unexpected friendship

If you asked me to define a person  who would make a 'good' expatriate (if there is such a thing) my words would probably sound something like:  "the opposite of my husband and me".

While we are are both open to change and not adverse to taking risks, we both tend towards the introverted and reserved side of the spectrum.  Our thoughts lean more towards the quality of our friendships rather than the quantity of our friendships.  Not exactly the traits of people that will have an easy time of 'putting themselves out there' in foreign countries and making the first move to develop a friendship.  

Knowing that, I fully expected to move back to the United States with the same friends that we had had when we left Minnesota.  And perhaps we'd add to the list in the Netherlands (the only place we thought we'd live) because it would have clearly been hard to go three years just talking to each other.  Plus, now in Scotland, just about seven months before we leave this country, I find myself growing closer to women who come October will likely never share a continent with me again. 

Sigh.  But that's not the point of my writing today.

What I didn't expect to happen over the last three years was to create and foster friendships with people who are there.

In the United States.

While I'm over here in another part of the world.

.....

We sat around a table at Caribou Coffee on a Sunday morning last November.  Some of us had been communicating daily for a large part of the last ten months and this was the first time we would meet face to face.  We were missing a few essential parts of our group, but they were there in spirit. It was a day for the my record books.

Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I'd be part of a group that has now stuck together for over a year on a tight knit, private group on Facebook. We offer each other support, advice and a few barbs (for competition's sake) here and there.

Its thanks to this group that I gained the love for exercise that I have in the last year.

And its thanks to a few of these ladies {perhaps a few that aren't even playing anymore} that I truly feel understood and cared for as I continue to try and figure out how to live a healthy lifestyle on an ongoing basis.

It was out of the blue that I found people that I can now call friends {and will be friends in person after I move} when I am thousands of miles away.

Seriously, a few of these people could have quite literally been sitting at a table across the aisle from me three years ago, and I would have never known.  And now, instead of being across the aisle, they'll be at my table.

I'm one lucky girl.

.....

Joining Kristen at Chasing Blue Skies for Out of the Blue again this week.  Take a quick second and find your way over there; it iss clear to me that you never know who you could find via the internet.  

Unexpected.

It was May 2009.  We had a newborn baby boy, and we were living in New Jersey, thousands of miles from all of our family and friends.  We were brand new parents, longing for the support of grandparents, aunts, uncles and friends.

Combine that with changes at the company I was working at, and we were faced with an open door to move back to Minnesota, where all of those family and friends lived.  We just needed my husband, J#1 to find a job.

He interviewed a few places, and after having phone interviews at what would become his current company, he mentioned to me, "They are an international company.  Maybe I'll get to travel internationally.  Hey, we could even make it a family trip."

We are not people who ever imagined living overseas.  I know there are people who dream of living in a foreign country--because I've met them.  But that wasn't us. 

Fast forward about a year, maybe a bit longer, and there is an offer on the table for our family to move to the Netherlands.  Say what?

It didn't take long for us to make the decision.  He had called me at work at about 2:30 with the news, and by 6:30 that evening at a local restaurant, we were talking about the 'what ifs' and the 'but what about thats'.  And in the next breath figuring out how to break the news to those very same family and friends that we had moved back from New Jersey to be near.

Even though it wasn't something we had ever dreamed of, much less talked about--we both knew we had to do it.  I'd almost say we both had the same gut reaction that we were meant to take our then one-and-a-half year old baby boy and the sweet daughter that was growing in my belly on the adventure of a lifetime.

It is the single most important and unexpected (because we hadn't prayed for it) prayer that has ever been answered in my life. 

I could write a book about how difficult life can be for an expatriate. I could write a few books about the longings I've had to be near those family and friends.

But without this adventure I wouldn't have changed.

And clearly God knew that I needed a chance to change, a chance to learn how strong I could be, and how strong our little family--my husband, son and daughter--could be on our own.

• He knew I needed the experience of delivering a baby in a foreign speaking hospital to prove to me that I can do pretty much anything. 
• He knew that I needed to have the time to learn to love exercise.  
• He knew that I needed the chance to step out of my comfort zone and become a little bit more outgoing, so that I could make friends in not one, but two foreign countries. 
• He knew I needed the time and the loneliness for my faith to grow. 
• He knew that I needed to build my confidence; to learn how to worry less about what other people think of me, and worry more about what I think of me.  

Just over seven months remain until our move back to Minnesota. We will move back to those same family and friends.  We will move back to familiar surroundings, stores and customs.

I wonder, though, what is left for me to learn during these seven months?

Clearly one lesson is that it is sometimes the unexpected...the prayer that we don't even pray... that is the most important prayer of all.

* * * 

There is a brand new link-up party that I'm joining over at Chasing Blue Skies. The whole idea is to write about something that was out of the blue relating to the prompt that Kristen shares each week. This week was prayers that were answered "out of the blue".  Next week, its about friends.  Click on over to learn more about it.