I’ve been slowly frantically erratically researching the next steps for our overseas move. Luckily, I noticed a denial button on my laptop—it’s in the top right hand corner of each online window, marked with an “X.” My process and key search terms:

Airport and international travel with children: look for a forum on surviving an international flight with four children, followed by an unspecified time in a hotel, adjusting to the time change, while making coherent decisions about such small matters as taking a driving test, finding housing, and buying cars. Hyperventilate….Press denial button and decide to move on to something else.

Housing: the story is the same on every source. We can’t find out anything until we survive, I mean arrive on our overseas flight. We are at the mercy of the housing counselor and availability. Luckily, he or she is at the mercy of God. Shrug and know that I can’t do anything about it. Pray that we get a house near the middle school with a fenced yard, but I know God will put us where we need to be. Weird, but this is the part I don’t worry about.

Humidity: clicking away from the housing link, I notice a forum on mold…I try not to read, but it appears that mold will take over our lives, furniture, and home while in Okinawa. Cringe and try not to dwell on the fact that our household goods have already arrived in Okinawa and are probably well into stage 3 mold. Rust will take over the rest. Great! I bet I can drop another couple thousand pounds or so before we come back in three years. Press denial button by promising myself to buy dehumidifiers and clean them as often as possible. Apparently I can allow God to choose my housing, but I don’t believe He can handle mold? Is this covered in the passage about “life is a vapor?”

Language: I have been taking (or should I say FAILING) the Rosetta Stone course for Japanese. I am three units in and the only words I know are boy (otokonoko), girl (onnanoko), bread (pan), and juice (juuis). I need to attack this from a different angle, as I keep asking myself, what part of speech is THAT word? Pete’s sake! Can I get a Latin or Greek cognate? I haven’t even begun to look at Kanji characters yet. I guess if I am starving, I can ask for bread and juice, or if I lose my kids I can shout boy and girl. Excellent progress. Denial button.

Neighbors: Stumbled upon a site with all sorts of alarming animals and insects who might visit us in Oki. Habu snakes (What do you mean they don’t have rattles? Sheesh, at least the rattlesnakes here come with a warning mechanism), brown recluse spiders (we know you from CA and AZ), blue-ringed octopus (dark yellow with iridescent blue rings in its eye spots, which are said to glow when it is aggravated, according to the article), jellyfish, rockfish, lionfish…. The list goes on. The article closes with this advice: “practice the look-but-don’t-touch method.” Riiiiiiight. You don’t have to tell me twice…the kids? Denial button. I hope they don’t go over all this in the kids’ information brief, because Memphis will suffer a coronary on the spot, then clutch her chest as she wears the instructor out with her questions and “what if” scenarios.

 Most days I am still excited for this tour which will begin in one short month. We are going to get to flex our faith and flexibility muscles. There’s so little I can control except my attitude, and darn if that isn’t a beast as formidable as  any irritated, glowing blue-eyed octopus.