The experts call it culture stress. It’s the effect of living in an environment different from your own. Sometimes people withdraw, sometimes they get angry—in short they begin to act and react differently than they normally would. I’d say that husband dear and I have done fairly well preparing for and recognizing this stress. After all, we have both lived for extended amounts of time in different cultures before. But then we have never done it together, married, with three small children…and sometimes it can creep up on you--like the other night. I, husband dear and our three lovely children had spent a delightful evening picnicking on the beach. When we left it was late, we were tired and trying to find our way home.
Before I continue you should know that I am, unfortunately, not that much of a help with directions and maps. Thankfully, husband dear has a great sense of direction, normally, and can manage just fine without my help in this arena. However, we’re in a new city, different country, and my husband’s navigation system is still being established, translation: we were a little lost. Husband dear asks me to help with the map while he drives. Our new country has few lights and many round-abouts, which personally I like because if you can’t figure out which direction you should go in you can just keep going around till you do. Husband dear does not see it this way. The down side to round-abouts is that it’s hard to do a quick U-turn because they are spaced fairly far apart.
Long story short, we missed our road, comments were made, and we started arguing about whose fault it was and who was being unfair to whom, etc., etc. Usually these kinds of squabbles are short-lived with us, but this one was not getting resolved. Even after husband dear apologized I still wasn’t ready to let the argument go. And then out of the back seat, my four year old starts to belt out a song she made up on the fly (I assume—I’ve never heard it before) and it goes something like this, “You can forgive anytime you want, all you have to do is forgive, you can forgive anytime you want…”
Talk about convicted! What a blessing we do not face culture stress alone. =)
