The pains of living away from family

Pineapple Chilli — Sat, 21 Jan 2023 10:19:42 +0000

My family left yesterday to fly back to their home country and I was devastated. I had a glimpse of what grieving was like and it was terrible. Nothing made me happy. The beautiful and warm sun on my skin at the beach could not fill the empty hole in my heart. And yet when I look back, I feel ashamed and guilty of how I felt when they first arrived.

My sweet and small family came to visit me and it took some days for me to adapt to their presence. I wasn’t used having them around and I didn’t know how to love them well for the first few days. I didn’t feel the great love and warmth that I always felt for them. I let work and my daily routine take priority.

I knew that I was going to regret feeling this way and yet I couldn’t get rid of it. And I do regret it now. After a while I did get used to them being around and loved their presence. Now I feel like I’m back on that first day that I arrived in Melbourne; sad that I didn’t appreciate our precious moments together and missing them so much.

But times have changed since then and I am no longer a stranger in this country. I have responsibilities and a life here. I have a husband and friends and a church and work, and I am so grateful for them all. Even though the busyness of this life can make the days of missing them shorter, it doesn’t take away the sharp and persistent pain of sadness that I go through every time they leave.

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The ocean of emotions

Pineapple Chilli — Sat, 21 Jan 2023 09:28:14 +0000

Have you ever asked a guy how he feels and gotten a bland logical response? Yeah, me too! Marriage has made me shockingly aware of the deeply rooted differences between men and women. Accessing my emotions is as easy as breathing. The difficulty of prying an emotional response from my husband got me thinking of whether there was a good analogy for this.

Then it hit me: our minds are like an ocean.

Did you know that oceans have layers? Waters of different temperatures and salinity flow in currents at different depths. And they’re super, super deep.

My emotions float on top – when something happens I immediately feel the full emotional effect. Only once I’ve come to terms with that can I try to make sense of the situation to make thoughtful and wise decisions. My husband might say that my ocean is more like a whirlpool and he’s getting pretty good at navigating it!

The emotional current of men lies at the bottom of the deepest, quietest ocean (11km to be exact). When I ask an emotional question of my husband, he first needs to escape his natural state of the present. This is what he can see around him, the weather, the time, is he hungry?…

Then he progresses to the next current: the past. The past of memories, facts, places, thoughts and actions. But I want to know how he feels NOW!

And finally, one million years later, he arrives. The murky depths of his soul. In his eyes I spy a hint of something; maybe sadness, longing, love or gratefulness. I pry a little more as he strains to draw it out… and then… the words come. “I feel…”

And I’ve been blessed with another glimpse of the heart of my best friend and we’ve taken one more step towards emotional intimacy.

It’s frustrating, but I know that our differences are for the best. We are fearfully and wonderfully made by our great creator. I love that we will always have more to explore in each other’s oceans of emotion.

Does this analogy ring true for you too?

Image credit: Christian Palmer – Unsplash

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