How Long Will It Take...

This summer my family is moving to a foreign country. It's called "America." My son has never lived there, my daughter has lived only 4 of her 11 years there. So it's going to take some adjustment.

When you live in Europe but belong to the military you get used to two sets of everything. (Currency, electricity, measurement, everything. It’s crazy, really). We have jokes in our family about how long it's going to take before we stop asking certain kinds of questions. Like these:

"Is that 110 or 220?"

"Is that in dollars or euros?"

"Is that in Fahrenheit or Celsius?"

"How many kilometers is that on the autostrada?"

"Doesn't that close for riposo?" (Half the stores in Italy close for three hours at lunchtime. We have to adjust to this NOT happening.)

"Did you remember the gas coupons?"

And then there's these questions:

How long will it take before I stop referring to everything off post as "on the economy"?

How long will it take before I stop greeting the gate guards in Italian?

My family says "You'll be fine, you grew up in America, this is home for you." And it is. I will ALWAYS consider myself a citizen of Texas. (hahaha) But when you live in a country outside of Texas (ok, fine, outside America) for seven years, you wake up one morning and realize it's not a foreign country anymore. This is "where I'm from," too. And leaving my other home country will be very hard. (pausing to search for tissues).

The city, state, country, and CONTINENT we live on is about to change, as well as the languages of the people around us. Kids will go to new schools. I may have to get an actual “job”. We will probably live in a house that isn’t connected to the one next to us. Absolutely everything about our lives will be different. 

Except our family. And our faith. God remains the constant in our lives, the reason that I don’t completely fall apart when paperwork gets the best of me (I’m choosing to ignore the 5-minute breakdown I had yesterday). 

When I start getting weepy over this (and it’s happening a lot) I remember that Moses and Abraham had once been “strangers in a strange land” (Exodus 2:22 KJV). I also remember that God is going before us to prepare the way. He is with us at all times. There’s even a verse that tells us “the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard” (Isaiah 58:8). These verses speak volumes of comfort to my heart.

But I’m not quite sure whether it’s in liters or gallons.