to ancient sites (even though we worry that J, at 4 years old, is a bit blase about ancient sites already) and hear their commentary (as J points to an Ionic pillar top and said it looks like a cinnamon roll...). We love that we can show them that Christianity is a tangibly historical religion as we point out the baptistry in the ruins of an ancient church. And yet we also know that the children's limited attention spans means that our visits tend to be somewhat more fleeting than we might like them to be. Overall, though, we really enjoy taking our children to ruins - and they enjoy the visits too.

Exploring the ruins of Laodikea

Laodikea road

A restored archway

One of the churches (partly restored) in Laodikea, with some amazing mosaics. It's from about 300AD.

And then there was Pamukkale-Hierapolis. Pamukkale means "cotton castle" in Turkish and its famous for thermal waters which flow down white travertine (a form of limestone) terraces. The ruins of Hierapolis, an ancient Roman city, are so close to Pamukkale that they form one site together. Not only is Pamukkale-Hierapolis a UNESCO World Heritage site, Hierapolis is also reputed to be the place of Philip's martyrdom (although according to what I've read, it's not exactly clear which New Testament Philip this was).

As we knew the weather was going to be hot and there would be no shade, we visited very early in the morning and arrived at the Hierapolis necropolis at 7.15am. We walked about an hour through the ruins of tombs before getting to the Pamukkale side and spending some time exploring that part. After the swimming pool at the campsite the previous day, the boys were rather unimpressed with the thermal pools. As the weather was getting rather hot by then, we skipped most of the Hierapolis ruins and were back at the campsite taking down our tent by 11am!

Arriving at the Pamukkale side

Pamukkale 

And then it was on to our 'proper' holiday over on the Aegean coast...

The Ungrateful Refugee: gratefulness, dignity and complexity

I've recently finished reading 'The Ungrateful Refugee' by Dina Nayeri. It wasn't an easy, comforting read - but the best books, the ones that give rise to thoughts that you're still turning over in your mind months later, rarely are. I'm pretty sure I'll still be mulling over things from this book in the months to come.

The book is comprised of two different parts, interwoven: first, the story of the author's childhood experience of leaving Iran and arriving in the USA, via Dubai and Italy, and life as a former refugee; and second, the stories of different refugees.

What stood out to me after finishing the book was the complexity of refugees' lives, when often in the West we're looking for a simple story. Sometimes we just want to skip to the 'happy ending' - refugee endures unspeakable tragedies in home country, somehow arrives in a Western country, proves herself to be a 'deserving refugee', is granted asylum, effortlessly integrates into her new country and forever onwards declares her undying gratitude to her new country.

But life isn't like that and people aren't like that. People are human beings, each with an inherent dignity that comes from being human, and each person has a unique story that doesn't fit into the neat tick boxes that we'd like them to. And Dina Nayeri's writing reminded me of the complexity of refugees' lives and stories, of the paradoxes, of the humanity of refugees. She challenges the distinction between 'worthy' refugees and 'opportunistic' migrants. She points out the cost of gratitude - "[the volunteers] have come for that silent look of admiration that's free to most, but so costly if you're tapped for gratitude by everyone you meet" - and the complexity of assimilation - "in forcing assimilation, are we asking for performance? We want to see that newcomes are happy, grateful, that they're trying. But real gratitude doesn't present itself loudly, in lofty gestures. And learning to posture is a much quicker process than transforming...".

She also reminded me that cultures tell stories and process truths in different ways, and when countries expect asylum seekers to present a flawless account of why and how they left their home country, to cherry pick the parts that asylum officers want to hear out of their stories of pain, loss and injustice, to give their tale in a way that makes sense to Western ears but is so completely foreign to their own tongues, we ask an impossible task of them. And also of the asylum officers, who are assigned the unenviable task of being the "arbiters of complicated truth".

It's not always the easiest book to read - both in terms of subject matter, and in terms of writing as it can feel slightly repetitive at times, and due to the interwoven nature, jumps around quite a lot. But it's an important book that I'm glad I read.


"no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark

you have to understand,
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land"

(Warsan Shire, 'Home')

Kurban Bayramı, sacrificed meat and issues of conscience

Yesterday was the first day of Kurban Bayramı, which is more commonly known outside of Turkey as Eid al-Adha or the Feast of the Sacrifice. It lasts four days here, all of which are public holidays. I wrote about it last year here, here and here but is is an annual remembrance of Abraham's willingness to submit to God and sacrifice his son. It's typically celebrated by a family sacrificing an animal (in Turkey, usually a sheep or cow) on the morning of the first day. Traditionally, the meat from the animal is divided into three parts: one third is given to the poor; one third to friends, wider family and neighbours; and the remaining third is kept for their own family. In cities, the animal can be ordered already sacrificed and cut from a shop or supermarket, or a family can go to a special sacrifice abattoir place and choose their animal and have it sacrificed then and there.

This is our first full Kurban Bayramı actually living in this city - we arrived part way through last year. In the run up, we received a promotional leaflet advertising different options for buying the meat of a cow or sheep, or part of it, when our shopping was delivered last week and then saw the sudden appearance of signs on the street giving the location of the nearest sacrifice places. And then there was the almost mass emptying of the city the night before, as people returned to their family villages for the day.

As might be expected, it's also something that comes up with the local believers every year. We've had teaching that we have no need to sacrifice an animal every year, because our Sacrifice was once for all. We had very new believers at our weekly gathering yesterday who for the first time in their lives were not celebrating Kurban Bayramı but who were singing of the power of that Sacrifice two thousand years ago. We had almost all of the young, single believers missing from our weekly gathering yesterday because they would have been required to be with their families.

And we've had various discussions about the eating of sacrificed meat. All meat in Turkey is considered halal - meaning that it conforms to Islamic law in that the animal is killed in a certain way and that a blessing is said while the animal is slaughtered. Eating halal meat isn't an issue I've ever heard raised here - and actually, from our point of view, it's not something to particularly worry about. There's a good chance that people in the UK have unknowingly eaten halal meat anyway (source). But meat from animals that have been killed as the integral part of a Muslim religious festival is different and it does come up as an issue.

Some Turkish believers have chosen to very clearly make a stand on this issue and do not eat meat that has been sacrificed as part of Kurban Bayramı. We understand their thinking, particularly as they are usually first generation believers, with unbelieving family, and feel the need to draw a very clear line in the sand between the practices of those around them and their new practices as believers. We do not come from the same background as them and don't feel so close to the issue.

But we've also been talking about how this is not a new issue for believers but one that is directly addressed in God's Word, in particular Romans chapter 14. So in conversation, believers do explain the conclusions they've come to and why they think that way - but it is also stressed that this is an issue of conscience, where mature believers can come to different conclusions. Our main responsibility is to maintain the unity of the believers and not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in the way of fellow believers, but to deny our own preferences for the sake of our believing brothers and sisters.

So what has this practically looked like for us this year? It's meant respecting the convictions of our fellow believers and understanding that those from very different backgrounds to us experience Kurban Bayramı very differently from us. For L and I, it's also meant that when our neighbour rang our door bell earlier with a plastic bag full of meat for us, we accepted it graciously and thanked her. She will know that we are not Muslim, but to refuse her kind gift would have been incredibly rude and incomprehensible to her - she doesn't know anything about our beliefs so to refuse would just have offended her with no gain made whatsoever. However, if, for example, we had very close Turkish friends or family members who had made a sacrifice and we had the relationship with them, or the meat was offered in such a way that it would have been a stumbling block to a Turkish believer, we may have declined the meat with the explanation of why we don't celebrate Kurban Bayramı.

The caveat, as with all of these issues, is that we're still figuring out these things and I'm sure that our thinking will become deeper and more nuanced as we live here longer. Yet we can't just put off thinking about these things because we've only been here three years and not thirteen or thirty.

In the mean time, I now have a bag of meat in my freezer. I don't know what animal it's come from and have no idea what cut of meat it is, never mind what I'm going to do with it!

When a picture's worth a thousand words

Sometimes it's hard describing where we live to people in the UK because it doesn't really fit in any category of housing location that we're used to. You'd never find this kind of neighbourhood in the UK. We live in a flat in a 14 floor apartment building, surrounded by other apartment blocks. The ground floor of some apartment blocks is used as shop space. We live right on the edge of the city. We also live at the foot of a mountain. The streets are wide in this neighbourhood and there are small parks dotted regularly around, with grass and trees. It's hard to find a large grassy space, big enough for a game of football or ultimate frisbee though. Although the apartment blocks are well spaced out, there are no detached or semi detached houses as you might find in the UK. There are a few detached houses right on the outskirts of the apartment block forest, usually either rather basic houses with land attached, or villa-type houses (often used as summer houses).

Does that make any sense to you?!

If it's a little hard to imagine, some pictures might help.

Our apartment building, situated right next to (behind) a mosque

Our apartment building on the right, surrounded by other blocks and with the mountain in the distance

The view from our balcony. This is what we mean when we say we live at the foot of a mountain. L uses the mountain for his running routes.

Another angle from our balcony

And looking the other way from the balcony

Our neighbourhood, from one of the playparks

And again from the same park

Three cross-cultural amusing moments

Cross cultural differences can be amusing. We don't laugh at our Turkish friends but sometimes we laugh with them. Sometimes just the cultural differences make us laugh - what is so normal to us but is so foreign to them, and vice versa. Here's three cross-cultural moments that made me smile this week.

• While waiting to pay at the hospital for Z's two month check up, the lady next to me was giving her best shot to arguing for a discount for the cost of an X-ray. I've got used to paying when we go to a private hospital but the idea of bargaining for hospital services is so foreign to my British-ness, I couldn't help but smile - especially at the effort to which the lady was going to. Unfortunately for her though it was to no avail.

• After paying, I was sitting waiting to be called for Z's hip ultrasound (routine here and really not worth the effort of arguing that it's probably unnecessary for him!). J and S were sitting on the floor next to me colouring and I was holding Z. We'd already been at the hospital for nearly an hour at that point as we'd seen Z's paediatrician first, so the boys' patience was starting to wear thin. While trying to oversee the fair distribution of crayons and ensure they didn't end up all over the entire corridor, look after Z, and field questions about whether or not my husband was Turkish and where we were from, the older lady next to me was trying to tug the hem of my t-shirt down for me because in amongst getting Z out of the carrier that was strapped to my front and bending down to deal with said crayons and small children, the back of my t-shirt had ridden up and was showing maybe 1cm of bare flesh. At that point, I really wasn't too bothered (particularly as I had my back to a wall anyway) but the lady was obviously very concerned for my decency and was doing her best to help me out. I did my best to hide my smile and thanked her.

• And my personal favourite -  I was out walking with a Turkish friend one evening this week, pushing Z in the pushchair. It was nearly 8pm but the temperature must have been at least 25 degrees still and there was no breeze. Z was dressed in a sleepsuit, which I considered more than sufficient, but for a typical Turk that was definitely underdressed. As we passed one lady sitting on a bench, she tried to stop us while indicating to Z, ready to point out that he had no blanket and (in her opinion) would be getting cold. Without breaking a stride, my Turkish friend  - who is well aware that my children are almost always underdressed by Turkish standards, as most Turks worry about children getting ill from being cold, whereas I worry about them overheating - just waved to the woman and said 'she's English' - as if that was explanation enough and no further comment was needed. I laughed out loud and tried not to think what impression of British people I'm creating around here.

Summer days

How did July arrive so quickly? In just over a month, we'll have been in this city a year. It seems to have gone fast and yet it seems like a very long time ago that we were living in Istanbul.

July and August are hot here. The weather will be hot and sunny almost every day, with the temperature usually reaching above 30 degrees Celsius. In fact, it will be an abnormal day when it doesn't reach 30 degrees.

So for the next couple of months, our entire routine shifts. We avoid being outside in the sun between about 9.30am - 4.30pm - it's just too hot and too much chance of sunburn, especially with small fair skinned children. Even at 5pm or 6pm, it is still hot but at least there's less chance of getting burnt. So we try and get the boys out either first thing in the morning or sometime after 5pm, fitting tea (dinner!) in as well. This usually means that the boys' bedtime shifts later. We end up going to the park when they would usually be getting ready for bed, or later. I can't quite embrace a Turkish mindset of 'the children go to bed whenever they want, usually post 9pm and sometimes at midnight' - mainly because that would definitely be too late for me! But I have definitely relaxed my British attitude of 'it's 7pm, the children must be in bed and going to sleep'. It just doesn't work when you live in a hot country, and that's okay.

Despite the heat, it's a lot more comfortable here than in Istanbul. Although we're in a flat and surrounded by other apartment blocks, we're at the edge of the city so we can get a breeze into the flat. We have a balcony that is shaded and the boys play out on (and we can even fit a small paddling pool onto it). As well as being significantly less humid here compared to Istanbul, we are also much higher up in terms of altitude, so the temperature drops a little bit cooler at night. Plus, we have a car so we can get to wherever we need to go in air-conditioned comfort - that makes a huge difference compared to walking and getting public transport around.

Summer here might be hot, but there are definite plus points too. We can plan outdoor activities (in the shade or the evening) with a strong degree of confidence in what the weather will be like. We're enjoying the summer fruits that are in season here - huge watermelons, ripe peaches, grapes, nectarines. We have friends who live in a house with a garden, a 5-10 minute drive from ours, and while they're out of the country this summer, we're helping with watering their garden. The boys are enjoying playing in the garden and 'helping' water while we have also been collecting kilos of cherries from their trees.

Third Culture Kids and Sundays

I've mentioned before how Sundays do not feel like the easiest day for us but we believe that they are worth the effort and the turning upside down of our usual routines. I've stumbled across a couple of blog posts and articles recently that have reiterated that point, which is always an encouraging reminder.

It's often mentioned in these types of articles that children absorb what is going on as they watch and listen to the service. But there's often been a nagging question at the back of my mind - what happens when the service is in their second language? Our children's Turkish is developing well but I am fairly sure that, although J knows a few key religious words, he is unable to understand most of what is said in the service.

I'm not going to turn this into a debate on whether or not children should sit through sermons. But I did have this feeling that our children were missing out on some of the blessings of being taken to our weekly Sunday gathering because of the language barrier.

And then I read an article on why children of foreigners like us should learn the local language and one of the points it made sparked a new direction of thought for me.

Our children may be missing out on some of the advantages of witnessing God's people worshipping corporately in their native language. But not only are there still plenty of benefits that do not depend on language, there are even blessings that result from experiencing Sunday gatherings in their second language!

Firstly, even while they do not understand much of what is said, there are still great advantages to them being there. We believe that there is a special privilege and blessing of gathering together with God's people each week and worshipping together. J and S see us making a priority of being there on a Sunday. And they still get to witness the form of a service - the singing to praise God together, praying, God's Word being read and expounded, the Lord's Supper and the fellowship.

But there are also benefits that come about because our Sunday gathering is in their second language, and it's these that I hadn't really considered before. We don't have to try and explain that people in different countries who speak different languages also meet together on a Sunday and worship God - our children get to see it first hand. They know that we can talk and sing to God in English and in Turkish because that's what they experience. They know that native English speakers and native Turkish speakers (and others too, we've a few international students around) can worship God together as family. And this is what is normal to them - not just as a one-off, but every week they get a little taste of what it will be like for people from different tribes and languages and nations to worship God together and a small glimpse of the global-ness of our spiritual family.

So, as is typical for Third Culture Kid in so many different areas of their lives, yes they are missing out on some of the experiences and blessings that would have come with staying in the UK. But they are receiving different benefits and blessings from living here. And that's something I just have to keep reminding myself of.

Ramazan

Ramadan (Ramazan in Turkish) started a few days ago here. It's a month of fasting that comes around once a year on the Islamic calendar. The Islamic calendar is lunar, so a year is 354/355 days. This means that every solar year (i.e. 2019 or 2020), Ramazan gets a 11 or so days earlier.

Fasting during Ramazan means refraining from eating or drinking between sunrise and sunset each day. Chewing gum and smoking are also refrained from. Pregnant and nursing women, children, the old and weak, and those travelling are exempt from fasting. Those fasting get up before sunrise to have a meal (sahur) before their fast starts and break their fast each day with iftar, a meal held straight after sunset, often a large celebratory meal shared with family or friends. For Muslims, it's the holiest month of the year and a time where they examine their lives and focus on their religion and God. Mosques are busier this month.

Not all of those who would identify as Muslim choose to fast but many do. Although this is our fourth Ramazan in Turkey, it's our first in the city we now live in. Different parts of Turkey vary vastly in how secular/religious they are, so foreign tourists who come to the very tourist-y areas of Turkey during Ramazan are unlikely to be impacted much. Istanbul has a mixture of more conservative and more secular areas. When we were in Istanbul, we lived in quite a secular area and walking down the nearby streets, cafes and restaurants would still be open and we'd see people in there eating and drinking in the day.Now we live in a more conservative city and so we assume that the majority of people around us are fasting.

Practically, that means this month we're avoiding eating and drinking out in public. We tried to do this while we were in Istanbul anyway, but we're more conscious of it here. Many cafes and restaurants are closed for the month, or at the very least have removed their tables from the pavements outside during the day. Cafes and restaurants that are still open may be closed during the day or have shorter opening hours, but then stay open much later at night, for those that want to eat out for their iftar meal.

To be honest, we don't go to cafes and restaurants much anyway - although there's something about knowing that you can't that makes you want to go more! Although children are exempt from fasting, I try to be sensitive and make sure that the boys have had their snack before they go to the park, rather than taking it to the park to eat there. We'll also avoid, for example, having a midday picnic at a picnic area at the weekend (and the picnic areas will be full quite early anyway, as people stake out a spot well in advance for an evening iftar picnic or barbeque).

We're also aware that the hour before sunset, traffic is often heavier as people are making sure they're home for the iftar meal - and drivers may be a little grumpier than normal if they haven't eaten or drank all day! So where we have a choice, we might try and avoid being out in the car at that hour.

One thing that we didn't know about before we moved to Turkey was the drummers. This is a long standing tradition in Turkey that drummers (sometimes wearing Ottoman-style clothing) go round neighbourhoods banging their drums to wake people up in time to have their pre-fast sahur meal. With the current sunrise time, we're hearing them about 3am each night. We heard them when we lived in Istanbul but they definitely seem louder here!

Fasting for a month from sunrise to sunset with no food or water is hard, especially in country like Turkey where in summer months it is hot and the daylight hours are long. I have a lot of respect for those who are fasting in the sincere belief that it will bring them closer to Allah and also sorrow that so many people are doing their best to earn their salvation through works such as fasting when I believe that there is no way to earn our salvation. I also hope and pray that as many people use this month to think on spiritual matters and to try to draw close to God that they would truly come to know God through the One he has sent.

The Comparison Trap

Last summer I was at a conference and sat next to a lady at one meal. We got chatting. She was probably in her 60s, a doctor, working in a village in Papua New Guinea. She was single and she told me about her work, that there had been quite a few families working in that village at one time but now it was just her and another single lady left. And then later she shared at a conference session later about different problems there had been but how God had been faithful through them.

As we finished our meal, my unspoken thought was that she was the real deal of what a worker looked like. I mean, she had spent many years working in such a remote and far off place, lived without access to many things that we take for granted in the UK, was exposed to so many physical hardships - and that was without even considering the pressures of work, the realities of singleness, the spiritual battle. I have so much admiration for her. Compared to her life, I didn't think my life was that hard at all.

But then she floored me. I'd shared a bit of where we lived and what we were doing and she turned to me and told me that she didn't think she could live where we lived when it was such a spiritual stronghold of another religion.

I wanted to point out that in many ways, my life is so much easier than hers. At that time, we'd just spent two years living in Istanbul, where we had excellent public transport and shopping centres and broadband Internet and friends who spoke English. Where people could come and visit us relatively easily. Where the Mediterranean coast was a package holiday destination. That I'd been blessed with a husband to do all the transition of moving to a new country together with and two lovely children. I mean, it wasn't necessarily easy. There were enough power and water cuts, cultural adjustments and other issues to confirm that. But if it wasn't easy, it had to be easier.

How quickly we fall into the comparison trap.

The months since we moved to our new city have not been easy months, for a variety of reasons. Moving to a new city is always stressful and we've been navigating various bureaucratic processes to set up life here and get permission to stay. I have found my third pregnancy to be significantly harder than the previous two. I had worse morning sickness, we had quite a few bouts of illness, I've been more tired than before. And just when I thought that I had finally got out of the tiredness stage that traditionally finishes with the end of the first trimester but seemed to stretch half way into the second for me, my body decided to remind me that I don't have quite as much energy as I thought I did. So a a few weeks ago, I spent a pretty terrible week completely wiped out energy-wise, with a mouth full of ulcers that had me in pretty much constant pain and unable to eat or talk very much. Thankfully that is behind me now and has not recurred. Plus, ministry is just messy in every country and sometimes that can be compounded by cross-cultural issues, or at the very least having to do everything in a second language.

And I start to play the comparison game. Yes I had worse morning sickness this time, but it was only (constant) nausea. I've some friends who threw up multiple times a day for the first few months of their pregnancies. Or felt nauseous their entire pregnancy. Or felt nauseous and threw up their entire pregnancy. So any hint of me admitting that it was harder this time comes with the add-on that I can't complain, it could have been worse. Yes I've been tired. But I only have two small children. Imagine how much harder it is for those who are on their third or later pregnancies. And L helps out a lot around the house and with the children. So it's nothing to mention really. Yes a couple of months back I had a bit of a rough week health-wise. But it passed, at the end of the day it wasn't a serious health issue and there's always someone in a worse situation. And look at all the things I have to be thankful for - two healthy children, a healthy baby developing, a loving husband who supports me as much as he can and retains more flexibility to help me than most people. 

So often we want to compare ourselves. Often it's to other people, either real or imagined. But sometimes to an invisible standard that we think marks the bar of where our issues feel serious enough to warrant mentioning, or asking for prayer, or using it as a rationale to explain why we've had to back out of doing something without wondering whether everyone will think it's just an excuse, or even if we can possibly start classifying it as a 'trial' or 'suffering'.

We tally up the hardship factors on one side against the blessings of our life on the other, and try and work out whether one outweighs or merely counterbalances the other, and therefore do we meet the invisible standard of hardship or trials or do we just need to quit complaining and get on with it. I live in a different country and not only that but in a city away from most foreigners. One for the hardship column. But I also live in a large apartment on the edge of the city. And I can even do my food shopping online and get it delivered that day. That must balance out living in a different country/city, at least to some degree. Pregnancy is tiring and I miss the NHS. But the hospitals here are so much better than in most of the world and my mum is coming to stay when the baby is born. And it would be tiring as well if we were in the UK. And so it goes on.

But there is another way. We don't have to prove to ourselves or others that our troubles are significant.

If we have trusted in the death of God's Son for the forgiveness of our sins, then we are adopted as God's children and have the grace of God. And this grace flows into our lives, filling every nook and cranny, covering us completely. It says that we don't have to compare ourselves to others, we don't have to check and see how serious our problems are to consider them trials, we don't have to prove ourselves to be deserving enough to be heard.

Grace allows us to bring our troubles to our heavenly Father. And not just bring them hesitantly, but to cast our cares onto him. Cast as in throw, toss, fling. And not just the significant trials but our 'cares' - it doesn't matter how big or small they are, our Father wants us to bring them to him.

Young children are the perfect example of this. My children do not consider whether or not a problem is significant enough to bring it to my attention. If I am occupied with one child's issue, that does not stop the other coming with his own problem. The level of seriousness of the first issue that I'm dealing with has apparently no bearing whatsoever on the other child's problem and whether that moment is really the best time to bring it up with me. They simply do not compare their issue to their sibling's issue. And they definitely do not calculate how serious their problem is in relation to all the other good things in their lives.

They assume that if they think it's a problem or issue, they should let me know about it immediately, regardless of anything else and presumably because (even if they can't articulate this yet), they know at a deep level that I love them and will listen to them and try to help them. When my children come to me with their cares and problems, I do my best to listen to them, to be patient and to take them seriously. Sometimes my 'help' may not be what they think the 'help' should be but they hopefully at least understand that I hear them and their problems. In my better parenting moments, I understand that however insignificant their problems might seem to me, they matter to my children and because I love my children, those problems then matter to me. (In my less impressive parenting moments, I show my impatience at why exactly something that seems so insignificant to me is such an issue and can't they please just get over it, but that is why God is our perfect ultimate Father and parents will always be rather imperfect in imitation.)

We are to be like little children. We come to God with the faith that he hears us, he loves us, that nothing is too small for him to be concerned about, that we don't need to compare ourselves to our spiritual siblings. We don't have to try and work out if our troubles measure up to the invisible bar of significance, or calculate if they are outweighed sufficiently by other things that we should just grin and bear it. We know that God is infinitely patient and loving with us. We don't need to worry about how big our troubles are but we are free to express our hurts, doubts, frustrations, disappointments, anxieties, troubles to our Father in prayer safe in the knowledge that he cares for each of us individually.

Cappadocia - Swords Valley

It was slightly embarrassing to admit that we've lived an hour's drive from Cappadocia, one of Turkey's most famous regions, for seven months now and hadn't been over to there since we moved here. Cappadocia is famous for its unusual landscape and rock formations, especially since the inhabitants of Cappadocia many hundreds and even thousands of years ago carved their houses and churches into the rock. So it tends to be on any must-see list of tourists travelling around Turkey.

But the first couple of months we were here we were busy settling in and then the weather turned rather wintery - which is definitely not the best time to visit Cappadocia. And in our defence, L and I visited about 4.5 years ago when we were on holiday backpacking in Turkey so we have been before.

However, today we finally made it across to Göreme, a village in Cappadocia which is surrounded by valleys perfect for hiking. With two small children, we chose one of the shortest valleys to walk - Kılıçlar Vadisi, or 'Swords Valley'. It's only a couple of miles long but more than made up for its short length with an impressively long (apparently about 300m) and rather narrow tunnel and a good section of the valley being more akin to a super-narrow gorge, with rocks towering above us.

In retrospect, it was probably a slightly challenging walk for us to manage with a nearly 4 year old and a nearly 2 year old and me 7 months pregnant, but we all loved it (although for J and S, going through the tunnel once was enough...). We reached the end, explored a little and then had a picnic lunch (which had been a significant motivating factor for J). It was lovely to get out into nature and to have the opportunity to point out things like wild flowers, butterflies and even lizards to the boys. And while we had thought that L might have needed to walk back and bring the car round to us, the boys even had enough energy that we all managed to do the walk back up the valley to the car again - going up was definitely easier than going down!

Swords Valley

This was one of the steepest/narrowest bits

Classic Cappadocia scenery

View from our picnic spot at the end of the valley, with some of the rock caves visible.

We sat eating our sandwiches looking out across at this scenery, L and I thinking that the last time we came to Göreme we could never have imagined that 4.5 years later we'd be coming on a day trip from our home an hour away, with our two boys and another on the way. God has been so good to us. 

We finished off with a quick trip into Göreme to get our first ice creams of the year, realising that despite it being only early April we had all managed to get very slightly sunburned. Oops. And then headed home, with both J and S fast asleep in the car within 5 minutes of setting off - definitely the sign of a successful day out!

Monday encouragement

I read this post this morning and was so encouraged by it.

Our Sunday gathering starts at almost exactly the time that J and S eat lunch and S usually goes down for his nap. So almost every week usually involves L or I dealing with a tired, but stimulated enough by everything going on that he has no intention of sleeping, toddler who keeps going until well past his normal nap time then crashes out in the car on the way home but only sleeps the 15 minute length of the car journey.

So it was good to remember the day after that what was, for various reasons, a particularly hard Sunday, that Sundays are good for our small children.

"Sundays may mean disrupted naps and delayed meals, but our children are trading earthly provision for something far better for their undying souls. On Sundays, everything is rearranged so that they might hear the Word proclaimed in the power of the Spirit. On Sundays, every ordinary thing takes a lesser place in favor of “the one thing necessary”." (article linked above)

Six months

We've been in this city for just a few days over six months now. I know this because legally we can only drive in Turkey on our British licences for six months after coming into Turkey. We're hoping to have our Turkish licences come through in the next few weeks (thankfully there's a process to swap our British licences for Turkish ones rather than having to sit a driving test here) but until then I can't drive. L did a weekend hop to the UK a couple of weeks back, which starts him off on another 6 month period, so he's now the official family chauffeur.

Six months. That time has flown by. We still get asked fairly regularly if we've got used to life here. Our answer is usually 'yes and no'. On one hand, we have settled here. This is home. We have pictures hanging on the walls and a flat full of the messiness and paraphernalia that comes with family life - artwork on the fridge, drawers with odd socks in them, Duplo bricks behind the sofa and random objects stuffed down the side of sofa cushions. We have different names to distinguish the different parks within walking distance of our flat. The employees at the little supermarket we go to most regularly know the boys by name. We have routines, regular places that we go and know when our preferred city centre car park is most likely to be full and when we're likely to find a space. Our life in Istanbul feels a long time ago.

On the other hand, it's only six months. Six months is not a long time. We're still discovering lots of new places in the city and get caught out by road systems that do unexpected things. And if we were in the UK and moved area, I wouldn't generally expect six months to be long enough to establish good friendships (unless of course you're a student or maybe a young-ish single person). And that applies even more so when the friendships we are slowly forming are cross-cultural, so it is not a surprise that six months does not feel long at all.

Last Friday L's work permit arrived, valid for a year, and this morning we submitted the paperwork for the boys' new residence permits. My residence permit application will be done in the next couple of weeks. With that work permit comes a sense of stability, or at least a sense of temporary stability, in knowing that we can be here until at least next February. As foreigners, our ability to live here will always remain fragile. But the last six months have seemed particularly fragile, as we moved to this city, started building our lives here, establishing a business, on the hope and expectation that we'd be able to stay.

Our first six months here has gone. I remember when we marked six months living in Istanbul and it was with the realisation that a quarter of our Istanbul-allotted time had gone. Now we have the privilege of marking six months here and knowing that we have permission to be here for another year, and God willing, for a long time after that.

TCK myths: language learning by osmosis

If our children spend their formative years in Turkey, which is our plan, they will be Third Culture Kids - TCKs for short. One of the most commonly used definitions of a TCK is:

“A Third Culture Kid (TCK) is a person who has spent a significant part of his or her developmental years outside the parents’ culture. The TCK builds relationships to all of the cultures, while not having full ownership in any. Although elements from each culture are assimilated into the TCK’s life experience, a sense of belonging is in relationship to others of similar background.” (Pollock and Van Reken)

J and S are growing up in a culture that is not mine and L's culture or their passport culture. Because they are growing up in a different culture to the UK, they will never feel fully British. But with British parents and a British passport, they will never feel fully Turkish either. They will develop a strong relationship with both British and Turkish cultures but their sense of belonging and identity will be to a third culture i.e. to the group of people who have also grown up in different cultures from their parents. In other words, J and S are likely to find more in common with other TCKs (even if they are, for example, American but grew up in South Asia) than they will with those who are British and have lived in the UK their whole lives.

There are many, many things that have been written about the advantages and challenges of being a TCK by people far more knowledgeable than me so I'm not going to repeat them. But I do want to dispel some of the myths about TCKs.

One that I have heard several times relates to TCKs naturally achieving fluency in the language of their host country. It's the different variants of 'your children will be so privileged, they'll grow up speaking Turkish', with the assumption that just because we live in Turkey, our children will learn to speak Turkish fluently and be bilingual.

Unfortunately, this is not true. Language learning by osmosis is sadly not a recognised method of language acquisition, much as I wish it were. I think that the view is that because children learn and grow so fast, they will just automatically 'pick up' a second (or third etc.) language by being around it and hearing it.

However, it takes time and effort for anyone, including children, to learn a language. Unsurprisingly, children who are immersed from a young age in a day care setting or school where the second language is the main language spoken do learn the second language well. But that is because they are spending eight hours a day hearing that language, five days a week for the entire academic year! I have no doubt that if I were to spend that amount of time in a Turkish speaking environment, my Turkish proficiency (at least in listening and comprehension) would improve significantly. Even then, despite the immersion, it is very common for a child not to speak the second language at all for a year or so.

The advantage young children do have in learning a language is that they may be less self conscious about speaking the second language, feel less pressure to be perfect and speak with a better accent. But it is not necessarily true that the younger a child is, the quicker they will learn a second language. Language skills transfer from one language to another and a young child may not yet have training or skills in their mother tongue to transfer to a second language.

We hope that our children will speak Turkish well. We're not actually aiming for them to be bilingual or to be academically fluent in Turkish. The ability to speak more than one language is a great advantage - as well as the practical benefits of speaking a second language, it also stretches and develops the brain in different ways. But we are realistic enough to know that English will be their first language and that mastery of English, not just proficiency, is vital. So we are planning and aiming for the boys to be fluent at a conversational level in Turkish but accepting that they will not have the academic fluency to complete their education in Turkish or be at the same level as their Turkish peers in reading and writing.

As our children are still young and spent most of their time at home with me, they naturally hear a lot of English and we have to work hard on their Turkish. It's been suggested that we could put J in a creche or preschool to improve his Turkish but for various reasons that's not something we're considering at the moment. The boys hear Turkish a fair amount on Sundays and if we go to Turkish people's houses or people come to us. But that is not enough for them to learn Turkish. Sometimes L and I will speak Turkish at home and try and encourage the boys by speaking to them in Turkish. Generally if I'm out in public with the boys and there are other people around, I'll try and talk to them in Turkish. We also have books and songs in Turkish, a lot of the (limited) screen time they are allowed is in Turkish (thank goodness for Thomas the Tank Engine dubbed into Turkish!). They are also currently using an online program called DinoLingo which is designed to teach a second language through videos and animated stories. And one of the most useful things we are now doing is that the boys have an oyun ablası ("play big sister") who comes one morning a week. She looks after the boys, plays with them and speaks to them entirely in Turkish which allows me a couple of hours to get some admin work/language study/rest in. From next week, J will also start a twice weekly gymnastics lesson at a local sports centre. This will obviously be entirely in Turkish, which I think will be quite a learning curve for him and maybe not very easy to start with, but should be good for him.

And with all that, so far J is actually able to understand some basic Turkish. He'll speak some odd words and phrases but generally prefers not to speak in Turkish right now, which is very normal. S doesn't speak at all yet in any comprehensible language, although he understands a fair amount of English and I'm pretty sure he understands 'yapma!' in Turkish (which translates as 'don't do that!).

We understand that learning a language is a process, it takes time and children learn in their own time and we're grateful for the progress that they are making. But we are definitely conscious that TCKs do not automatically learn the language of the country they live in and that it will take time, effort and active work on our part to help J and S learn Turkish.

Neighbours

I asked a lady I know recently how she became a believer.  She told me that when they lived in a previous apartment, they got to know a Turkish family who were living in the same building. The family they got to know were already believers and told them the Good News and invited them along to a Sunday gathering. The lady's husband believed first and about a year ago the lady believed. She finished by telling me that if this other family hadn't happened to live in the same building she would never have become a Christian.

There are about 1 million people in our city and less than a handful of believing Turkish families. In statistical terms, the chance of finding yourself living in the same building as a Christian Turkish family is minuscule.

We're obviously not Turkish but we have the same Good News to share. So my prayer is that in 2019 we would build relationships with our neighbours and have opportunities to share the reason for the hope that we have. And beyond that, considering that the chance of living in the same building as a believer is so small, that we would be able to develop relationships with others in the community.

Humanly speaking it seems hopeless. There are so many people here who have never met a Christian, never opened God's Word, never seriously considered the claims of Jesus. There are so few believers.

But our God doesn't deal in 'humanly speaking'. It wasn't an accident that led to my friend living in the same building as a Turkish Christian family or that led to that family befriending their neighbours. Our God is sovereign and he is at work here. And knowing that gives me the faith to pray that this next year there will be people added to the Kingdom from this city - and then the impetus to get to work myself.

"And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”