California

Well, we have moved to California, nearly two months ago, and I think I’m ready to write about it. To the two people who still check this blog.

This was not a shotgun move. It was several years in the making, and made intentionally for mission and community, which I’m realizing is very strange in Silicon Valley. People come here for tech, for Stanford, or for the academic success of their kids. Where we live, houses cost anywhere from two to ten million dollars: it’s this strange oxymoron, seeing dated, small houses that would go for 100K anywhere else in the country, but that cost millions because of the dirt they sit on.

This place is full of contradictions like that. Inclusivity, awareness, and diversity, for example, are huge values, but while people are diverse in terms of ethnicity or lifestyle, there isn’t much diversity socio-politically or economically.

That’s led to a sense of personal dissonance, because while I fit in perfectly on the surface—I’m a highly-educated, slim, casually-dressed Asian female, which every other woman seems to be here—I’m actually really different inwardly. I have way more kids than anyone else here probably thinks is responsible (or affordable), and I primarily parent them myself rather than outsourcing for the sake of career or self-care. Our kids go to a choice school that they pretty much accidentally (providentially) got in to, not because I had orchestrated or worried about it. Similarly, we live in a covetable house, but due to an act of grace, not by merit or striving. Our kids do have some enrichment skills like language or music, but because I try to teach them myself at home, not because they were enrolled in a ton of extracurriculars from a young age. I secretly compost and recycle not for the good of the earth, but because our regular trash can is sized for a midget. I have ties to an Ivy League, but I’m an under-achiever in my career. I value kindness and inclusivity, but I believe in absolute truth.

When we first moved here, there was just so much to thrill the heart, and I was just soaking all that in, rightfully so—our kids are around other kids that look like them! The weather is disgustingly perfect, all the time! There are (almost) no mosquitos! The food—the food! The parks and playgrounds and zoos and museums and things to do with the kids! Perhaps I will never get over seeing an orange tree outside the window, opening the windows to a fresh cool breeze at night, or seeing blue mountains in the distance. I’m still amazed by the 100-book checkout limit at the library, the way our kids have taken to biking everywhere, and how any retail store in the universe appears to be within ten minutes of our house.

But eventually things about the culture started to soak in. Part of me feels lonely, and I’m not even sure what for—I don’t think Virginia was a place we could have stayed forever, or that I really belonged in either—perhaps what I miss are people who unconditionally love and support us; people I felt I could completely be myself around. And I know that only comes with time. Part of me is trying to make myself relevant to the culture here, while figuring out how to be intentional about who I still am. A few days ago, after realizing I was getting a bit swept away by school stuff, we finally got back on some spiritual and marriage routines we had lost with the move, and that was good.

So there are a few unique things about this time period: it’s going to be lonely. It takes a while for a place to feel like home (someone told me eighteen months) and that’s okay. The loneliness hits me at random times, like when I think of something a friend back in Virginia would have liked to know about, or when I get lost again going somewhere. And this is also a formative time: we have a new chance to define ourselves, to set the right foundation, and part of that is intentionally not getting swept away by various pressures, is being willing to wait and discern before making decisions about our commitments.

And a lot of it is drawing closer to God, as to an anchor in changing seas or a resting place in lonely times. This move throws into clearer relief that we all long for home, a place where we belong, where we are unconditionally loved and inexpressibly understood, and yet we could search forever on earth and not really find that place. As St. Augustine wrote, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you”—one could add, “until it finds its home in you.”