Practicing Contentment

My granddad has Alzehimers and is quickly deteriorating.  My mom and dad just went to visit him a few days ago and he didn’t even recognize them.  Apparently he is confined to a wheel chair almost all the time now because of his frailty.  This breaks my heart, but I can only imagine what it must feel like for his own children to see him in this state. I can’t imagine, nor do I want to, a day when my own mother or father doesn’t even know who I am.

The reality of this disease, and of so many other diseases like the breast cancer my friend is dealing with which I spoke of briefly in the last post, is that it sobers us.  It weighs heavy on our hearts when people we love suffer.  Or even when we hear about the unimaginable suffering happening around the world. 

Which brings me to what’s been on my heart a lot lately: practicing contentment.  I’ve really been struggling with being content lately.  Content with what I do have.  Being thankful for all the blessings in my life.  I can be a pretty upbeat, hopeful person, but I also have an immense capacity to complain, focus on the negative, and wish for difference circumstances. 

Like wishing the ants would just go away.  For good.  And stop crawling around in my dirty laundry. Or brand new trail mix. (The fumigation did absolutely nothing and the ants were back in full force after a day).  

Sorting through the trail mix to weed out the ants.

Or like wishing Kate would stop getting sick every month – this last time she had a four day virus with temperatures up to 104.   

Day four of the virus... thought she was better but while downtown San Jose her temp spiked again.  So glad she's finally better!

Or like wishing this cultural adjustment would just speed up and I’d be able to speak amazing Spanish and stop feeling so stupid all the time even though I’ve lived here for almost 10 months!  There always seems to be something I can find to complain about.

And then I get an email from my mom about my granddad falling apart. And it puts everything in perspective.

Life is too short.  Too fragile.  Too precious to complain all the time.  So I’m making a conscious effort to practice contentment.  And to actually open my eyes, strip off the wool, and SEE the amazing things all around me and in my life.

Here are some of the things I’m seeing:

Loving, Supporting Family(ies)

            We have had so many visitors just in the past two months – Maggie, my mom, and now Joe’s parents.  It is a great blessing to have so much family come and visit us.  Many missionaries don’t get to see their family very often so we are so thankful for their visits.

My mom helping Kate paint.

Joe's dad Bruce and his friend Mark who worked for four days at the Project fixing windows.

My mother in law Anita taping and painting the trim.

Bruce and Joe playing futbol with the workers during lunch.

Grandma and Grandpa hiking down a rather precariously steep trail with Kate.  We turned around shortly after.

Kate and Grandma in the topiary gardens of Zacero.

These guys are just a hoot.

Bruce living it up on the Sky Trck zip line in Arenal.

 Kate Estella

            She is beautiful, strong, funny, creative, independent, lovely…

Oh that double chin.

She took this of herself.  Obviously.

In her new rainbow sunhat and sorta matching pants.

 Sunsets, Sand, Beautiful Tropical Plants

          Kate and I took a 'picture walk' where we took lots of pictures of the beautiful tropical leaves and plants all around us.  Even just being aware of the simple things like this - the beauty of a flower or a sunset - can help us be more content. 

 

 

Sloths

            We saw two sloths in two days while up at Volcan Arenal.  One was a three toed sloth, climbing in a tree.  The other one was a two-toed sloth, sleeping in a tree during a rain storm just 10 feet above our heads.  I LOVE sloths and get over their cute little faces... even if I couldn't quite capture it on camera.

Love

            I have an amazing husband who is my best friend.  We get in fights sometimes, sure.  He annoys me sometimes, yes.  I surely annoy him, probably a lot.  But he is devoted to me and to Kate and does so much for our family.  We celebrate our 11^th anniversary tomorrow.  Happy Anniversary Joe!  You never fail to make me laugh.

Joe about to blow out his birthday candles (Kate and I made him a surprise cake.)

This is who I sit across from every day in Spanish class.  His big hair makes him smarter.

I mean, really?

Joe on his actual birthday, the 22nd.  We got to go on a zip line together with his dad.

It's pretty cool to wear your helmet crooked I guess.

Donning Kate's new rainbow sunhat.

 So... it's actually kind of embarrassing to see all the blessings in my life and know that I still manage to complain about things on a daily basis.  

What are the things in your life that you complain about?  What are the things that you can focus on instead, see, be aware of, that can help you be more content?  I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comment section below!

Hats and Glasses

I was inspired to write a post similar to my good friend Lynnea, who is courageously battling breast cancer at the young age of 32, and has an incredible blog about her journey. Her 32nd birthday was just a week ago and she wrote this post: Happy Birthday To Me. If you don’t have time to read it, she writes about several lessons she has learned since being diagnosed with cancer earlier this year.  I want to borrow (or plagiarize) some of these lessons here because our lives have some parallels right now.  But before I begin, I want to say that although there are parallels between her life and mine , I don’t want to understate the trial that she is going through and make it seem that we are in the same boat.  We are not.  On the other hand, there are similarities, because we both live in cultures that aren’t our own and we’ve both dealt with health care issues while abroad (again, cancer is way more serious than my infertility. Read more of my story here: His Gentle Guidance, Learning to Wait).

The nine months of living here, and even the preparing to move here, hasn’t been an easy ride.  There have been many blessings of course and we both know that God has a plan and a purpose for our time in Costa Rica.  But oftentimes, we’ve struggled with doubt, fear, frustration, homesickness, anxiety and even on some days depression.  All of these struggles, however, can be counted as a blessing too, because the trials we experience in life and how we react to them will define who we are and who we become.  And I, for one, am very thankful for all the ways that this experience is strengthening us.

So onto some lessons I’ve learned about surviving and thriving while living in Costa Rica:

·      Keep your sense of humor.

o   Joe and I laugh a lot together.  We have to in order to survive on some days. Like last Wednesday when the exterminator was supposed to come to kill all the ants.  We had everything bagged up: food, clothes, cosmetics.  We even had a reservation at a hotel (thank you mom).  But then the guy comes and it starts to rain, and he says he can’t spray because of the weather.  It won’t be effective, he tells us.  And gosh darn it, we need that spray to be effective.  The next earliest appointment we could get was Monday morning at 8 a.m. which meant four more days of living with ants everywhere.  Yes, we were mad.  But we also laughed.  And that helped.  A lot.

·      Make plans with friends.

o   Sometimes when we’re down, our tendency is to isolate ourselves.  At least that is my tendency.  But we were made to be in community.  And we are so blessed to have some pretty awesome friends here.  Inviting people over, ordering pizza, drinking margaritas, and laughing all night is a great way to battle the blues.

·      Exercise regularly.

o   I feel stronger and healthier when I exercise.  And it gives me much needed endorphins that help me cope better with slow, more difficult days.  Kate likes to do it too and will go change into her ‘exercise clothes’ and sometimes she gets real serious and takes her shirt off.

·      Read God’s word and pray as much as possible.  But skip church if needed.

o   Church is important, but to me, going to a 3-hour service in another language sometimes does more harm than good.  The most important thing for me is to talk with God throughout the day and read my Bible.  The Bible has brought me immense peace throughout my life, but especially during this season.

·      Don’t ask “Why me?” – it is a tempting but extremely dangerous question…and one that causes an endless spiral and doesn’t have an answer (lesson from Lynnea).

o   For me, the ‘why me’ comes with our struggle with infertility.  We are now 4 months past surgery and 21 months into trying for kid number two.  We never expected this.  It was not in the plan.  But isn’t this life?  And aren’t struggles like this how God teaches us to be more like Him? That’s why this ‘lesson’ is so vitally important because the why me will never get me anywhere.

·      Hope is a powerful force. Despair is an equally powerful force. And I have the choice. (Lynnea)

o   Again, so well-said and true for us, whether it’s something like adjusting to a new culture or hoping for another baby.

·      Yell or throw something if you really need to. No one keeps it together all the time, nor should we have to. (Lynnea).

o   See Throwing Plastic Chairs…

·      Get out and go places.

o   We’ve been incredibly blessed to have lots of family come visit us and we’ve taken the opportunity to get out and enjoy this beautiful country.  It keeps us going and gives us joy.  And Kate learned how to swim - or survive in the water at least.  See video below.

Sunning our legs at Playa Samara.

Aunt Maggie teaching Kate how to blow bubbles.

·      Be silly and have fun.

o   Aliss is this department store here that I love, that sells everything from crazy sunglasses to high-end dishware.  I like the crazy sunglasses.  One day while my mom was here, we went to the mall and went crazy with the hats and glasses.  I get frustrated with the lack of options for recreation here, but you just gotta make the best of it.  And Aliss in the mall offers some fine recreation… not to mention this mannequin we saw in the Tommy Hilfiger store that is wearing some very ill-fitting jeans.  This is how my 85 year-old granddad with Alzheimer’s likes his pants to fit. (It was much better and funnier in person).

Not sure if this is the image Tommy was going for.

So these are some of the lessons we're learning... I'm sure there'll be many more.  Thanks Lynnea, for your inspiration, heart, and courage. 

Do Ants Have Tongues?

Do ants have tongues?  This is a real question Joe asked me just the other day. 

Situation: my mom decided spur the moment to come visit us and so of course brought us lots of fun treats.  Like a big ol’ bag of peanut M&Ms.  So we are enjoying our treat when Joe asks me this ridiculous question.  “Do ants have tongues?” He wanted to know if ants could get into our M&M bag and “lick” the M&Ms.

The problem really isn’t whether ants have tongues or not.  Or whether they can lick.  Because really, once ants get into the candy bag brought from the States, or the $5 dollar Cheerio bag you splurged on, or the bag of Wholesome Fruit and Nuts brought to us by my dear sister-in-law Maggie just 3 weeks ago, the problem isn’t that ants might have tongues or that they might lick. 

The problem is that the ants Got In. 

The barrier of 3 layers of Ziplocs somehow failed.  The ants are IN the bag of food instead of out.  And they are crawling all over, all in between, all everywhere in that precious bag of food.

Your food is basically screwed.

And really, the bigger problem is that there are ants outside the bag in the first place.  Enough ants on your counter, running to and fro who knows where, scurrying up and down walls, into your cabinets, onto the floor, to attach themselves to any small parcel of food. 

We’ve dealt with the ants in the kitchen since we moved here.  It’s part of life in Costa Rica.  And these ants are so tiny that it is almost impossible to exterminate them because it’s hard to find their nest.  So we’ve tried our best to ignore them.

But then, suddenly, they started to multiply.  And multiply.  And it became increasingly difficult to use the ignore-them-and-they-will-go-away tactic. 

You can’t ignore them when they are advancing across your bedroom floor by the hundreds.  Or emerging out of books on your bedside table.  Or stuck like glue to your Burt’s Bees night cream on your bathroom counter.  Or marching around your yoga mat in the living room like it was the city of Jericho.

This kind of ant behavior will not be tolerated.  It is time to exterminate.

So we are calling in the professionals.  They will come tomorrow and spray both inside and outside of our house.  I have been very resistant to spraying inside because of course chemicals will be sprayed where we eat, sleep, breathe.  But enough is enough and we just can’t take it any longer.

So whether ants have tongues or not, they hopefully all will be dead by tomorrow.

Throwing Plastic Chairs

One time, maybe back in November, we went to Pricesmart (local Costco) to buy a few things.  One of our main purchases was a $12 block of cheddar cheese.  You think it would be monstrous in size for being this price, but no, it is normal.  Cheese is just expensive here.  It was dark and raining really hard when we left the store. When we got home, there was no cheese to be found.

Joe had left it in the cart, in the parking lot, in the downpour, in the dark.

He was so mad when he realized this that he threw a plastic chair across the room. 

It was just cheese, for goodness sakes, but man, it felt like a really big deal at the time.  And it’s not like we could go back to the store, and in our broken Spanish try to explain, “Uh, we left our stupidly expensive cheese in the cart… did any of you find it?”

This is $16 cheese.  Just cheddar.

So a plastic chair got thrown across the dining room.

Last Thursday was another ‘we-want-to-throw-chairs’ type of day.

We are trying to become residents here in Costa Rica.  Just temporary residents, but you wouldn’t believe the work, the time, the money that goes into getting a ‘cedula’ here (visa).

I will skip all the boring details of what becoming a resident entails, but suffice it to say the process started way back in the States many months ago and continues still…

Thursday morning we head to the Social Security office in downtown San Jose to set up our account.  Paying into social security is one of the requirements to get the visa, even though we will never see a single benefit of paying into it. 

Our friends only pay $26 a month, so it’s worth it so you can get your proper visa and don’t have to leave the country every 90 days.

We got there at 7:26.  Me, Kate, Joe.  We are hoping to get to Spanish class by nine or nine-thirty.

After waiting in line for three hours later, our number is finally called.  We all go back to the office only to have the lady tell us that Kate and I can’t stay with Joe.  The whole reason I went was so Joe and I could tag-team with Spanish.  No love.

Kate and I wait outside for about 30 minutes.   Joe finally comes out and I can tell by the look on his face that it is not good news.

Instead of the normal minimum fee of $26/month, they are telling us we have to pay $440 a month!  Rules have changed.  They are getting stricter.  We are rich Gringos.  “You can pay that much,” the lady tells Joe.  Even after Joe attempts to argue with her, in Spanish of course, the price is still the same.

This lady has got to be kidding.  Wrong.  Confused.  We are volunteers here in this country.  We can’t pay that much.  We won’t pay that much. 

We wasted three hours of our day.  We canceled Spanish class.  We are mad. 

So mad we want to throw a chair across the entire waiting room of the Social Security building.

But instead, we just leave, and start to drive… we are starving… and we almost end up eating at Hooters because it was (almost) the only place open at 11:15 a.m.  (Luckily we did find another option.)

24 Hours Later

Joe takes our good friend Jonathan, who speaks great Spanish, in to the same office the next morning.  Joe is armed with a detailed spreadsheet of our expenses, which our lawyer recommended having (she tells us this after the first appointment – a little too late), to hopefully get this ridiculous monthly fee reduced.

Results: New lady.  New day.  Fluent Spanish speaker to help.  We will be paying just $16 dollars a month.  $16!!!  That is a 97% reduction from the day before!

I mean, seriously???

And so our want-to-throw-chairs experience suddenly turned into a thank-you-Jesus moment.

What a difference a day makes.  And on this day I was humbly reminded of a few important truths

• We so often waste our time and energy getting so worked up over something that in time will work itself out – sometimes sooner and sometimes later - but it will work out

• Even if it doesn’t work out the way we envision, it’s going to be okay. God is in control. He has a plan. And if we allow Him, he will use our ‘momentary sufferings’ (whether small daily frustrations like these, or big, life-changing trials) to shape and mold us into His image. (Romans 8:18, 5:3-5)

• It’s okay to be aggravated, frustrated, overwhelmed, confused. Maybe it’s even okay to throw chairs (or to want to). But you can’t stay there. You have to move on and see the big picture. It’s just cheese. It’s just a misguided government employee who doesn’t have a clue what she’s talking about. And tomorrow is a new day. 

And now, with our Social Security account in place, we have an appointment to finally get our residency visas on Tuesday.

You can pray that all goes smoothly…

* * * * *

We all experience frustrations like this in our lives.  What is your experience and what have you learned from moments like these?  Share a comment below.

Time is Going By Really, Really Slowly

There are some days that just seem to go so slow around here.  And it’s not just days… it’s weeks and months too.  June 10th marked 8 months since we moved here.  It feels like we’ve been here more like 18.  It seems like we will never make it to that one-year mark.   Time goes so slow, that much of the time, we feel like the video below (one of my faves on youtube).

Okay, so I’m not saying we feel like the guy in the video for the same reasons.  We are not baking pot brownies.

But time does drag on.  And on.  I’ve been trying to figure out why.

Maybe it’s because we wake up between 5:30 and 6:30 on most days.  The sun rises around 5.  Kate wakes up anywhere between the crack of dawn, and if we’re lucky, 7 a.m.  “It’s daytime mama…”

Maybe it’s because every day seems the same.  Like Groundhog’s Day.  Wake up, exercise, eat, Spanish class, lunch, rest, try-to-study or do-something-productive in the afternoon, make dinner, sun down at 5:30, talk again about our insane decision to move to Costa Rica, bedtime.  Repeat.  Repeat again.

Maybe it’s because we live in a 3-mile radius from our house, almost literally.  Unless we get out of town for the weekend, we frequent the same places again, and again.  Walmart.  Automercado.  McDonalds.  Aquanauticas (Kate’s swimming lessons).  The Project.  Back to House.  Maybe to Pricesmart (the Costa Rican Costco), maybe to EPA (Costa Rican Home Depot).  And holy moley, maybe every once and while we trek across town to get some variety and – watch out – we go to Wendy’s. 

Or maybe, just maybe, it’s because time really does go slower here.  Or at least it feels like it.  We are out of our comfort zone.  Out of our culture.  We don’t speak the language.  We don’t have a ton of Costa Rican friends (working on that…).  We don’t have the energy to go out and ‘get in touch with the culture’.  We can’t anyway because we have a 3 year-old who goes to bed at 7.  We don’t have parks, or hikes, or birthday parties or playdates to go to. 

Our life is pretty simple.

Which, yes, is a total gift.  And we are trying, oh so hard, to embrace this gift and this time, but it’s not always easy.  In fact most of the time it’s quite hard.

It’s hard just to get through a day sometimes.  I feel like throwing myself a party when 6 o’clock comes around.  “I did it!!!”  Sometimes, I feel like giving up and saying "Please send rescue."

But we are doing it.  One day at a time.  We are learning to slow down.  To listen.  To rest.  To persevere.  To count our blessings.  And that’s what counts.  Even if the time does go by too slowly.

* * * * *

Have you had seasons/days of your life go too slowly?  When, where, why?  What do you think the challenges and blessings are of these seasons?

An Offical Adoption!

Y'all, this will pull your heart strings.  This is a picture of Mainor and Jenny, siblings that JUST got officially adopted by an Italian couple last week.  It was LONG process.  Mainor, at 13, was the oldest kid out of all the kids in the two children's homes here.  He and his sister had already been through one failed adoption.  But this time, it worked out.  Look how happy they look!

I am still learning the details of how international adoptions work in Costa Rica, but the gist is this: PANI (the Costa Rican child protective agency) first has to declare the children officially 'abandoned'.  This can take years sometimes - for various reasons. (There are several kids at the two homes that still haven't been declared abandoned.  One set of four siblings has been here for four years!). 

Once declared abandoned, then they are open for adoption.  PANI eventually chooses a family, but then it can take months for them to get here (don't have a clue why)... once the family arrives, there is about a week of outings, where the parents meet the kids face to face and take them out on various outings to bond.  But the kids still sleep at the children's home. 

Then, after about a week, the kids 'move in' with the parents in whatever hotel they are staying at.  They have a period of time, a few weeks, where they hang out together and try to bond as a new family. 

Finally there is an appointment with a judge where the kids are interviewed to make sure they are "identifying" with their new parents, etc.  And the judge can either say, "yes" and put the official stamp on the adoption, or "no".  It's all up to the judge. 

In the case of Mainor and Jenny, at the first appointment with the judge, there was a little snafu and misunderstanding when they interviewed Jenny (who is only 8 - she got scared probably and said some things that made the judge think the proper 'bond' wasn't happening), and so thinking they needed more time, the judge told the family "no"...  Finally, last week, they went before the judge again, and the adoption is official! 

Thank you God!  We are praying for a smooth transition for all as they head back to Italy.

And so, with two spots available in the home, PANI just placed two new kids under Gabby and Esteban's care (the house parents) on Thursday.  They are siblings, a 4-year old boy, and younger sister, 2.5, who came from an abusive home. 

This is what the Abraham Project does, so if you're supporting us, praying for us, encouraging us, you're doing the same for them.  The kids.  The orphans.  The least of these.  Thank you.

Fluency - An Impossible Goal?

It has been said that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert in anything.  I recently did a Google search that said something like this: “how long does it take to learn a second language”.  I wanted to do a little research on the topic because it’s obviously very relevant to our number one goal right now, which could be boiled down to the following two sentences:

Learn Spanish.  Speak Spanish.

So the first page that came up from my search was a random blog with a post that fit my quest almost to the T: “How Long Does It Take To Learn A New Language?”.  The blog referenced the book Outliers by Malcom Gladwell, which apparently discusses the study about the 10,000-hour rule to become an expert.   The blog post went on to say that if you define fluency in a new language to mean being an expert, then it must take 10,000 hours to achieve fluency. 

My favorite part of this particular post, however, was when it went on to calculate formulas of studying a second language in order to get to this 10,000 hour mark.  There were four different scenarios included which ranged from taking a 3 hour continuing-ed class once a week for 8 weeks, all the way to total immersion which was defined as being ‘immersed’ in the language for 16 hours a day for a year.  It then calculated the number of YEARS it would take to achieve ‘expertise’ or fluency in the given scenario. (Scenario #1 would take 208 years, Scenario #2, just two years).

So let’s jump right to our own scenario. 

·      We currently take 10 hours of Spanish a week.  If we do that for 52 weeks that is 52x10 = 520 hours.  If it truly takes 10,000 hours to become an ‘expert’, that means it will take us approximately 19.23 years to become fluent in Spanish!  Almost 20 years!!!

At first, I must admit this calculation was not only overwhelming, but depressing.  And impossible.

But then I started to think more optimistically and define what ‘fluency’ or even proficiency would look like for Joe and me, because God knows, we will probably never get to the 20 year mark!

This is what I came up with:

Westfall Fluency = Being Able To…

·      … confidently and easily ‘get around’ and ‘do life’ in a Spanish speaking culture/country.  This means shopping, eating out, making reservations, going to appointments, etc.

·      …understand most of what is said on a tv or radio program.

·      …have Spanish-speaking friends that we can converse with in Spanish, understand what they are saying and asking us, and have an intelligent conversation with them.

We’ve been studying Spanish for five months now, and although we’ve achieved a lot in that time, we are a far cry from being fluent.  But with my new definition of fluency, I must proudly announce that we are gaining ground!  Even with only 200 hours of study under our belt, (and 9,800 to go to become experts), we still hit a huge milestone last Friday. 

We invited some Tico (Costa Rican) friends over for dinner for the first time.  And they don’t speak English.  Which means we had to speak Spanish the entire time.  And it wasn’t just Spanish 101 (Hola, coma esta?  Me llamo Jennie, Vivo en San Jose).  It was real conversation.  We talked about our time so far here in Costa Rica, our hopes of having another child… they shared some real-life struggles of their own.

It wasn’t perfect.  Most sentences were slow-coming and there were many things I couldn’t express with ease.  But we did express ourselves.  And so with this growing friendship, and other Fluency Goals slowly but surely being accomplished, we realize that while fluency may take immense dedication and effort, it is not an impossible goal!