Goodbye, Grandpa B

On Monday, my Grandpa Bodensteiner passed away after a period of failing health and dementia. We celebrated his life this weekend, and it was wonderful to be together with so much of my amazing family.

Grandpa B was the last of my grandparents to pass away, and he made it the age of 97! I'm sure it's sad and strange for my parents to no longer have their parents here. For me, Grandpa was the last person I really knew from the greatest generation. That alone is a loss. My grandparents all weathered the hard times of the Depression, World War II, and raising large families with little money to spare, and they did it with grace and good humor.

I think about how my generation talks... We're always "freaked out" or "ticked off" or "over it." We're crass and impatient. But none of my grandparents talked that way. I love hearing my mom describe Grandpa B's reaction to a bad shot at the golf course: just a simple, "Well, I'll be darned." Of course, it isn't just their civil speech that set that generation apart, but for some reason it's been on my mind.

At his funeral, Grandpa B was described as a "gentleman and a gentle man." I will miss the gentle steadfastness of the greatest generation, and I'm sad that younger generations won't really get to know them.

Here's a Proverb that came up this week on my Bible app:

The righteous who walks in his integrity— 

blessed are his children after him! (Proverbs 20:7, ESV)

Again and again this weekend, I got to hear about Grandpa's integrity. He was a hard worker (Dairyman of the Year!), a loving father, a devoted husband, and an honest man. I found a note my mom had written to her parents on their 60th anniversary praising their integrity. She said that when she was growing up, if she told someone she was one of Linus and Rita's girls, they always had wonderful things to say about her parents. She was proud to call them her mom and dad. In their old age, Grandma and Grandpa B's unfailing kindness made an impression on the staff at their assisted living home and then nursing home.

Ninety-seven years of integrity is an incredible legacy. Not only are Grandpa B's children blessed after him, as the Proverb said, he also left 19 grandchildren and 20 great-grandchildren with the example of a life well lived to the end.

We have many stories of answered prayer in my grandpa's life over the last five years, and even in the last few months. I'd love to share them with you and praise God for His faithfulness.

For now, I'll leave you with a few favorite photos.

Celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary, with Grandma in her original dress!

Grandpa watching me and my brother, who were recovering from chicken pox

Grandma and Grandpa holding the three newest granddaughters with the rest of the clan at the farm in 1989

Dancing with my sister at my aunt's wedding. I was just told he danced with all his daughters and granddaughters that day.

My all-time favorite photo of Grandma and Grandpa B, polka-ing in their basement.

My brother playing cribbage with our two grandpas

My mom and her dad. She said he had just made a rare sarcastic comment and it cracked them both up.

My dad and Grandpa B, both veterans

Another favorite photo: Grandpa B on the farm with me and a few cousins

Goodbye, Grandpa B.

How Living Overseas Changed Me

Three years ago, I spent three years working as an English teacher in China.  Now I'm looking back with the question, "How did living overseas change me?"

My question was inspired by reading a very interesting post by another American living in China: How Living Overseas Drained the Extrovert out of Me.  She describes how the "rain-swollen river" of relationships flowing through her life eventually eroded her extroverted tendencies.

Since I, too, was a raging extrovert before I moved to China, I was very intrigued by that article.

...Just kidding.  I was, and still am, a non-raging introvert.  So how did living overseas change me?

I wasn't dramatically changed, but I know I'm a different woman than I would have been if I'd lived in Iowa my whole life.  In a word, I've been enriched.

My relationships were enriched.  I met a whole new crowd of interesting and inspiring ex-pats.  I taught hundreds of college students.  I had new colleagues, new leaders, new neighbors.  I had my "go-to" vendors -- my fruit lady and my chicken lady and my water man.

In particular, it was my students that made my time in China so very rich.  They were loving, eager, and enthusiastic!  The Lord gave me a true affection for them, and they blessed me immensely in return.

"Free Talks" were extra English practice sessions that often filled my apartment.

I got to visit this good friend in her hometown.

One of my favorite classes -- all girls!

I don't remember the gift, but I loved getting notes like these!

My mind was also enriched.  Living abroad was a fantastic education for me.  I learned basic skills in a new culture and a new language.  I learned things like how to say "foreigner," how to navigate the train system, and how World War II continues to affect the world today.

Living in an Eastern culture taught me about concepts like shame & honor, "face," and relational webs.  I've learned to keep the Eastern perspective in mind as I read news from the Middle East, try to understand Bible stories, and make friends with internationals on American soil.

Learning about the corn harvest

Learning about Chinese.... or trying to.

Finally, my view of God was enriched.  I've written elsewhere about how living in China gave me a front-row seat to one of the most amazing Christian movements in history.  There's no logical reason that the Chinese church should have survived and grown through the terrible persecution of the mid-twentieth century, and yet there are now millions of believers in China.

I can think of several moments when I sat with Chinese believers and got goosebumps.  My favorite one was when a young Chinese woman shared her vision that God wanted to use China to reach the Middle East, and that she was actively training to go as a foreign worker to share good news in a dangerous country there.  My second favorite moment was when I sat at a kitchen table with two Chinese believers and an American friend, and we had an amazing hour of worship and fellowship with our Bibles open.  Experiences like that have given me a great appreciation for God's work in his global church, as well as a lingering dis-taste for the materialism and showmanship of many American churches.

My time overseas also gave me greater confidence in God's provision in my own life, as he provided finances, safety, vision, opportunities, and joy during my three years abroad.

The line for a Beijing church popular with college students.

The registered church in Qufu, where I first lived.

An impromptu lunch with church ladies we barely knew - One of my favorite Qufu memories!

In conclusion:

Sweet memories did indeed go with me when I left China.  But I'm not 100% that a clean environment was left behind!

This post is part of a (very) short series on "How Living Overseas" changed me. AKA, a two-part series, unless any of the rest of you want to chime in! :) 

See the first installment from Lisa Shunk, on the impact of living in Haiti during her teen years.  How about you?  Have you lived overseas?  How did it change you?  

Happy Ameriversary!

There's something about an anniversary that brings out Introspective Alison.

A few days ago, I was leading some of my patients through Orientation Group (a daily review of the Who, What, When, Where, and Why of their lives in brain injury rehab).  Midway through the group, I stared at the date I'd written on the whiteboard and realized: It was an anniversary!

It was August 5, my three year Ameriversary.

I can easily remember that I moved back to America on August 5 because Nostalgic Alison (aided by Procrastinating Alison) kept the receipt for my PEK - CID flight saved on my desktop for years after I'd actually returned.  I blogged about that receipt in this post, which chronicles God's faithfulness to me during my first year back in America.

On my 6-month anniversary of living in Asia, I wrote a little post called Chinaversary.  It was a list of the hard and good things the Lord gave me in my first semester as an English teacher in China, including:

• Overnight train rides that I thought would never end
• Eating animals and plants I didn't even know existed
• The blockage of almost all my favorite websites
• The 60th birthday of the PRC
• A brown Christmas
• Cooking without cheese
• Baking without butter
• Carrying on my most valued relationships by Skype and e-mail
• Teaching 190 sweet, motivated, delightful students
• Having my assumptions challenged
• Seeing God's word through fresh eyes (not mine)
• Being the fastest bicyclist on the street instead of the slowest
• Joy, purpose, and satisfaction

This week I'm reflecting on some of the hard and good things the Lord has given me in three years back in America, including:

• Cooking with cheese
• Baking with butter
• Being in the same country as my family for my sister's wedding and the birth of my brother's babies.
• Finding a job
• Re-learning how to be a speech therapist
• Finding a church
• Living in a sweet old Mansion with my friends
• Breathing clean air, and everything that clean air lets me see: Sunsets, clouds, and stars.

I am so grateful for an easier return than I ever expected, and for the many good things and good people that fill my life here in Iowa.  In reflection, I would say the hardest things about returning to the States are these two:

1)  I am forever split.  The people that I love, the places I want to be, and the person that I am are all divided between two continents.  There are parts of me that emerge only in China; for example, the part of me that gets on a stage to sing songs to a packed house because in the China-fabulous world of being a foreign teacher, part of your job is to entertain.

And there are the people.  I can't just gather up all the people I care about and keep them with me in the same country.

If I'm here, I miss there.  If I'm there, I miss here.

However, even as I have missed people on both sides of the planet, I've also realized:

2)  Life goes on.  When I flew away to China in 2009, all my relationships in America were frozen in time.  The friends I had in 2009 are the friends I thought I would return to in 2012.  But life went on.  People got married, had kids, moved away, moved on.  I moved too; my home base in 2009 was not the town I moved back to.  I was unprepared for how hard it would be to re-join the relationships I still had, and to re-build a social circle to replace the one that had inevitably changed while I was away.  Three years later, this is still hard.

Now that I'm here, my ties in Asia are likewise changing and weakening.  My former students are getting jobs, spreading across the country, getting married, moving on.  If I moved back there, I would have the same challenge as I've had here: build up the friendships that still exist, and then start fresh, building relationships with a brand new bunch.

In spite of these difficulties, the experiencing of living in another place -- really living, not just visiting -- has made both the going and the coming back completely worth it.