Category: repat

Speaking of “Coming Home”

2057958540_c80ea35181_m-1Last year I posted Carla Williams’ “Silences,” about how missionaries express themselves without using words, “about what faith looks like in the failures. Not in the everyday, stumble-and-move-on failures, but in the ones that knock you to your knees and change the course of the rest of your life.”

Recently, Carla wrote an article for Team Expansion‘s Tell magazine, titled “Coming ‘Home’: When Missionaries Come off the Field.” This time she used the words of former missionaries to share their thoughts on returning to the States. Here is some of what they came up with:

“We tried to change the factors and could not. I had arrived at the point that I cared more about being a missionary than I cared about my family. Ministering at the expense of your family isn’t really what God had in mind.”

“You know yourself, but you don’t know yourself here.”

“It was difficult to hear some people suggest ideas right away. We were numb and not in a good state to make big decisions.”

“I have to figure out I can explain this to someone who’s never done this and they’re just not going to understand the depths of emotion and the heights and lows that come with coming back.”

“In the moment of everything happening, it feels like such a heavy burden. We felt guilty that we weren’t following through with what we told people we would do. We felt like failures. But in the end, we can appreciate everything that we learned and did and can see how much more effective it has made us in the ways we are able to serve now. Coming back to the US wasn’t the end. In a lot of ways, it was just the beginning.”

Read the entire article in the latest Tell for more, including a discussion of why missionaries leave the field and what can be done to help them once they return.

I’m grateful to Carla for inviting Team Expansion repats—including my wife and me—to give their input for the article. And she even included my poem “Back in the States after Being Gone for a Long Time” as part of the issue.

Sometimes I need someone to listen to my silence. Sometimes I need someone to listen to my words.

(Carla Williams, “Coming ‘Home’: When Missionaries Come off the Field,” Tell, Fall 2012, pp 24-27)

[photo: “Make up chyer mind, please,” by Nikki, used under a Creative Commons license]

Regrets and Remembrances: A Prayer for Those Who Leave Home

With one plane ride the whole world as TCKs have known it can die. Every important place they’ve been, every tree climbed, pet owned, and virtually every close friend they’ve made are gone with the closing of the airplane door.
—David Pollock and Ruth Van Reken, Third Culture Kids

5420666395_e086b79cf9_mThis closing door doesn’t just happen to Third Culture Kids. It’s also the experience of immigrants who leave behind many what-could-have-beens in their old country. Cross-cultural workers feel the door close when they leave their work and return “home.” (What other job requires you to leave the country once you’re no longer on the payroll?) International students close the door with the hopes that new opportunities will open many more. And refugees often see the door slammed and locked by soldiers carrying guns.

5420666545_cd2c078381_mBut while the door is closed, the mind is still open to thoughts about what was left behind. Some thoughts are joyous and life giving. Some are hurtful and life stealing. And often they come intricately, painfully intertwined, called up by a scent, a word, a sound, a flavor, a feeling or a dream. Bittersweet.

For those who find themselves on the other side of a closed door, I offer this prayer, inspired by Reinhold Niebuhr’s “Serenity Prayer.”

God, grant me the confidence to let go of the regrets that I should not hold on to,
The ability to hold on to the memories I should not let go of,
And the wisdom to separate the one from the other. Amen.

(David C. Pollock and Ruth E. Van Reken, Third Culture Kids: Growing Up among Worlds, Boston: Nicholas Brealey, 2009)

[illustrations: (upper) “Joined” and (lower) “Cupped“) by Pete Hobden, used under a Creative Commons license]

Eleven Tips for Helping Someone with Cross-Cultural Transitional Loss

7016973613_ded8a0eac1_mIf you want to help people in transition—cultural, geographic, and vocational transition—then you’ll need to deal with the grief that comes with their losses. Here’s a great resource for that, A LifeCare Guide to Helping Others Cope with Grief. (LifeCare is a leading provider of “work-life services.”) While this publication is aimed at comforting people who have lost a loved one, the advice it gives can be applied to those with cross-cultural transitional loss as well.

It opens with the second half of this quotation from Henri Nouwen, from Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life:

[W]hen we honestly ask ourselves which persons in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief or bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.

Here are eleven tips from Helping Others Cope with Grief to guide us in being that “friend who cares.” Each one is followed by a short excerpt to help explain the idea. I have, when necessary, replaced some words (in brackets) in order to to apply the advice to people experiencing loss due to cross-cultural transition—a group including all cross-cultural workers, their parents and family left back “home,” Third Culture Kids, expats, and repats:

  1. Mention the [lost relationships, places, and things], and acknowledge your awareness of the loss.
    . . . . Many people avoid mentioning the [loss], fearing it will remind the grieving person of his or her pain. . . . [B]ut behaving as if you don’t remember or are unaware of your [friend’s] pain often leaves him or her feeling very alone.
  2. Listen to your [friend].
    . . . . The most important thing you can offer someone who is grieving is your ability to listen without judgment. A good rule to follow is to listen 80 percent of the time and talk 20 percent. . . .
  3. Insist that your [friend] see a doctor if he or she exhibits signs of depression.
    Intense grief can lead to depression. If your friend seems unusually depressed or withdrawn, suggest that he or she seek professional help. . . .
  4. Encourage your [friend] to make wise choices.
    Urge the person who is grieving to pay attention to his or her own needs, and make choices accordingly. . . .
  5. Offer practical help; don’t wait to be asked.
    . . . . Make specific offers several times, and encourage your friend to take you up on your offers. Avoid phrases such as, “Let me know if I can help.” Usually, he or she won’t let you know for fear of imposing on you. . . .
  6. Remember that grieving is a long process.
    The person you care about may be grieving for a long time. Several months or more after the transition, he or she may actually be feeling the loss more acutely, and much of his or her support system will have backed off. . . .
  7. Offer your companionship.
    Your presence can be comforting to a grieving [friend]; you don’t have to do anything special. Often, grieving people just do not want to be alone.
  8. Don’t minimize the loss.
    Be careful not to say, “I know exactly how you feel.” . . . Instead, use statements such as, “I know this is difficult,” . . .  or some other statement that is heartfelt and accurate, but leaves room for the uniqueness of your [friend’s] experience.
  9. Encourage your [friend] to share his or her feelings.
    Avoid saying things like, “Be strong for…” or “Don’t cry.” This sends the message that you are uncomfortable with your [friend’s] intense feelings and, therefore, you will leave him or her emotionally alone. . . . Instead, encourage your [friend] by saying, “It’s okay to cry,” or “You don’t have to be so strong.”
  10. Help your [friend] create new traditions/rituals/activities.
    . . . . Holidays and other events filled with tradition can . . . be especially hard to deal with; try to help your [friend] discover new ways to experience these events. At the same time, he or she should be encouraged to cherish the memories and/or traditions associated with the [people and places no longer close by].
  11. Give advice cautiously.
    Avoid offering advice with phrases such as, “You should…” or “You need to….” . . . . Instead, give advice that encourages the grieving person to trust him or herself and make choices based on his or her needs, rather than on what others think he or she should be doing or feeling.

(A LifeCare Guide to Helping Others Cope with Grief, LifeCare, 2001)
[photo: “B,” by Eugene’s Likeness, used under a Creative Commons license]

Better the Disappointment You Know?

Just last week, my wife and I watched Last Chance Harvey (2008) for the umpteenth time—well, maybe not the umpteenth time, but at least the umpth time. It evokes some particular emotions for us, as we first watched it on a plane ride back to the States during our time in Asia. We were coming back with some disappointments, and the movie—especially a conversation near the end—resonated with each of us. If you’re not familiar with the story, here’s a short synopsis, leading up to that exchange:

Harvey Shine (Dustin Hoffman) is a down-on-his-luck jingle writer from New York, flying to London for his daughter’s wedding. Kate Walker (Emma Thompson) is a Heathrow employee with the tedious job of interviewing travelers. Their first meeting begins with Kate’s attempts to ask Harvey the questions on her clipboard. It ends with Harvey rudely brushing her off.

Not only are things going poorly for Harvey on the job front, but he later finds out that his daughter has chosen her stepfather to walk her down the aisle—and there are obviously some family skeletons that reside in Harvey’s closet.

Things begin to look up, though, when Harvey meets up with Kate the next day at a Heathrow bar. Harvey has just missed his flight back to the States, and Kate is using a novel as an escape from failed blind dates and phone calls from her mother, with whom she lives.

Over the next several hours, Harvey and Kate begin to enjoy each other’s company, and they even see glimpses of a happy future together. The two attend Harvey’s daughter’s wedding reception and then wander around London, ending up at the fountains at Somerset House. They agree to meet there again at noon the next day. A spirited climb up his hotel steps puts Harvey in the hospital, just long enough to keep him from making the appointment. Not knowing the cause, Kate is crushed at having her emotions stood up . . . again.

Harvey tracks Kate down, even though she no longer wants to see him. She is wounded and fears being wounded even more. As Harvey tries to convince her that she should give their relationship a chance, they have their pivotal conversation, in which Kate says,

I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to do it, because it’ll hurt. . . . and I won’t do it. . . .

You see, what I think it is, is . . . is that I think I’m more comfortable with being disappointed. I think I’m angry with you for trying to take that away.

Since we were escorting our five children across the Pacific, my wife and I were separated during our flight, catching pieces of movies on our individual screens in between naps and meals. Sometime later during the trip, our youngest was asleep and we got to sit together for a while. We’d both watched Last Chance Harvey, and we both remembered what Kate had said. At the time we understood that even though disappointment is painful, it can become more comfortable than hoping for miracles and risking deeper loss. Maybe that’s why we continue to watch the film from time to time. . . because we still understand that. And when fear accompanies hope, as it often does, we do our best to press on, more guarded, but pressing on.

Last Chance Harvey doesn’t end with “happily ever after,” but it does end with a hopeful beginning. Harvey decides to stay longer in London, and Kate agrees to open her heart to the possibilities with him. As the two start down this new road together, Harvey remembers their first encounter and asks Kate to continue the interview that she’d started with him at the airport. She does:

“Name?” she asks.

He replies, “Harvey Shine.”

“Place of residence?”

“I’m in transition.”

Here’s the trailer:

And here’s a “Back Stage interview with Thompson and Hoffman, in which they talk about the mood and personality of the movie. When discussing the on-screen relationship between the two characters and how that was reflected in the film-making process, Hoffman says,

I always said that you always know who your friends are [. . . .] Your really good friends are the people that you can sit at a table with and not talk [. . . .] And we said, whatever the specialness about that relationship was, could we do this movie like that?

[photo: “Yellow Point: Somerset House Fountains,” by Tania Caruso, used under a Creative Commons license]

Conversation: noun, “a turning with”

Steve Smith, author of The Jesus Life and co-founder of Potter’s Inn, recently wrote in his blog,

[I]n the course of life’s seasons, we need to have spiritual conversations with people who are good listeners. Let me be clear here, most people are not good listeners. They listen for facts not feelings. They listen for what they hope to hear. They listen when it may not cost them something.

A spiritual conversation is a reciprocal dialogue between two people where thoughts, opinions and feelings are shared and received. It’s two-way. Not one way.

People who have gone through major transitions—and others who have encountered loss—need good listeners. But what is necessary to be someone who listens well, to be someone who nurtures spiritual conversations? How about compassion and empathy and comfort?

Following is a list of words that I associate with good listeners. We all know what the words mean, but we’ve become fairly complacent in using them. Therefore, as a way to jumpstart our thinking and to help us do a better job of living them out, I’m pairing them with the literal meanings from their origins (with the help of the  Online Etymology Dictionary and other resources). My intent is not to “correct” their modern definitions but simply to give depth to what we already know.

For instance, today a companion is a friend or partner. But the word companion is formed from two parts that originally meant “with” and “bread.” So a companion was someone who shared a meal with another. Even now we understand the link between sharing food and sharing our hearts. Here’s what Smith says about companionship:

I wrote in The Jesus Life that spiritual conversations take place at the table where we eat our meals. . . . It’s never an intent when you ask someone for lunch–to share protein, carbs and water with someone. No, when you ask someone for lunch, you’re really meaning, “Hey, let’s get together so we can share what’s been going on in our lives. It’s been too long. How about next Tuesday at noon at the deli?”  That’s the stuff of conversations where hearts connect and souls meet and people who are lonely become spiritual companions.

Now, here’s the rest of my list:

acknowledge: “to admit understanding or knowing”
from a blending of Old English on, “into,” and cnawan, “recognize,” with Middle English knowlechen “admit”

affirm: “to strengthen”
from Latin ad, “to,” plus firmare, “make firm”

advocate: “someone called to help or plead”
Latin ad plus vocare, for “to” and “to call”

comfort: “to strengthen much”
Late Latin com, “very,” and fortis, “strong”

commiserate: “to lament with”
from Latin com, “with,” and miserari, “to feel pity”

communicate: “to make common”
from Latin commun, “common,” plus the verb suffix icare

companion: “eating partner”
Latin com, “with,” and panis, “bread, food”

compassion: “a suffering with”
Latin com and pati, meaning “with” and “to suffer”

concern: “a sifting” or “comprehension”
from Latin com, “with,” and cernere, “to sift”

condolence: “a sorrowing with”
from Late Latin com, “with,” and dolere, “to grieve”

confide: “to trust strongly”
Latin com plus fidere, meaning “very” and “to trust”

console: “to give much comfort or solace”
from Latin com, “very,” and solari, “to comfort”

contact: “to touch with”
from Latin com, “together,” and tangere, “to touch”

conversation: “a turning with”
Latin com, meaning “with,” and vertare, meaning “turn about”

empathy: “a feeling in”
Greek en and pathos, meaning “in” and “feeling”

encourage: “to add heart or bravery”
Old French en, “make, put in,” and corage, “heart, innermost feelings”

sympathy: “a feeling together”
Greek syn, “together,” plus pathos, “feeling”

understand: “to stand in the midst of”
Old English under, “between, among,” plus stand

May we better understand these ideas and, in so doing, better understand each other. May we put them into practice. May we all become better companions . . . and better listeners.

(Steve Smith, “The Power of a Spiritual Conversation,” Steve and Gwen Smith, September 26, 2012)

[photo: “61098,” by Drew Herron, used under a Creative Commons license]

Departures and Repatriations: Crossing the Great Divide

“Never die in Taiwan.”

That’s what the poor man at the American Institute in Taiwan said. AIT serves as a de facto US embassy in Taiwan, and I was there taking care of some routine matters. Others, like the student I met who had been so excited about navigating the city in a taxi by himself that he left his backpack and passport in the cab, had more pressing issues.

The man who turned away from the window in despair, who told us all, “Never die in Taiwan,” had just presented documentation concerning his recently deceased wife. He needed to prove that she had died to show that he wasn’t trying to remove his children from the country against her wishes. This was his second or third visit, and the person behind the window was sending him back for translated copies—from Chinese to English, or from English to Chinese—or for some other paperwork that seemed impossible to obtain. The man looked so defeated. The death of a loved one overseas must truly be a distressing experience, in so many ways. I can only imagine how hard it is.

Recently I was jumping around the Web and looked up repats just to see what was out there on the repatriation process, say, for returning cross-cultural workers. One of the top sites listed was repats.com. That seemed like just what I was looking for, but the text underneath wasn’t what I expected:

Funeral Repatriations – Rapatriements funéraire – Funeraire repatriëring

So repats.com is a funeral site. That means, I thought, that repatriation must refer to sending a person’s spirit back “home,” to heaven. What an interesting use of the word. But as it turns out (as most of you probably already knew), for funeral operators, repatriation means returning the deceased’s remains to the country of origin.

Obviously, there is a lot to take care of in this kind of repatriation process: There are laws to follow, the paperwork, the physical aspect of transporting the body, the expense, the disruption of normal day-to-day life overseas, the stress and grief, and the coordination of cultural and religious customs. Avalon Repatriation Services, located in the United Kingdom, gives the following overview of some of the varied practices around the world:

  • In France for example, a body must be embalmed and placed in a wooden coffin 24 hours after death.
  • In Islamic countries, it is the widely-held belief that the deceased should be buried before sundown or within 24 hours, without embalming.
  • In the United States, embalming is common practice. In many countries—when embalming does take place—it is a qualified embalmer’s job, whereas in some countries, for example Portugal and Spain, it is against the law for anyone but a qualified doctor to undertake this procedure.
  • Those of Jewish faith believe that the body should be returned to the earth it came from and are therefore against cremation.
  • Hindus cremate their dead, believing that the burning of a dead body signifies the release of the spirit and that the flames represent Brahma, the creator.

My misunderstanding the meaning of repatriation reminds me of the Japanese film Departures, winner of the 2009 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. It tells the story of an unemployed cellist, Daigo, who answers a newspaper ad titled “Departures.” He thinks he’s applying for a travel-agency job but instead ends up taking a job as a nokanshi, someone who ceremonially prepares bodies for burial. Daigo learns the trade from Sasaki, his boss, who becomes his mentor. And Daigo learns also to overcome opposition from his family and friends and to face his own fears, finding deep meaning in his new vocation.

This is a great film. It’s been one of my family’s favorites ever since my son brought home a copy. Just listening to the theme song in the trailer reminds me of the deep emotions that are explored in the story. I think it’s about time I watched it again.

(“Catering for Different Religions,” Avalon Repatriation Services)

[photo: “Go West,” by halfrain, used under a Creative Commons license]

Live and Learn Abroad to Boost Creativity

You’ve been overseas and you’re back in the US looking for work. Not many job descriptions say that the “ideal candidate will have lived outside the US.” So what transferable qualities or skills have your experiences developed in you? How about adaptability, flexibility, resilience, and empathy?

Here’s something else you can add to your qualifications, and there’s research to back up the claim: creativity.

Finding the Relationship between Creativity and Living Cross-Culturally

A few years ago, William Maddux and Adam Galinsky conducted a series of experiments that demonstrate the link between living abroad and creativity.

  1. In the first, the pair showed that the more time a subject had spent living (though not traveling) abroad, the more likely it was for him to solve a particular puzzle. But the cause-effect relationship wasn’t clear. What if it’s simply because creative people choose more often to live abroad?
  2. The second experiment verified the results, this time using built-in controls for personality factors that are linked to creativity in order to isolate the effects of living abroad.
  3. The third study had subjects who had previously lived abroad think and write about their experiences. They were then tested, showing a temporary increase in creativity.
  4. Study number four looked at adaption to a new culture as the main driver of increased creativity. It showed that the more a person adapted, immersing herself in a culture, the higher the creativity.
  5. And, finally, the fifth study followed up by showing that subjects with past living-abroad experience who then imagined and wrote about adapting to a foreign culture exhibited higher levels of creativity in a subsequent exercise.

(William Maddux and Adam Galinsky, “Cultural Borders and Mental Barriers: The Relationship between Living Abroad and Creativity,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, May 2009)

Wanting to Live Abroad Isn’t the Same

As described in a recent article in Pacific Standard, researchers at the University of Florida, Gainesville, further validated the idea that studying abroad increases creativity, rather than vice versa. The study, by Christine Lee, David Therriault, and Tracy Linderholm, looked at three groups of students: those who had studied abroad, those who were planning to study abroad, and those who had not nor were planning to study abroad. The first group scored higher than the other two in levels of creative thinking, suggesting that it’s the actual experience of living overseas, rather than a personality type that is inclined to do so.

(Tom Jacobs, “To Boost Creativity, Study Abroad,” Pacific Standard, August 6, 2012; Christine Lee, David Therriault, and Tracy Linderholm, abstract of “On the Cognitive Benefits of Cultural Experience: Exploring the Relationship between Studying Abroad and Creative Thinking,” Applied Cognitive Psychology, July 2012)

Diversification and Flexibility

In the abstract to their research published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, researchers from the Netherlands and California note that “past research has linked creativity to unusual and unexpected experiences, such as early parental loss or living abroad.” Their experiments suggest that it is the “diversifying” aspect of these experiences that brings about great “cognitive flexibility.”

(Simone Ritter, et al., abstract of “Diversifying Experiences Enhance Cognitive Flexibility,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, July 2012)

Learning the Whys of Culture Helps Even More

Back to Maddux and Galinsky, this time joined by Hajo Adam. Working on the idea that adapting to a new culture brings about novel ways of thinking, the researchers asked, “What is it about adaptation to foreign environments that is critical for facilitating the creative process?” They hypothesized that it is learning about a foreign culture in a multicultural setting that boosts creativity, To test this, the researchers assembled a group of university students in Paris who had previously lived abroad. They then “primed” part of the group by having them think and write about a time when they had learned about another culture. Others in the group did the same about a time of learning about their own culture. As predicted, the first group scored higher in a followup test of creativity.

The three then focused on “functional learning,” or “learning about the underlying reasons for observed foreign rituals, rules, and behaviors.” Subsequent experiments showed that creativity increased even more when the priming focused on not only on learning something new about another culture but learning when the subjects were actually able to find out the reason behind the cultural differences.

(William Maddux, Hajo Adam, and Adam Galinsky, “When in Rome . . . Learn Why the Romans Do What They Do: How Multicultural Learning Experiences Facilitate Creativity,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, June 2010)

Boosting Your Resume in a Globalized World

So, in review, if you want to develop your creativity, here’s the plan:

  1. live overseas
  2. adapt to another culture
  3. learn about that culture
  4. and learn why a culture is the way it is

In an article posted by the Kellogg School of Management, Maddux tells the American Psychological Association that their research

may have something to say about the increasing impact of globalization on the world, a fact that has been hammered home by the recent financial crisis. Knowing that experiences abroad are critical for creative output makes study abroad programs and job assignments in other countries that much more important, especially for people and companies that put a premium on creativity and innovation to stay competitive.

(Audrey Hamilton, “Living Outside the Box: New Research by Kellogg Professor Adam Galinsky Suggests That Living Abroad Boosts Creativity,” Kellogg School of Management, April 23, 2009)

[photo: “Globeism,” by Joel Ormsby, used under a Creative Commons license]

Silences, by Carla Williams

During our time in Taipei, my family and I served as missionaries with Team Expansion. Carla Williams, Team Expansion’s Creative Arts Writer, wrote the following a couple years ago for Window’s into the World, and she has allowed me to reprint it here. It is a reflection on years of meetings with missionaries, and on one conversation in particular. It speaks for those of us who often run out of words but still have much to say. 

I want to talk about the silences. I want to talk about the pained glances shared between husband and wife when I asked questions that hurt just a little too much. I want to talk about what faith looks like in the failures. Not in the everyday, stumble-and-move-on failures, but in the ones that knock you to your knees and change the course of the rest of your life.

I want to talk about the silence that filled the room when I asked the young couple sitting in front of me what they thought they did well while they were in the country they’d just left. The silence of insecurity. The silence of painful memories. The silence of doubt.

I want to talk about the silence that was the result of the question, “How is God affirming you right now?” The silence of seeking. The silence of uncertainty. The silence of battered hope.

Those silences are honest. They are full of all that is not being said. They are almost too loud.

I’ve heard countless stories of victory.  God calls people out of the complacency of their lives and pushes them toward a fruitful life of adventure and faith.  They have their struggles and their challenges, and even some very dark times, but in the end, those are stories of hope—of knowing what God called them to do and faithfully pursuing it. And there’s affirmation and joy and a sense of purpose. These are beautiful stories—stories that should be told over and over. These stories inspire and encourage.

But these aren’t the only stories.

There are also stories of bitterness, burnout, and arrogance. Sometimes, people sit in front of me angry, tired, and frustrated. But their stories are not full of silences. They are overflowing with words—issues to be talked out and resolved, fingers to be pointed, faults to be listed, and hopefully—peace to be restored. These stories are hard, but they’re not the ones I want to talk about.

I want to talk about the quiet couple who sat in front of me, with their eyes looking intently at the floor, their very presence conveying the wounds they were suffering. They’d eagerly and prayerfully moved where they wholeheartedly believed God wanted them to be. They’d fallen in love with an unreached people group. They’d invested years of their life into pioneering a ministry in one of the most spiritually dark parts of the world. They had been obedient and faithful. And they’d failed. Or, at least, that’s how it seemed to them.

And so, they sat in front of me. Cautiously and painfully looking behind, as if looking at a fresh wound under a thin bandage. And even more carefully peering into the future. Not knowing how yesterday’s pain was going to shape tomorrow’s journey.

With all the pain of having sought the will of God and having it bring them to an unspeakable valley, they answered my gentle questions. But it wasn’t in their words that I learned about their persistent hope in the face of the raging storm. It wasn’t in their words that I discovered their unfaltering desire to keep going. It wasn’t their words that revealed the faithfulness of the broken.

It was in the silences.

(Carla Williams, “Silences,” Windows into the World: True Stories about Team Expansion Workers around the World,” June 15, 2010)

[photo: “Simple Silhouette—Busy Delancey,” by leonem, used under a Creative Commons license]