A Matter of Perspective

It's funny the things you miss when you are living in a new and very different culture.  Some of our culture shock issues have nothing to do with Singapore culture but rather with living in a big city verses our quiet country living that we are used to.

  I miss having my cup of coffee in the morning with the sun rising over the lake from our couch back in Wisconsin.

We miss the beauty of our flower beds

We miss watching a storm come in from the back yard, it is so peaceful to watch a storm come in

We realize that we take for granted the every day pleasures that God has blessed us with in His creation like the view from our living room.

In the midst of culture shock it seems that we have traded all of these peaceful blessings for noise, traffic, construction, people everywhere, concrete and steel.

But have we really traded it?  I think it is all a matter of perspective and we need to choose to see the beauty of God's creation right here in Singapore. 

After all there are flowers,

opportunities to watch a storm come in,

moments to enjoy a peaceful and tranquil view,

and there is even coffee, good coffee in Singapore

But.... one thing we  find that we miss and I actually find it strange that we miss them because we do not eat a lot of them .... dill pickles.  We have not been able to find dill pickles in the grocery stores here.

 So we will improvise.  I found a baby dill plant at the grocery store and replanted it into a larger pot, it is now yielding some great smelling dill.

and today that great smelling dill is making us some refrigerator dill pickles, not exactly Milwaukee Midgets, but dill pickles, that we will enjoy

The things we enjoy in life is really a matter of perspective, God is at work in our lives here in Singapore just as He was in Wisconsin and we need to choose to see the beauty around us.  In the mean time as we are learning this lesson we will enjoy our pickles and try to keep things in perspective.