When you don't know how you're going to get there

August 28, 2017 Susan Arico

Years ago I traveled through southern Africa with my sister. After college she spent a year teaching in rural South Africa, and she plotted out a four-month backpacking trip for the two of us to undertake afterwards. We started in Cape Town – the southern tip of the continent – and traveled north to Nairobi, Kenya. Along the way we adventured as only a 21- and 23-year old can… rafting the Zambezi River, horseback riding in LeSotho, learning SCUBA in Lake Malawi, climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro.

During our four months we sisters traversed 3500 miles. We took buses; we rode in tiny, overcrowded shared vans called “combis”... and we hitchhiked. Once we rented a car. We carried a guide book (I think?) and tattered maps, and we followed our course. Looking back twenty years later, it seems crazy – even slightly impossible – but we did it. {And it was amazing - endless props to my sister.}

I thought about that trip a lot this summer as I navigated Space Available air travel for the first time. We’re privileged to be allowed to sometimes fly this way from our home in Crete, riding in military planes with vacant space to accomodate passengers. The cost is miniscule - a fantastic perk for large families.

The hearing test room: vulnerability and reward

July 14, 2017 Susan Arico

In the hearing test room, you close your eyes once the headphones go on. You quiet your breathing, you try to not even breathe. You strain to listen, striving to be present for each beep. You raise your hand as the sounds come, sometimes confidently and sometimes waveringly, as if your hand would say, "I *think* I heard that beep, but I'm not positive."

The beeps start in your good ear, and you breeze through. Then onto your bad ear, and the stress seeps soundlessly in. You know you're missing some of the beeps, but you try your hardest not to... willing yourself to hear what you can't hear.

Vulnerability meets you in the hearing test room. It's a place where the depth of your weakness is plumbed. A place where your shortcoming is measured, known, revealed.

You emerge at the end with a paper to show-and-tell the doctor, a series of falling dots and lines in bright colours. You bring it, like an offering, into the examination room.

The hearing test: part of my life. I've done it dozens of times in the past year and a half, and I know just what to expect. Before I enter the room I anticipate the procedure and the emotions it will bring: the strained effort, the subtle sense of defeat, the quiet resignation at the end. I had an audiogram this week before my surgery, and the whole cycle ran itself through.

What I've learned this spring: living in Crete, Greece

June 14, 2017 Susan Arico

It's a sweet spot where we live, here in the northwest quadrant of Crete. A scenic island in the middle of the Mediterranean: what's not to like?! Many Europeans winter here; some move here permanently in their retirement. Some who haven't yet retired consider big life change and a permanent move here; sometimes they find my blog and pick my brain about life on Crete. My "Living in Greece: stuff I've learned this fall" and "Suff I've learned this winter" appear to have made themselves useful resources in this regard.

So... seems like it's time for the next instalment. Without further ado, then (and in no particular order): here's Some More Stuff About Living in Crete.

1. Winter is a real thing here. (OK, so this one's actually pre-spring, I realise. Whoops!)

This year, for example, we got snow. Exhibit A:

We Stood Upon Stars: why you should read it

June 9, 2017 Susan Arico

There's a new book out, published last month, called We Stood Upon Stars. It's a book unlike other books-- memoir + travel guide + geography-based essays, built on soulish ponderings.

It's very much worth your time.

Author Roger Thompson is an adventurer, entrepreneur, family man, vanagon-driver, soul-wrestler. The book aims (in its own words) to help readers "embark on adventures that kindle spiritual reflection, personal growth, and deeper family connections." And it succeeds.

The Thompson VW van features prominently in the book; it's really the book mascot, if there is such a thing. We don't have a vanagon, but Roger's affinity for his mirrors my husband's passion for our 1996 Toyota Landcruiser, which he hand-spray-painted to "wilderness khaki" (a blog post for another time). It's our family's own adventure-mobile, which is what earned it a spot in the image above.

One boy's secrets to survival and living out adventure

June 3, 2017 Susan Arico

I run a little 5th grade "book club" for my son and a classmate of his (though since it's a mandatory thing for my son I'm not sure it technically qualifies as a "club." Thoughts?!) We read one book a month; he types answers to some written questions; then I meet with my son and his friend to discuss it. When I scoured the interwebs in October to create the book list, I came across a book I'd never heard of before: I Am David, by Anne Holm.

It's about an 12-year-old boy who's raised in an eastern European work camp in the years following World War II, escapes, and makes his way to northern Europe (and freedom). I read it last week, and it consumed me for two days. I could *not* put it down. Not the kind of response I anticipated when I casually picked up a formerly-unknown-to-me children's novel.

I found it exquisite.

The truth about fairies: secrets from my grandmother

May 26, 2017 Susan Arico

We lived overseas when I was a kid and came back to the States only occasionally. We'd vacation and visit with family, and the specialest part of it was the tree at my grandparents' house in Philadelphia. To the naked eye it was plain and ordinary tree, just standing there in corner of their suburban front yard. But it was a *magic* tree.

Because of the fairies.

The fairies knew when we came to stay at Nana and Grampy's house, you see, and when we visited they would hang tiny wrapped presents from the lowest boughs with pieces of thread. So while it looked like a standard tree, it wasn't at all. It was the fairy tree.

I don't remember what the small packages held, not a single item. What I remember is how diligently and reliably that tree offered us sweet gifts from the fairies, every time we visited. I remember the love I had for the tree and the delight we felt that the fairies had been readying things for our visit.

The edge of adventure: my unremarkable, remarkable boots

May 19, 2017 Susan Arico

I bought them at age 18, preparing to lead campers on hikes through the New England woods as a counselor. I broke them in on trails overlaid with pine needles and studded with rocks, belting out camp songs and encouraging my fellow-hikers toward the pepperoni, cheese, and crackers coming at the next break.

I used them in the Rocky Mountains at age 20 when my sister and I worked on staff at a guest ranch and then again at Yosemite National Park at 21, padding through trails with my best friend on our cross country trek in her Acura, “Sparky."

Hard + beautiful = this life

May 10, 2017 Susan Arico

Hard + beautiful = this life. This is the equation that's been kicking around in my mind this week. Sometimes people project only the beautiful... especially in our shine-it-up, every-share social media world. And sometimes they feel quietly consumed with hard.

I thought about this as I read I Don't Want to Know, a post addressed to "moms of the internet" on the new mothering collaborative, Kindred Mom. (If you haven't seen it yet, go check it out- a site full of real, relevant articles by thoughtful moms.)

"I don’t want to know how awesome your life is," writes Noelle Rhodes. "I want to know that your two-year-old had a tantrum after you told her she couldn’t eat the cookie batter. I want to know that your children read for about 5 minutes before one of them jumped on the other one’s head and tried to blame the whole scandal on the dog. I want to know that your living room only looks that lovely when you are taking a picture for your Instagram."

Man, does that resonate. I'm glad she said it. The curated images we see of each other's lives are gorgeous, and we can often feel a scrappy shambles by comparison. S c r a p p y.

The value of virtue: tales from Spinalonga

May 3, 2017 Susan Arico

On a recent sunny day of Crete-tripping, we visited the old leper colony. It happened to be Palm Sunday, and we'd watched a Palm Sunday skit that described Jesus as a healer of lepers. We got to talking about the age-old illness- how debilitating it was, how feared and hated by society, how socially isolating. How there was no cure and no hope... which was what made Jesus' healing so amazing and powerful. (This is a helpful clip about the disease to educate kids, FWIW.)

The leper colony was housed on an island, Spinalonga, located along the north shore of central Crete. And I wasn't prepared for how breathtakingly beautiful it would be. It was no less than stunning. I couldn't take my eyes off the island as we skipped across the channel in the little wooden commuter boat. And as we wandered through it and climbed to the top of its hills amidst fields of wildflowers, I felt positively enchanted.

Simple encouragement for when you're not like your kid

April 26, 2017 Susan Arico

Were you an inside-the-box kid or outside-the-box one? What about your own children - which are they?

{SALLY'S EXPERIENCE.} In her extraordinarily helpful book Different: the Story of an Outside-the-Box Kid and the Mom who Loved Him, Sally Clarkson describes a bit about her childhood and upbringing. She describes her willfulness, extraordinary energy, and the tumultuous landscape of her inner life. She writes, "As I grew, I did struggle a lot with feeling like I was too much for most people and unacceptable to them. As a result, I have felt lonely and different most of my life... Often I wondered what was wrong with me... Why couldn't I just be like everyone else?" She was at times secretly despondent as a teen and often "needed to walk miles and miles to work off the adrenaline that days of disillusionment had built up in" her.

Sally has an outside-the-box personality and was different from her family. Her parents "could not fathom what was going on with" her. "'Why do you have so many questions?' they would ask in annoyance. 'Why can't you just be satisfied with life as it is?'" Sally says her parents loved her, but they didn't get her or know how to enter her world and offer real support. These childhood experiences equipped her to parent her outside-the-box son Nathan (with whom she co-wrote the book). She could draw on her own tendencies and history to learn to understand him... and to support him in ways she wished she'd been supported.

Do you remember? And "themes of our lives"

April 20, 2017 Susan Arico

It's Easter week, and here’s one thing I love about Easter: the remembering. Three days’ worth. The grief-filled events and somber scene of Good Friday, the quiet waiting of Saturday, the rejoicing and feasting of Resurrection Sunday. We piece the Biblical narrative together as we walk through Jesus' final days, as if we were with him. For many of us, it’s the longest stretch of practical engagement, of real “entering-in,” we do with the Bible all year.

And the remembering of communion winds into Easter remembering too. The body broken and the blood poured out. When we consider the words recounting Jesus’ sacrifice on our behalf, in our pews together with our fellow pilgrims, the Easter story again unfolds itself in our midst.

Remembering's good for us - not just Jesus' life, but our own life too. Good for the soul, and good for our faith as we walk it out. Not just good, actually, but essential… because without active remembering, we can’t keep growing into and toward our God. A robust faith can’t be maintained. A couple years back I wrote a piece for Christianity Today on this, Remember When. "Turns out that reminding ourselves—and helping others do the same—builds the kind of faith that pleases God."

Unexpected home birth: the gift of my brave warrior daughter

April 13, 2017 Susan Arico

9:30 pm, six years ago to the day. Lying on my bed, hollering for my husband at the top of my lungs. Totally unconcerned about my three kids (1, 3, and 5), sleeping in neighbouring bedrooms. Concerned only about the fourth kid who's suddenly - and so forcefully - trying to push her way out of my body. Thinking, "if he doesn't get here soon, I am going to have to birth this child myself. Like those strong farm women used to do, out in the rice fields..."

Exact thought. Am I going to have to do this myself? Because suddenly I knew that my baby girl was coming, and she was coming fast. And I couldn't get off the bed.

But my husband did come, bless him. He'd been out in the car, securing the new infant carseat... because he knew we were headed to the hospital that night. I was in labor after all; we knew the drill. I'd called the labor & delivery ward to tell them we'd soon be there. I'd called the babysitter and the doula. Everything was in motion. I was just waiting till things were further along before we headed into the hospital.

But our sweet baby girl jumped the gun and at least two stages of labor and suddenly was just READY.to.be.born. My husband called 911, and the woman - after taking our name and address and dispatching an ambulance was on its way - started walking him through how to deliver a baby.

When life is "one darn thing after another"

March 30, 2017 Susan Arico

V i s i t o r s !

Last week we hosted our very first batch in Crete. We loved having my parents stay with us and spending time with them. When it came to adapting to the nuances of Crete life they fared admirably - like the bins for used TP instead of flushing it; electric water heater if you want a shower that's hot (turned on well beforehand, mind you); navigating the Cretan roads, even! They rented a car and went sightseeing in Heraklion and Rethymno in the middle, and my dad displayed great driving prowess. They were pros.

There were some hiccups though too. My mom came down with a bad stomach bug less not two days after her arrival, which kept her in bed for a chunk of the visit. One daughter was laid up two days with a high fever. A dental crisis cropped up for another daughter, necessitating the immediate extraction of two molars- a real doozy of a dental procedure (and trust me, this poor girl has been through many). Days of pain and chipmunk cheeks. Unexpected challenges seemed to keep arising from every corner.

One year with hearing loss: what I've learned

March 23, 2017 Susan Arico

A little over a year ago, my left ear went rogue. It started ringing and didn't stop... and it turned out to be nerve damage. Permanent nerve damage, that created permanent hearing loss. So now I wear a hearing aid, and I will for the rest of my life.

There's an organization called The Mighty that builds community around issues of disability and disease, and last week they published my story: "What I would tell myself a year after experiencing sudden hearing loss." In the piece I lay out some basic information about the kind of hearing loss I have, sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SSHL), and provide a few practical takeaways. The biggest takeaway is that if I'd acted earlier, I might have been able to get my hearing restored.

What the article doesn't cover are the emotional/spiritual aspects of the journey, and if your viewpoint is anything like mine, those facets are sometimes the most interesting. I wrote my first post about my ear debacle, "A Definition of Suffering (and my gimp ear)," in the thick of the experience- just a few weeks after I'd started wearing my hearing aid. And "What, now THIS? Dealing with disappointment" came six months later, just after I'd discovered that a surgical attempt to correct (a different component of) my hearing loss had been unsuccessful. The soul wrestle comes out more in those.

In a new land: a cure for "what am I doing here?"

March 15, 2017 Susan Arico

Recently I came across a story of a man who lived far from his family in a neighbouring country for many years. Decades after his arrival, his siblings visited the country where he lived and chanced to find themselves interacting with him. But so long had it been since they'd seen him and so much did he appear a native - language, clothing, customs... that they didn't recognize him. And he didn't reveal himself. An interpreter was present at the meeting, translating between the man and his siblings, but the man in fact understood everything his siblings were saying. They were actually speaking in his mother tongue.

The setting is Egypt, thousands of years B.C. The man is Joseph. The siblings are his ten brothers who have come to beg grain because the famine in their homeland, Israel, is so severe that they fear death. The same ten brothers who'd thrown him into a cistern when he was a kid and then sold him into slavery to passing merchants - telling their father the lie that a wild animal had killed him.

So Joseph first arrives in the country destitute - betrayed, enslaved, alone. His initial job is as a house servant where he shows his smarts and gets promoted. Before long he's in charge of the whole household... whereupon his master's wife falls for him, tries unsuccessfully to seduce him, frames him, and gets him fired and imprisoned. (The stuff of modern day soap operas, I tell you.)

Encouragement for moms raising out-of-the-box kids

March 10, 2017 Susan Arico

This week my recent piece about my daughter's hidden worry - and our efforts to get a handle on it - was published by For Every Mom. I was of course cheered by the idea that anything our family has learned might be useful encouraging to someone else... because isn't that what's all about? Insights and camaraderie, mom to mom, are what breathe life and hope into the effort to mother well (or at least a big part of it).

This week, too, I've been on the receiving end of wisdom from a mom who encourages through her words... big time. In the days after my post came out, no less than four people turned me onto a new book that's just been released by the amazing Sally Clarkson. It's co-written by one of her now grown children, her son Nathan Clarkson. It's called Different: the Story of an Outside-the-Box Kid and the Mom Who Loved Him.

Man, what a book. I'm here to tell you: the thing is priceless. Encouraging, instructive, big-picture-presenting, loneliness-abating. For anyone who feels overwhelmed or unsure while parenting a kid who doesn't respond in traditional ways to standard parenting tactics... Get a copy.

What I've learned this winter: Greece and books

March 4, 2017 Susan Arico

A quick, "light stuff" post to shuffle things up a bit - give a sneak peek into the life on our little Greek island (and beyond). Winter has been sickness-filled for our team, more than any other winter in memory, and we still aren't back to 100%. But there've been plenty of lesson learned... and I love Emily Freeman's words about the value of pausing to "reflect on the past season before we move ahead into the future." For those who would adventure and soul-wrestle well and fruitfully, pause and reflection are critical.

Without further ado. Some things I learned this winter:

1. The Acropolis is cool, but if you chance to visit on a 40-degree, slightly wet day with four underdressed kids with short-lived interest... don't plan to spend a lot of time there.

Refugees in Greece, first-hand: quick takes

February 23, 2017 Susan Arico

Greece is - as you may know - a hub for refugees heading west from unrest in the middle east; last count I heard, there were around 65,000 refugees in the country. I get folks asking about the refugee situation here, and the truth is: I'm not too well-versed in it.

Last week though, I got an up-close look for the first time since we arrived. I had an appointment for my crazy ear in Athens, and it so happened that a Crete friend was spending several days volunteering at a Salvation Army post in central Athens that serves refugees. So I joined her (and her two sons) for half the day.

The center's located in a rough area - depressed, ill-kempt, and in the red light district.

Loving the unlovely (when the unlovely is your kid)

February 17, 2017 Susan Arico

"Yes I know she's annoying you, but we're to love those who annoy. Yes - even now, when they haven't even stopped yet. We're even called to love our enemies - and sometimes our siblings do feel like our enemies."

I'm unsure, even as I speak the words, if they're registering with my child. Unsure if it even matters, because the words on this day are for me. I know it even as they slip from my mouth. Loving the unlovely: this is our purpose, what we're here for.

Fine. But what about when the unlovely are our own children? And we just - God help us - are at the end of ourselves and find we can't do it?