Immigration

I feel like I should re-title my blog...the ups and downs with Immigration. For the last year and a half, especially the last year immigration has been on my mind pretty much every day. I feel like i've become and expert on something I have no interest in becoming an expert on! I am thankful for my understanding and incredibly patient husband who has been by my side every step of the way and our wonderful immigration lawyer who answers every one of my (sometimes frantic) emails. Never in my life have I every had to think or worry about where I live and actually being able to stay and live there. So this was a new ball game for me. I guess its something most people don't every have to go through. Yes, I had to occasionally get travel visas to visit other countries back in my traveling days but never anything quite as extensive, difficult and overwhelming as this. As I've mentioned in previous post, as of the 11th of April I will no longer be able to work until my visa is granted. And right now in order for my visa to be granted we are waiting for my FBI background check to be sent back to Australia for the US. I made a static filled phone call to the FBI this morning and the lady informed me my background check will be mailed on April 6th even though it was processed 3 weeks ago! Thats another week away! As much as I wanted to ask her why...maybe raise my voice or cry...who knows, I resisted and said thank you and hung up the phone. At least for the next week I can stop waiting for the mail to be delivered. I know in all of this God has a plan and he is teaching me many lessons. Honestly I think God is giving me exactly what I need. I need a break from work. Even though its a unpaid/forced break, its still a break and I desperately need some time just to do nothing. For so many weeks now we've just had so many thing going on. Most days I feel great about things. I know that God is in control and he's given me so much peace, but some days are just hard and everything catches up with me and hits me like a ton of bricks. I feel like I've been having more harder days lately, which I hate. But as my sweet husband says, I (we) have a lot of big things going on, a lot on our plate that not everyone knows about, and I need to give myself a little more credit and not be so hard on myself and that its ok to have a bad day. He is probably right. Gosh, I love that man! I don't know what I would do without him helping me though all this...well actually its because of him I have to deal with immigration in the first place but he is TOTALLY worth it :) I know that this is just a season. One day (hopefully very soon!) I will be granted my permanent residency visa and we will get to have our celebration dinner at the top of Centre Point Tower in Sydney (my request!), I'll be able to go back to work and I can breath a BIG sigh of relief because finally the biggest hurdle on the Australian end of Immigration will be over. Now I know immigration will always be a factor in our life and I knew that when I married an Australian. And one day maybe we'll have to deal with this on the American end for Ben and I pray if/when we do I will have learned a lot from this go round to help me the next time! Its just a season, it will pass. Right now I'm constantly praying for strength to get through this season and patient while we wait for the next. But everyday thankful its in God's hands.  

sick days

My hubby and I have both been home sick the last few days and boy does that make for an interesting few days! Thankfully we're both on the mend. For me sick days lead to a 'Lindsey nest' on the sofa complete with my new memory foam pillow (which I am in love with, its amazing how much a pillow can change how well you sleep!), blanket, cup of tea, and my laptop. I've spent more time on Pinterest in the last 2 days than I probably should but its so addicting and I love it! For some silly reason Pinterest makes me feel at home. I love all the crafty things, the tons of holiday decor ideas, I love all the beautifully decorated houses that scream southern living, I love, love the countless teaching ideas and don't even get me started on the yummy looking recipes! I think Pinterest is a southern girls best friend. I'm from the south..we decorate our homes for every holiday, we monogram everything, we love looking our best, including our big hair (which had to be the first thing to go when I moved to Oz, courtesy of my cousin). I love being a southern girl and I miss it terribly, somedays.

Pinterest is also wonderful at making me miss teaching...terribly. There are SO many ideas its crazy! I think my teaching ideas board has the most pins of any of my boards. I've definitely gotten sucked into reading teaching blogs this week and pinning tons of ideas for my classroom I hope to have again one day. I'm very thankful to be in a school and very thankful for my job, but its not teaching and I'm a teacher. I've known since I was little that I wanted to be a teacher. I used to spend my allowance at the teacher supply store and turned our playroom into a classroom. I did such a good job that once we had a repair man or someone come to our house once and asked if my mom home-schooled us! There are not a lot of things that I think i'm good at, but i'm good at being a teacher. Its my passion, its what I feel is my calling in life, and its what I love and miss everyday. But God is good and I know I'll get to teach again and when I do, watch out because i've got a ton of new ideas, thanks to Pinterest!

 

You learn something new everyday

Its true. I feel like this is a major theme in my life now! Everyday I do learn something new; whether it be in my job, about my friends, about living in another country, my husband, being married, my relationship with God, and who would have thought i'm still learning about me, even after 27 years! This might sound all kids of cheesy, but I feel like moving half way around the world and starting a life in another country really has changed my perspective on life. I think of all the lessons and experiences I've gone through in the last 19 months and sometimes I wonder how i've made it this far.

My hubby and I talk sometimes about some of the differences between the US and Australia, most of them not major things (even though at times it may feel like) whether it be hanging our clothes on the line to dry outside, cooking with herbs from our landlords herb garden, how slow the internet is here, washing dishes by hand, having central heating and air, etc. I told him that even though a lot of those things are silly, I hope if we do move to the US one day that we can have a clothes line in our back yard, have our own herb garden and maybe even some chooks! Don't get me wrong, I still want a dryer and dishwasher and all those things I miss so much, but every once in a while it is nice to sleep on sheets that had been hung outside in the sunshine all day!

I have decided that no matter where we live when we have kids I want them to know everything about where they come from, after all they will be half Australian and half American! I want them to know what its like to hang clothes on the line and not just use the dryer! I want them to get to celebrate all sorts of American and Australian holidays, we will get to do road trips around Australia and the US, and Lord help us but hopefully they will learn to love flying because we will be doing a lot of it! At times its overwhelming thinking of being an international family, but we can and will make it work. I'm incredibly thankful for technology and know that no matter where we live our kids will grow up knowing part of their family via skype, and thats ok.

I think of how moving here for me has been and i've had moments of ups and downs. Some days are great and some i'm just down right homesick. Its funny when I first moved here I talked about how the culture shock wasn't bad and I wasn't very affected by it...yeah, I was wrong. I think it takes quite a while for culture shock to set in. I've been here over a year and a half and I still have moments of, whoa! I really hope we will be able to create a life for our kids where they don't have to go through some of those experiences. Although I know some of it will be necessary, I just want to protect them from as much of the hurt and homesick as we can, wherever we live. I hope they always feel like they fit in whether it be in Australia or the US. I hope we can teach them so much about both places that it just becomes a natural part of their life. I hope they love both of the places they come from just as much as Ben and I do. Being an international family affects more than just Ben and I, but at the end of the day its he and I. We have to make the decisions that are best for us and one day for our children. We can't worry about what will make everyone else happy, because lets face it, we can't and we shouldn't have to. Its about us, our 'one day' family and the plans God has for us, wherever he leads us.

 

Blessed

Where to start? I've been trying to figure out what to start with and all I have is- we are incredibly blessed. As i've shared in past post, we have a lot going on! One of the biggest things being my permanent resident visa which we are waiting approval on. And because of several things out of our control, I will have to stop work in April until it goes through. But I tell you what, our God is bigger than all of that! We have been praying so much regarding my visa and work issues (as well as some other big things we have going on...and no, we're not having a baby!) and God has been blessing us and answering prayers left and right. We have so many other things on our minds and God is continuing to open doors and showing us his way. I'm just so thankful. At the moment we still have not been given a decision on my visa, but we did receive some good information from our immigration lawyer, which by the way he has been another blessing! We've only had to meet with him twice, but he still keeps in touch with us and answers any questions we have. He informed us last week that Immigration is making some changes with visas that are "process ready" which ours will be hopefully this week as we are waiting on 1 last thing from the US. And hopefully because of our situation we should get it approved faster so I won't have to be off work for very long, if at all. Not for a minute do I think any of this is an accident. God is on our side and he is working it all out. I'm not going to lie there have been times when I get so overwhelmed and stressed out with everything going on and knowing I don't have control over any of it, but God has given me so much peace about it all. We still have a ways to go and several more things going on besides the visa but God is in the drivers seat and I'm so excited to see where he is taking us!