Through the Eyes of the Wife and Child: A Wife and Mother's Perspective of the Sandbox

This is a look into my story. The story of how I, personally ended up in the Middle East. The story of how I followed my husband’s lead for our family, a story of how I battled with a mother’s heart of bringing my three year old to an entirely different culture and completely disrupting his life.

Through this blog, I hope to shed light into our lives, the ups and the downs, but most importantly, how our God is sovereign and really does work everything out. How our God walks with us through our emotional struggles, our sad hearts as we leave behind our earthly families, and our excited hearts as we walked off an airplane and didn’t know (literally) to turn left or right.

I believe this whole process started way back when I was in middle school. Most of you know where this is going. It’s mine and Zach’s story. Even as a young student, I knew I wanted to marry Zach. I knew I wanted to be with him forever. Throughout the next few years that strong desire would come to fruition as we dated, married, and started our lives together. Zach began working at a youth detention center and through God’s divine intervention, landed a job at Oglethorpe Middle School in Savannah where we would then move to and begin our lives as a family. Many of you know that Oglethorpe ended on a not-so-good note, but looking back, I think that’s probably the only way that God could get us out of there to prepare us for the big move that He already knew about and had already planned. By working at Oglethorpe, Zach met a few certain people who would later tell him all about teaching with ADEC (Abu Dhabi Education Council) and what it was like to make the move to Abu Dhabi. Zach landed a job (again, only by God as we were certain he would never be able to teach in Savannah again) in an inter-city school in Savannah and it became clear he would not be there long. Throughout looking for jobs, he applied to jobs ALL OVER Georgia, went to many promising interviews, none of which ever panned out and the frustration set in. Why would God have Oglethorpe seek him out, love him for a few years, and then just out of no where be done with him? It didn’t make sense. We didn’t see the big picture. But God did.

Back in the beginning of 2013, Zach brought up the idea of moving to Abu Dhabi. My answer? No. N-O. I wasn’t even discussing it. I was not moving to the desert, I was not moving away from civilization, I for certain was not bringing my child to such an unsafe place- he can’t even defend himself! I immediately closed the discussion, if you can even call it such. I was reminded that just like Christ is the head of the church, so is Zach the head of our family. I began to pray that if God really was leading him to Abu Dhabi, I would trust his lead, but only if I also felt peace about it. I truly believe Zach is the head of our family, but I truly believe that we make decisions together and thankfully Zach has always believed the same. The more I began to pray, the more I began to be okay with the idea. I joined Abu Dhabi mom groups, I found people on Facebook that lived in Abu Dhabi and began asking even the basic questions- are there cars? toilets? grocery stores? Looking back, how naive. I can only laugh.

So our timeline began and Zach started the process with local and federal governments getting clearance to enter the country and getting all of his documents certified. I informed work that I would be leaving, after just beginning my job as a full time employee a few months earlier. We put our house up for sale and sold everything except for a few boxes and our clothes. Only by God’s grace, our house sold in about three weeks and the timing couldn’t have been more perfect. I moved in with a family for a few weeks to finish up my job. So at the beginning of August, I ended my job at Candler Hospital and moved back up to Calhoun to spend time with my family.

The waiting began. Waiting, waiting, and more waiting. Anticipation, and waiting. We became impatient about waiting for our ticket and constantly checking our email for our ticket that we both began applying for other jobs. Maybe UAE was a distraction to get us up to north GA to begin another career? Or maybe we were being impatient and needed to wait longer. Nonetheless, we both landed jobs within a week. Zach was offered a teaching position with a nice salary and nice benefits in Chattanooga and I was offered a job as a social worker with a local hospice agency – what I really wanted to get involved with and get experience. After much prayer, we made what was probably the hardest decision we have ever made. Either decision was a huge life altering decision. Oh how we would love to finally be close to family and be in Chattanooga. But did we really sell everything we had to move to the UAE for nothing? We each spent some time in prayer and quiet. And with a struggling heart, we both turned our positions down. Three days later, we received our plan tickets to Abu Dhabi. Oh. My. Goodness. Was this really happening? We are, like, for real moving across the world. The anxiety began to set in. And emotions began to flow from family. We would be leaving in three days. More notice than some, but short notice nonetheless.

We spent the next two days finishing our packing and running our last minute errands tying up any loose ends.

The day came. The day where ALL emotions flowed. Sadness, excitement, anxiety, you name it. So so sad to say goodbye to friends, family, familiarity, everything we’ve ever known, we now say goodbye. And anticipate a hello to new friends, new life, and a new experience.

We said our goodbyes at the airport and proceeded through security with a car seat and some carryon bags. Our plan was delayed but it gave time for lunch and lessened the 6hr layover in Chicago that was upon us. We flew from Atlanta to Chicago on a short flight and Braxton loved it. He listened so well and took everything in. Thankfully Chicago had a kid’s play area that allowed him to play and get some energy out. We then had enough time to eat dinner, change him into pj’s, and get in line to board. A 13 hour flight was ahead of us. As an individual, and a mom, I had to be mentally prepared for such a long flight. Thankfully, we had been up since 6:30am that morning and it was now close to 10pm. Braxton fell asleep during takeoff and did not awake until about 4 hours until landing. The airplane was huge. I sat beside a lady that taught with ADEC and she helped calm my nerves and told me a lot of great stories. I was able to sleep a decent amount (as much as you can in the middle seat with a 3yr old sprawled out on you) and we finally landed in Abu Dhabi. The only problem was, we just slept the whole flight, and it was now 8pm in Abu Dhabi, time for bed. Thankfully, we were all still tired and were able to go right to sleep at the hotel.

There has been so much to happen in the past few weeks that I know I will forget funny stories and new experiences that when they happened I said “Oh! I need to make sure I put this in my blog!” I’ll try to make it as short and sweet as I can, as this is already a super long post.

·         They lost two of our bags- one with ALL of Braxton’s clothes and the other with all of Zach’s dress/work clothes. Thankfully, they were found and we picked them back up at the airport after a few days

·         We experienced the extremely reckless driving of Abu Dhabi. Wow. It’s like there are no lanes here. People go in and out like it’s nothing. They beep their horns at EVERYTHING. And since there are no carseat laws, you can see infants sitting in the front seat with their parents like it’s nothing. Or a 12mo old baby standing on the parent’s lap going down the road.

·         There are no four way stops, only round-abouts. 3-lane round-abouts. Meaning, if someone from the inside lane of the round-about wants to exit, they have to cross to lanes of the round-about to do so, even if you aren’t exiting. You get the picture.

·         I’ve never been asked so many time where I am from. I can’t figure out if I say “The States”, “US”, “America”, etc. I guess it doesn’t really matter, but for some reason I feel like I have to say them all. Braxton just says Georgia to everyone

·         I’ve learned that just because someone looks like an American, when they open their mouth and speak, you never know what to expect

·         The locals LOVE Braxton. Like, LOVE. Every time they walk by the pinch his cheek, rub his head, etc. One lady even pulled on his arm and said “let me kiss you face!” He is extremely shy about all of this but slowly seems to be opening up.

·         Everyone is so nice. They call us “Sir” and “Madame” everywhere we go and open up doors. I feel spoiled…

·         We have met some pretty cool friends from Alabama who have been here a little longer than us. It’s nice to be in community.

·         We visited Evangelical Community Church (you can google it) and it was awesome. SO MANY different countries represented. This really is a “melting pot” here. I’ve learned that you can be open about your faith as long as you aren’t pushing it. You can wear the “Christian t-shirt”, bless your food in public, and Braxton is safe to sing Jesus loves me J

·         We are trying to get out of our comfort zone and try different foods. I think we’ve done pretty well at that but it is so nice to have a McDonalds fry or a Wendys hamburger every now and then

·         The malls are HUGE. Amusement parks, ski slopes, movie theatres, so much more. And there are malls everywhere. I feel like we’ve been to so many, but there are so many more to see

·         School is going well for Braxton. He is only one of two English speaking kids in his class. And his teacher comments often on how much he talks. Ha, I guess you could blame that one on me?

·         I dearly miss Chick Fil A, Waffle House, Zaxbys, and Lipton Cold Brew Ice Tea

·         I dearly miss my family, Eden Village Church family, St.Joseph’s/Candler family, and our friends in Savannah

·         I am thankful for Skype- and our weekly skype chats with our parents

·         I am thankful for very, very friendly American neighbors all around who are more than willing to help with anything we need

·         I am thankful for phone apps that can help me convert Celsius to Fahrenheit, ML to cups, km/h to mph and Dirhams to US Dollars.

Like I said, I know there is SO much more. I am going to try to write a new blog every few weeks. We will see how it goes. Love to everyone who reads our blog. And if you read through this whole thing- whew! Thanks J Love and miss you all!