We made it home to Ohio ten days ago. After a year living abroad, we now move back into our real home. But the clear processing and writing hasn’t actually started.

Somehow the words haven’t made it to my fingers quite yet. The thoughts haven’t formed into actual words.

I know they will. In time.

So much that fills my brain that tries to escape but can’t find words. Memories of there. Pressures from here. Excitement about things like cashiers I can chat with and drive-thrus I don’t have to build up courage or plan out vocabulary for. The strangeness of re-inserting ourselves into life as we knew it, only we’re different and it somehow all seems new.

So for today I will write about how it’s not yet ready. And I will show you the view that I pray my eyes never fail to find, now matter where I live or what I do.

What’s your view look like today? (Beyond the Word of God.) I would love a peek into your world as my eyes re-adjust to my own.

• I counted the days again yesterday. In 24 days we will be ready to land in our home country on the other side of the great Atlantic Ocean. Ten of those days will not be here. Next week we’ll be at the beach in Italy (!!) and (:>). The week after that I will travel with my kids for two days to another part of Germany to visit a friend.
• Suddenly I’m faced with the reality of fifteen days left in this beautiful place we’ve called home for a year, and I don’t quite know how to process that fact.
• I want to buy gifts for all of my friends. Both here and there. And for everyone I know at home who has any connection to this Land of the Deutsch, because they’ve been here with me in my spirit all year.
• Shopping feels like therapy.
• You might think the two previous facts combined would lead to some sort of resolution. However, the overwhelmed saturated brain waves will not allow it. Thus, I am faced with a constant feeling of nausea every time I find something I might want to get for — well, anyone — and try to think if it’s good enough, if they’ll like it, if I should buy it. The answer is always “I don’t know.” So it ends with me returning the thing to the rack before finding something for myself, like the ten Euro shirt I just found. Because I know I will like that. And I don’t have to worry if it’s special enough. Even though I probably don’t need it. And my eleven-year-old will no doubt point that out. And I know I’m teaching her bad habits when I lose myself in such pointless retail-therapy. So I pay and walk out and feel even more overwhelmed because I still want to buy gifts for those special people at home. But I don’t know what to get. So I go find a croissant and a cappuccino and sit down with my notepad so I can make a list. Only the list turns into doodles of overwhelmed.
• I cleaned out my closet and filled a huge bag with clothes I don’t wear. Now I need to figure out where to take it. so we don’t have to pay to move it back home.
• Yesterday, I started an 8-week Bible study by Katie Orr and Lara Williams called Love Like Him. Because I’ve been realizing lately how much I don’t really do that — love like Jesus. And how much I need Him to love through all my ugly cracks that make me oh-so-weak.
• I believe God is using His Word to make me more like Him. More of the loving like He does. Less self-absorbed.
• God used my friend, Sundi-Jo to help me realize how much I need to learn what it means to walk in the Spirit if I have any chance at all of loving like that.
• She wrote a book about how God took all her horrible brokenness and turned into this beautiful masterpiece of a woman who loves just like He does. It’s called Dear Dad: Did You Know I was a Princess. I’ve been meaning to tell you about it for the last week. It’s totally worth the read. You will not be disappointed.
• Last night we went to our oldest daughter’s goodbye-party, which her class gave her. We wandered through the mountains. Literally, over two mountains. For two-and-a-half hours. And ended up at a restaurant/brewery in the middle of nowhere, Germany where we ate some really amazing Bavarian food. I took some video footage. Look for it soon on my facebook page.
• I have many, many thoughts flying aimlessly through my head. (I’m guessing you can sense that?)
• I am finding it difficult to express those thoughts. Thus the randomness of this post.
• I could use a little help getting out of this tunnel of swarming randomness. Can you help? Just answer me this:m How are things in your world? 

We showed up at 3, because I did my math and figured out what 15:00 meant in German. (Who knew Germany would help strengthen my math skills?)

We brought gifts for each of them. So they would remember. So they could know how special they will always be to our family. What an integral part of our time here they were. Even if only for those first few months.

She made two cakes and coffee. I learned the name of the bundt-cake looking thing, but I’ve forgotten already. So you’ll just have to take my word for it when I say it was beautiful.  But the one with the strawberries and the cream and the almonds – that’s the one I chose.

They offered coffee and tea and water and beer. We offered our friendship and support in the form of sitting with them at their outside table, on the top of a mountain in Northern Bavaria. Our Deutsch a bit better, we conversed a little and laughed a lot.

Still, there was so much we could not say. So many words I wanted to share. So many questions like how long? What happened? When did they find the tumor that now grows inside of her brain?

I honestly did not expect her to look so good. I had even prepared my children for the way she might look. The sick she might portray.

We had prayed before we went there. Prayed for healing, of course. And for Jesus to shine through the words we did not know.

Somehow not knowing the language freed us up to just sit and not feel like we had to say things we wouldn’t have known how to express anyway.

I’ve been with dying people before and felt this guilt for not saying what I think they need to hear. Because I have no idea what they need. No idea what I could possibly say that might help them as they deal with inoperable cancer, impending death.

But this time, my reason for silence had nothing to do with choice. I literally did not know the words.

And somehow that helped me just enjoy our German friends’ company. Just talk about what we could. Say words we could actually communicate. Laugh with them and enjoy the sunshine we sat under.

When we gave her the scarf, she broke down and cried. I wanted so badly to let her know we were praying. To talk about her fears. To say something profound that would point her to Jesus and let her know death doesn’t have to be scary.

But all I could do was sit there. Pray silently that somehow in the void of my word-less company, God would speak. That He might point to Himself. Pull her into His peace.

We sat there and watched. And she cried. And our hearts poured out in the form of love we could not put into words. We didn’t even try to put it into words.

I did say what likely sounded something like “You so special us to. We pray.”

Then I shut my mouth because, really my wordlessness was better.

And what’s the difference between a foreign-speaking German who is dying and a native American who understands my every word? I mean, what do you say to anyone who faces such numbered days? Even if I spoke fluent German, what the heck would I say?

I tend to believe words would not have worked whether in English or Deutsch or Mandarin Chinese.

The conversation turned to kangaroos. (Because, really, doesn’t every afternoon Sunday visit include such topics?) And we decided together to take a drive to find the kangaroos that live in the middle of Bavaria. “Only 10 minutes’ drive.” He assured us.

The adventure that ensued will someday be another blog post, no doubt.

But love grew more clear as we drove those back German roads to Pottenstein and Gossweinstein, me in the driver’s seat, our German-speaking friend driving from the back shouting “left, no right” in his Franconian-dialected German. Our friendship no doubt deepened in those hours together. The words left unsaid spoke more clearly than the thousands of German words I do not know.

When we said goodbye later, she broke down again. I hugged her and told her “We pray. You special.” And she spoke about the living she will do in these days. I did not understand any but one of the words.

“Schwer.”

It means heavy. Difficult. Hard.

I agreed.

So, so schwer. In so many ways.

Eleven months ago, we landed in Germany and set up camp in a local hotel.  No place to call home, we quickly found a place, but it was occupied until the end of August. We needed a summer dwelling.

That’s how we ended up on top of the mountain in a tiny place called Heroldsburg. Population approximately 100. That grew to 104 the day we moved in.

We lived in an apartment above an amazing couple who took us in like family.

She spoke no English. He knew a little. So when they invited us to the Johannis Feuer approximately six days after we arrived, we figured that would be the end of a short-lived friendship. We thought the language-barrier would necessitate a mere landlord/tenant kind of deal.

We were wrong.

All summer long, they kept inviting our company. Kaffee und Kuchen at least once a week. Grillen und Trinken more than a few times. (Translation: amazing grilled brats and steaks and drinks — water, beer, apple juice, lemonade, whatever you want.)

When my youngest turned eight on the first of August, we invited them up for her birthday meal. They gave her a gift and a card and a hug.

They treated us like family, even though different languages forces us to  leave so much unsaid. We could use our words to communicate little.

Our lives became our voices.

We learned that he had an older son who lived far away.

We found out she’d had a brain tumor that had been removed several years ago. It rendered her unable to drive. So she took the one-hour bus-ride to the city for work.

We met their extended family who lived atop the little mountain as well. They shared their garden and didn’t let me only take a little when I helped tend it one evening. Zucchini. Black green beans. (They were green beans, only black.) Potatoes. Oh, the potatoes!

We called each other friends. Then we moved to the city after three months’ time.

We exchanged phone numbers, birthday dates (birthdays in Germany are a really big deal), and email addresses. But, really, how do you call someone whose words you can’t really understand?

So when I passed him in the city-center last week, I greeted him with a huge hug. We had lost touch by virtue of the language-barrier that rendered us un-phonable.

“We must visit you before we leave!” I said in my thick American accent.

“Sunday!” He said. “Fifteen o’clock.” (Because they keep time like the army here in this land of the Deutsch. It means math in my head, but I’m starting to get it.)

“And how are you?” I wanted to know.

He answered with news that made my heart sink down low. Karin has another tumor. This one’s inoperable. They can only try with radiation to make it go away. He told all about it. Details I did not understand. And not just because he delivered them in German.

And then he said the word we knew was one of his favorites. He’d said it a lot when we lived near.

“Sheist!”

And all I could do was say the same. Because sometimes the only word you can say is the one you never do.

There is more to this story. So much more I have to tell you. But you’ll have to come back tomorrow. For I fear this post is turning into a book. See you then!

I knew it was two days less than six weeks. So I did the math. It took a minute. Math has never been my strong point.

Forty. I realized last night that I have forty days left.

So I typed it out for her and we both said how spiritual that sounds. And Third Day started singing in my head, and now I can’t get it out.

I did a quick google on the significance of forty, and learned some interesting things. For example, forty is the only number word in which the letters are presented alphabetically. How cool is that? Also, how crazy is it that someone figured that out?

But I was thinking more along the lines of 40 days in the Bible. Like how Jesus was in the desert, fasting for 40 days. Or how it rained on Noah and his family in the ark for 40 days and 40 nights.

So I narrowed my search a bit and found this list that reminded me of so many different times the number shows up all through Scripture. I learned that God used the number to represent periods of judgment or testing.

Um. Okay.

But I was kind of looking for stories that took forty days to unfold.

Then I saw Exodus 24 on the list and learned that it took God forty days to give Moses the plans for His tabernacle. Moses was up on top of a mountain alone with God for 40 days, learning how to build God’s home for, you guessed it, the 40 years it would take them to get to the Promised Land.

So, I was thinking, what if these next 40 days are like my mountain time alone with God? No, I’m not gonna’ go find Maria and camp out on top of an Alp until June 6. (As awesome as that would be.)

But what if God wants to get me alone and teach me more of Him for the next 40 days? What if He just wants me to shut up and listen to Him in the quiet of rightnow before I get back to my life on the other side of the world?

What if, for the next forty days, I just shut up and look for what He might be using to prepare me for whatever’s next. What if I give up the platform-building and the seeking fame as a writer and the doing my best to present myself as a social-media performer? And what if I just listen. For forty straight days?

It’s a little bit scary because what if my blog falls apart in my focus switch? Or what if you all get bored with whatever it is that shows up here in this little land called briannaRwasson(dot)com?

I’m gonna’ try it anyway.

And, while I realize that you are probably not at the end of some across-the-world journey that has a mere 40 days left, I invite you to join me in the quiet. Forty days of zero fame-seeking, platform-building, plan-making or jumping ahead of God trying to figure out on my own what’s best for this thing called my life. And I’m going to just listen.

I’ve started by looking for what might be hiding inside a certain Psalm I’ve been recently intrigued with. I’m going to ask Him to show me all its treasures. Gonna’ beg Him to help me know Him so well I can’t help but be madly in love with Him.  Pray for Him to prepare me for whatever waits for me at home.

And I’ll check in here time and again. I hope you will too.  It’s kind of weird because I don’t know exactly what it will look like. If you subscribe, though, you won’t miss any updates.

Happy 40 days, my friends.

I wasn’t sure when I grabbed it off the buffet table that morning at my daughter’s class party. I decided to try.

Sesame-seed-topped feta-cheese-filled Turkish doughiness from Ismael’s mom. She’s from Turkey.

I’d never tasted anything like it. And I would likely never taste anything like it again. So I enjoyed every bite of that unknown deliciousness. Savored the foreign flavor while it was mine to be had. Before it was gone from my life forever.

The party activities began soon after, but there was plenty of Turkish amazingness left for me to eat another.

When I took inventory of my appetite, though, I knew I was full. Still, I could make room for just one more piece of the amazing.

But this was something I needed to conquer.

I could not let the temptation to overeat sneak in and steal the true satisfied that has nothing to do with feta-cheese or Turkish doughiness.

It’s a physical temptation that has become spiritual too. As in, I don’t need more, but I crave the flavor of amazing. I love to fill my gut with awesome. I cannot get enough when something is good.

So I sat there convincing myself I didn’t need more of the Turkish awesomeness. Like a cartoon with a little me on one shoulder, clad in white, halo shining. The devil version of myself on the opposite shoulder trying to justify the one little piece I did not need.

I would have experienced no immediate consequence had I taken another piece. No lightning strike for not heeding God’s wisdom that told me more was not better.

That one portion of His great is way better than two portions of just good.

But it was the principle at stake. The chiseling away, one tiny piece at a time, of the foundation of wisdom concerning my appetite for what is good.

You see, my taste is flawed. My taste for what is excellent. What’s worth chasing after. What’s worth filling myself with. Body, mind, spirit, time.

So often I let the pull of the momentary good pull me away from the focus of what is worthy. What is better. The truly amazing that God wants to give me. Wants me to chow down abundantly.

It’s the real and living water Jesus offered the woman at the well. Better than pretend-intimacy with men and their empty promises. More filling than the satisfaction of knowing she’d landed herself a man with a name.  Longer-lasting than the few nights she shared with each one of them.

Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again . . . (v13)

She’d been drinking from the wrong well. Kept coming back to the water that did not quench her true thirst.

How often I am that woman. I keep looking for more of what will not satisfy rather than taking the only thing that I will never need more of, whether a piece of Turkish amazing or something else.

The real and living water of Jesus Christ.

Is there something that pretends to be better for you? How do you deal with it when it calls out your name?

Last summer when America went crazy for chicken (or at least about it) as Dan Cathy proclaimed his belief in the Biblical definition of marriage, I read about it on facebook. I watched through the eyes of a foreigner as friends fought with words and took action both for and against the stand of Chick-fil-A.

I read in July about a man with a gun in a Colorado movie theater. And my heart broke for the fear of those nearby. For the horror of those affected. I watched from afar, an onlooker glad for the non-option of taking my kids to the movies last summer, living in this foreign-speaking land in which we only knew a few words.

In mid-December, when a shooter walked into an Oregon mall and started shooting, I was checking up on facebook and noticed my cousin’s status. She lives in Oregon. So I did a quick search and found news of a man in a Christmas-shopper-filled mall walking in and shooting three people, including himself.

Two days later I was sitting on my couch when I first learned a 20-year-old man had wreaked havoc at an elementary school in Connecticut, killing 27 people. Again, it was facebook that informed me of the horror.

I cried.

When my kids saw me crying I realized the blessing of the built-in filter through which they could learn the news. No picture-filled newscasts. No background screaming and crying as news anchors interview parents or friends or teachers.

Then I read status after story after blog post and more about the fear such news evoked in my friends at home in the States. Afraid to send their kids to school. Not sure whether homeschooling might be an option.

Being 4284.8 miles away from home gives me a different, almost detached perspective on national tragedies.

I have to choose my news sources. Have to seek it out. Often I can’t find more than a few sources to choose from, so I read what I can find. Of course we get German news, but we understand little, so we mostly avoid it.

As such, I find myself in a unique position.

I see my friends react from inside the fray of the ever-so-close terror, and my heart reels  as I watch somewhat objectively from these thousands of miles away.

I understand the fear. I used to live inside it.

It’s the kind that holes you up, leaves you lifeless and shaking, pretending for your kids that everything is fine. Begging God to protect you, to protect them, from the evil that seems to be exponentially multiplying, getting closer by the day. Lurking just behind the gun laws and the new alert systems and the border patrols.

I know that fear well.

And I am tempted to let it back in when I see my friend’s status Monday night asking for prayer for a friend running in Boston whose safety is yet unknown. It prompts me to search twitter then CNN.com.

Yes, fear knocks loudly when I read about bombs that take lives and limbs and the joy of the finish from both runners and loved-ones alike during America’s iconic marathon in Boston.

Suddenly those less-than eight weeks left here in the Land of the Deutsch sound less appealing, and I wonder if we should just stay here.

Do I really want to return to that place where people get shot just for going to a movie? Or Christmas shopping? Or school? Where bombs blow up people just cheering on their dad who’s running the race of his lifetime?

I am tempted all day to re-think my excitement. What if we just stayed here? Maybe we could avoid the terror that might happen when we get home.

Then the bobbling buoy of truth takes an above-the-water swing, and I grab it long enough to remember. It’s the truth about fear and afraid of which I cannot lose sight.

There is a certain kind of afraid that will actually lead us into more life rather than keep us from it. It’s called the fear of God.

With all that I am, I remember that God is worth fearing because He is good. He Himself is real life. And if I bank on that truth, I will only live.

He is good enough to know what’s best. Good enough to not let me go where He is not.

I can say boldly that somehow, even in the middle of that summertime movie theater, that elementary school hallway in Newtown, Connecticut. Yes, even in the midst of that Boston street yesterday — God is still good. He is still worth fearing.

He is so good that He grieves with the victims. Stands by and listens as they yell at Him for letting such a horrible thing happen. So good He will wait and keep loving. Keep grieving.

I don’t know why He let it happen. But this I do know: God is good. And He is worth all of my trust because He is Who He is.

So I will trust Him enough to follow Him back to the States just as I have trusted Him enough to bring me here to this foreign land. I will take Him for Who He is and trust that He somehow knows best. That He sees what I cannot.

Because I know Him, I know He can be trusted. Even in the midst of the terror-ridden races and the fear-laden newscasts.

I do not understand. And I do not like it.

But I have nothing to fear.

Because God is still good.

Maybe you don’t get it from deep inside the fear. If that’s the case, might I suggest reading this short little book called Life Unafraid. Perhaps it will give you some needed courage to really, truly live. Or maybe just remind you of a truth you’d forgotten from long ago. You’ll find it in the top right-hand corner of this page. Or you can click right here. Type in your email, and I’ll send you the link to the book.

How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord Almighty! My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.

Blessed are those whose strength is in you, whose hearts are set on pilgrimage.

Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere.

(vv 1,5,10)

As the words settled in, I found myself wondering what a pilgrim heart looks like. And what is it about God that makes one day with Him better than thousands somewhere else?

I was preparing for some devotions I was writing for the devotional blog Everyday With God. We’re talking about God’s definition of better this month, and I want to invite you to join us.

Then come back tomorrow for some more thoughts and some discussion on God’s definition of better and more.

See you tomorrow…

Today’s word = HERE.

I like it. So I wrote for (sorry — it was a little more than) 5 minutes. And here’s the magic that ensued…

**Before you read, you should know I am currently nearing the end of a one-year expatriate adventure in the beautiful land of Bavaria, Germany. A detail that will help as you read about my here.

Here.

I see today’s prompt and my mind starts flying. So much about here I could linger about.

I think of Jon Acuff’s great post a few weeks ago and his statement that “Now is awesome.” I remember the feeling those three words inflicted that day when I read them. The guilty I used for beating myself up.

Because I’m counting down days and can’t wait to get home where it’s summertime and English-speaking and I can sleep in my big huge bed and fill up my big huge refrigerator and drive down the street in my white minivan to go visit my friends I have not hugged in so many months.

“But don’t miss here for the longing of there.”

I know it. I’ve heard. I have tried to live inside this truth. The here and now will never be again.

But still. Sometimes I just want to be through the here and now and move on to the next one.

Don’t get me wrong. I love that I’m here. Would not change it for the world. I will miss so much about it, too. Especially my two foreverlong friends.

And the time around the table at dinner when the phone doesn’t ring and none of us has a distraction pulling us away from our togetherness.

I will actually miss the walking. And the bus rides probably too.

But I can’t stop feeling like I did when my kids were little and I so badly wanted to soak it all up for everything it was worth. Because, you know, they would only be toddlers for such a short time. And I didn’t want to miss it.

Then the truth would hit that my daughter had pooped in her pants or thrown up all over the bed. Or one of them would scream on the way out of Target because I didn’t let her put her own coat on. (Yes. I used to be a terrible mom.)

And, well, the here and now during those moments of rage or disgust or downright icky were less than awesome.

The real truth about here? It’s awesome, yes. But sometimes it’s hard and the hope of what’s next is better than the amazing of right here.

So I’ve decided to give myself a break and be okay with being ready to go home in less than 8 weeks.

And you know what? It’s helping me find the awesome of here before it’s gone forever.