City on a Hill

Spending a month in one city (in this case, Melbourne) rather than traveling all over the country has been an intentional decision. One of the reasons we have chosen to do this is community. Community, we felt, would lead to better understanding of culture, more local information about the area, invitation to participate in activities, and a sense of connection in a new place. One of the ways we find community at home is our church. We also want to use our sabbatical to grow spiritually. So, it made sense to find a church in Melbourne to regularly attend. 

We have a church in Lansing called Riverview that we closely identify with. It is part of the Acts 29 Network, which is comprised of churches with several key characteristics including gospel-centered teaching. So we decided to see if there were any Acts 29 churches in Melbourne. As it turns out, there are two such churches in Melbourne, both known as City on a Hill. One was on the west side of Melbourne, which is where we are, but not easily accessible via public transit. The other was located in the movie theater of a mall in the city center. The basement of the mall also just so happens to be a train station. Perfect. 

We had trouble finding the church the first Sunday, because it is a really, really big mall and at that time we didn't actually know the church was in the movie theater. Mercifully, we stumbled upon it and were only a few minutes late. We settled into the super comfy theater seats (maybe too comfy during a sermon) and were able to worship with Christians in another country. We learned some new songs and the teaching was gospel-centered and expository, which we relate to well. Pretty cool. 

The pastor giving the sermon that morning was actually visiting from the west side church and we were able to briefly meet him on the way out. We discovered his name is Luke and he lives in Altona near us, so we exchanged email addresses in order to meet up sometime. Pastor Luke ended up being the guy who loaned us his car for the Great Ocean Road. At that point, we had not even met up with him yet. We finally were able to meet him at a cafe and chat yesterday! Again pretty cool. 

City on a Hill church in Melbourne

Now for some reflection. I was hoping to expand our community through regularly attending a church, but I didn't really know what to expect. In order to facilitate meeting people, I was hoping for a greeting time. I must admit that I normally hate greeting times at churches. Yes, hate. They are usually forced and awkward making them feel insincere. As it turns out, there was indeed a greeting time. And, yes it was forced and awkward. In fact, once, we couldn't get anyone to talk to us. I don't bring this up to blame. I bring this up to reflect on myself. Now having been the outsider who actually wants to meet people, I have been convicted of making an effort to meet new people when I have a home church again. Brandon and I have previously discussed intentionally meeting new people at church and actually inviting them into our home for more personal, real conversation and community. But, we've only actually followed through once. Interestingly, the reason I started going to the church we attended in Holland is because a family did just that; they invited me over for dinner the first time I was there. And, you know what? I, and now Brandon, are still in contact with this amazing family. I know that something miraculous like that isn't going to happen every time I step out of my comfort zone. But, I still feel convicted to be more hospitable and sacrificial of my time as Christians are commanded to be. More than the sermons I've heard recently, this has motivated spiritual change for me. 

I've also been trying to cultivate spiritual growth on this sabbatical by personal Bible reading. I've been working my way through the New Testament and have recently been reading a lot about the early church, including Acts 4:32-35 which says, 

• "All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God's grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there was no needy persons among them. From time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, and brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need."

Wow. Pretty radical for our self-driven, independent culture to hear. This is of course just a description of the early church at that time. Nevertheless, this has stood out for me for a couple reasons. First, because our friend group in Grand Rapids has been trying to create such a community, one that generously shares food, resources, time, emotion, and spirituality. We've been trying to build that community by meeting once a month and having intentional, deep discussion not just the surface "How are you doing?... Good." conversation. It's been challenging, but it's been real. And, I miss it. 

Second, because of Pastor Luke's example. He gave his car to us, strangers from another land. Crazy, generous sharing among believers as in Acts. And then he shared his time with us chatting about all manner of things over warm beverages. Simple, but meaningful spiritual community. 

So, yes, I think I've found both community and spiritual growth. Or at the very least I've found the beginnings of those things, which I hope would continue to root if we were able to spend more than a month in Melbourne. 

A Sabbatical Is Not...

I have been working on this other post on and off again for a few weeks where I try to take the time to reflect on our sabbatical/time off work thus far, or at least more specifically how the sabbatical went over the summer. And I'm learning that it is a very difficult thing for me to fully process. There are a lot of angles I can take at analyzing that time we've spent so far. This becomes extra apparent in the actual process of writing because I tend to just go all over the place, making it quite difficult to make a coherent post that actually is meaningful to both myself and our readers. I'm still hoping to complete said post (or possibly posts), but as part of that writing process I thought I'd break out from that set of writings something that keeps coming up in my thoughts that doesn't fully complete the entire picture and is a bit more pessimistic in nature, but perhaps it's at least a step in the right direction. 

So all that to say that in this post I'd like to reflect on all the things that we've learned that a sabbatical is "not". Now bear with me. I'm not looking for any pity or sympathy. I do realize Katie and I are extremely blessed, and there are a lot more positives than negatives. But I do want to paint a realistic picture, especially for those who might try to take some extended time off work someday as well as for those who constantly remind us of how jealous they are of our situation because they have over-glorified what day to day life is like for us. Some of the points I make below I had kind of expected before we started this adventure, and others we learned along the way. But still living them out is different than having a feeling about what it might be like. So here we go...

Being on sabbatical...

...is not stress free - For a lot of people work is one the of their biggest sources of stress. This was especially true for Katie, and looking back I'm sure I had some stressful days as well. So a pretty logical conclusion is that if you eliminate that source of stress your levels of stress should dramatically decrease or even just go away completely. The sad reality though is that if you are already the stress-able type you probably have the not-so-amazing ability to find other things to be stressed about. 

Things that still stress me out: being too busy, having no time to relax, having to constantly keep planning/optimizing our plans, packing/moving, feeling like I have no control, making mistakes, relationship stuff, and the list goes on and on. And many of those are things we put on ourselves. Silly us. We convince ourselves it's worth the trade off for adventure/having fun/living life, but sometimes in the moment I'm not so sure. But for many of those sources of stress the resolve is to still in a given day or circumstance choose to exercise mind over matter and seek out the positive parts to dwell on. But the same was true even while working. So the bottom line is, if you're looking to live a bit more stress free, start practicing now. Because that lifestyle doesn't magically come with just taking a break from your job.

...does not mean you have unlimited time - This one surprised me a bit. In my working days, I'd look back on a given day and just feel like my entire day revolved around work. Think about it. We wake up thinking about work. We then drive to work (assuming you weren't working from home). We spend 8+ hours working. We drive home from work. We have a small window of doing whatever we please assuming we can get past any stresses from the work day. And then hopefully go to bed on time so we can function well for work the next day. Or if you are like me you log back into work at night and work another couple hours cuz you can't sleep cuz you didn't get everything done you wanted to. *Sigh* Work work work and very little time to invest in other things we care about/enjoy or even just get other things done off our ever-growing TO-DO list. 

This was one of the biggest motivations of our sabbatical: to take back control of this time. And to a large extent, it worked. Katie and I now have way more control over how we spend our time. But there is still only so much time in a given day/week/month/etc. 

For example, we still seem to have things we can't get to on our TO-DO list. I think I had hoped that we'd eventually get to a point where there would be days that were completely burden free. I'm not sure why I wanted this. Maybe I thought it'd be more stress free. But there always seems to be more things we can add to our TO-DO list. And when actually trying to fit some of those things into a given day, it's amazing how few of them we can accomplish in one day. We had some days where we spent the entire day just trying to get things done, and we'd maybe only get 2 of the 10 things that day fully accomplished, even after 8+ hours of trying. And then we'd somehow figure out we needed to add 3 more things to our list. We would then look back on a day like that demoralized by the feeling that very little got done and still wonder, just like when we were working, where the day went. And I feel like I felt way more accomplished after an average day of work then trying to work through our personal list.

And beyond just the things on our TO-DO list, there are so many more goals that we thought we could accomplish on a regular basis now that we have a bit more time on our hands. We want time to relax, time to spend together, time to ourselves, time with friends and family, time to catch up on and possibly binge watch some TV shows and movies, time to exercise, time to cook/eat well, time to explore the world, time to try new things, time to write some reflective blog posts, time for prayer, devotions, and reflection, time to invest in helping others, etc... And as you might have guessed one of the main problems we run into is that again there is only so much time in a day. So we could either pick one or two things and invest in them well or kind of work our way through a whole bunch and only feel partially accomplished in any one thing while at the same time exhausting ourselves.  This summer we especially struggled with the balance of navigating those goals. We would get really down on ourselves for neglecting certain goals when in reality there isn't time to do them all. But we're not willing to give up on any one of them, so this is a problem that I don't see going away any time soon.

So you can see why there was part of me that had hoped there was actually more time in a day. Or at the very least I had hoped accomplishing all those goals would be a breeze with an extra 40+ hours freed up in my week. I was clearly mistaken. 

...does not make forming good habits any easier - This relates back to having goals. But some of those goals involve specifically forming better habits for our own personal growth and well-being. The top two that come to mind that I really thought I was going to be better at over the summer was taking to time to exercise/stretch more and taking the time to read/study the Bible and pray. I always blamed my inability to do those things consistently on being too busy. But as I discussed earlier I still was busy a lot of days. And on the days that I wasn't busy, I didn't just fall into doing those good habits like I thought. It still took a true conscious effort the few times I managed to pull them off. So if you have good habit related goals like exercise, eating well, devotion time, etc.. that you hope to accomplish while taking a sabbatical, it's just like while working, don't expect it to happen for free.  

...does not make personal problems disappear - This is about to get a little personal. For a long while now I on occasion experience depression-like symptoms. It usually results in some pretty crappy days. I can feel very empty. Nothing sounds good to do or eat. It's a mixture of sadness, frustration, anger, and helplessness. The triggers are sometimes over-exhaustion or stress. Sometimes it starts with me beating myself up over some mistake I've made. Or there are times where it comes out of the blue for no apparent reason. All that to say, that hasn't gone away just because we're on sabbatical. 

I had kind of expected this. I know you can't run away from your problems. But I did think it'd at least help. Sadly that is not the case. If anything in some circumstances it's worse because now I don't have work to distract me from my own internal struggle and eventually pull me out of any slump. Instead I have even more time on my hands to overthink. And there are even more triggers given our lifestyle choices for this year since there are even more things outside of my control or that take an exhausting amount of effort to learn/keep up on/figure out. 

I'm sure this point translates to more than just depression, it's just the thing on the top of my mind since I've hit a few minor spouts of it even while here in Australia. But whatever your personal struggles are I don't think you'll find that part of your life getting any better by simply taking a sabbatical. It could definitely be used as one of many tools to help you work through your struggles, but I think you would need to be specifically taking some of that time to work on those things.

...does not make relationships any easier - The premise for this particular point does at least partially hinge on our way of doing a sabbatical in that Katie and myself's time together has significantly increased. There are probably two main guesses for how a sabbatical like we're doing would go: A. We grow significantly closer to one another because we have in theory less stress from work and other forms of busyness as well as more opportunity to have new and fun shared experiences.  B. Our relationship gets put to the test. 

The answer at least for us is a mixture of both. But I won't be focusing on the first point so much because for us the first point is often harder to perceive since even before this started Katie and I were really good about adventuring and enjoying life together. So because it's not novel, it doesn't stand out as much. Our brains are funny like that. What is newer to us and more prevalent in our minds are the ways in which we've been tested recently. 

Being tested examples:

1 - Our relationship had to evolve simply by the fact our routines were changing: During our working days, we actually had time to miss each other. One of our favorite times of our day was that moment where the other came home or wrapped up working and we had a chance to share about our day. That doesn't happen now that we pretty much do everything together. So what do you talk about when there is nothing to talk about? Sometimes we still find things. Other times it means we talk less. But when we talk less it's all too easy to think that something is wrong and we start looking for solutions to problems that may not really exist.

2 - Because of all the extra time together we are now forced to deal with a magnified perception of each other's and then in turn our own imperfections: We are by no means perfect individuals. When dating little imperfections we see in each other are often seen as cute or character building. But as time goes on those imperfections start to turn more towards being annoying and something to be tolerated... or even worse to bring up... corrected. Well those feelings get magnified when time gets increased together. There are days where for whatever reason we can't see very far past the negative. And what sucks even more is that most of the time the real problem is rooted in our own selfishness and lack of patience, but even with knowing that we a lot of times still can't get past it. And when things harbor up too long it leads to outward displays of frustration and sometimes arguments. We always seem to get past those bad times, and we usually try to brainstorm what we could have done differently or improve on. But given the amount of time we spend together, it seems inevitable that we'll keep running into this.

3 - Finding the right balance of together vs alone time: Every couple has a different balance of alone vs together time. Katie and I are obviously more skewed towards liking time together given how we're doing our sabbatical. But even between the two of us there are still different preferences of that balance. Or sometimes it doesn't even feel like it's about balance. Sometimes our need for alone time relates to other relationship struggles like the one I mentioned in my last point. Personally I usually don't realize I need "me" time until it's too late. It's not a great situation to be in because I tend to just shut down and block Katie out or react to her in very annoyed ways. The same thing happens to Katie too, just not as often (at least from my perspective), and her reaction is often different than mine. And when either of us do finally realize we need space, it becomes awkward and uncomfortable to seek out constructive options for ourselves because again it makes it seem like there other problems to deal with, which most of the time isn't the case.

There are probably many more points I could dwell on or analyze, but I think you get the point. Time together in this extreme case we find ourselves in does have its challenges, and I didn't even yet get into it being magnified even more when traveling. There is this quote that I like that I think is from Bill Murray of all people on traveling with someone you love. 

"...Take that person and travel around the world. Buy a plane ticket for the two of you to travel all around the world, and go to places that are hard to go to and hard to get out of. And if when you come back to JFK, when you land in JFK, and you're still in love with that person, get married at the airport."

I'm using the quote here a bit out of context since I'm not talking about finding the person I want to marry. I already figured that part out. But the point I'm trying to pull out is that when traveling with someone and it's just the two of you trying to figure it out and work your way through different challenges, and that's all the community you have, you are guaranteed to see both the best sides and the worst sides of each other. So far Katie and I have been up for the challenge, and I'm sure we will come out the other side still liking each other. Or even better yet we'll be closer than ever. But we do say that it is a challenge for a reason. 

...is not a recipe for guaranteed happiness - If you haven't picked this up from the other points, then you might be missing something. There are indeed so many possible enjoyable moments when you free up your time to explore the world or do what makes you happy. But you can't ride the high of happiness forever. You will either run out of experiences to have, or the experiences themselves will grow old and stale, or you'll just exhaust yourself to the point where nothing is enjoyable. And if you think you'll find happiness by avoiding what is stressful, or by trying to achieve some goals, or by trying to better yourself, or by overcoming personal problems, or by investing time in relationships... all my points above shows those thing aren't guaranteed to go as planned either. We have had some pretty crappy days on this sabbatical. But we continued on, made corrections where we could or just waited for our circumstances to change, and sure enough every time so far things got better. So I think as long as you set your expectations properly, a sabbatical is still worthwhile.


...is an opportunity to explore one's faith. The last little point I'd like to make is how our faith ties into all these points above. By taking a sabbatical we in many ways have done our best to set ourselves up for success. We've taken life by the horns and steered it in the direction where in theory we're in full control of the outcome. But as I've pointed out, even with as much control as we've gained, we're just as screwed up and helpless as we were before. We've just maybe traded off a few problems for some new ones. It just shows me and Katie how daunting and impossible a task it is to achieve a perfect life. So for us, our faith has helped us through many of the challenges I mentioned above. Even in just admitting our own shortcomings and trusting that God is in control and actively working in our lives, it takes the pressure off trying to do it all on our own. Riverview, the church in Lansing that we still follow, had a really awesome sermon recently that touches on this point. Noel talks about the liberating power of the Gospel, so if you'd like to hear more you can find that here.


So I hope you find this all helpful. At least it has been for myself even though it has also been tough. I really hope it helps paint a more complete picture of what kind of challenges you might face when taking a sabbatical, or retiring, or doing something of that same nature where you try to start taking back control of your time and using it differently. But don't be discouraged by any of this either. Like I said at the beginning of this post, there are so many awesome parts about taking a sabbatical. You can probably already tell that by the highlights we've posted so far on this blog. It was just that I couldn't fit all my more reflective thoughts and feelings about our sabbatical life into one post. Hopefully I will get to writing those other posts soon.

Until next time,
Cheers!

p.s. If you have any questions, comments, or pieces of advice about the topics I covered in this post, feel free to leave them in the comment section on this post or shoot either Katie or myself an email. We love it when our readers are interested and engaged in the things we post about.