People on Both Shores

Everybody has told you what to do and every one of them is fond of you.

The ones here say stay. They talk about the children's schooling and the healthcare and the fact that you have built something over eleven years, and all of that is true.

The ones there say come home. They talk about your mother's age and about the boy not knowing his cousins and about a way of living that you have described to them as being better and which you do believe is better in several respects.

Both sets are right about the things they mention.

And here is what you have started to notice, and it is not a comfortable thing to have noticed.

The ones here who tell you to stay are mostly people who also left, and some of them are not entirely settled about it. The ones there who tell you to come home are mostly people who stayed, and one or two of them have said things over the years that suggest they have wondered.

Which means that when you decide, you will not simply be deciding about your family. You will be handing one of those groups a piece of evidence about their own life.

You have felt that on both sides of the phone. It is not manipulation, and none of them would recognize the description. It is just that a decision like yours is never heard by anybody as being only about you.

What this page will not do

I am not going to tell you whether to go. I do not know your family, your circumstances, your immigration position, or what your wife thinks, and any of those alone would make advice from a stranger irresponsible.

I am going to say the practical part. If there are legal or financial consequences to either choice, get proper advice from somebody qualified, in both places, before you commit to anything. That is not a lack of faith. It is what a man does who is responsible for other people.

I am not going to say anything about people who leave or people who stay. Both are honorable and this site is not going to pronounce on it.

What I will do is take one weight off the decision, and it is a weight nobody put there deliberately.

You are not disloyal to anybody by deciding either way. Scripture says the Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart, Psalm 34:18, and it makes no exception for a heart divided between two countries, and the Holy Spirit is on that headland with a man being advised by people who love him.

The verse guides the ones who are not certain

There is a line in Psalm 25 that has an unexpected qualification in it.

The meek will he guide in judgment: and the meek will he teach his way.Psalm 25:9

The meek. Not the decisive, not the strong-minded, and not the ones who have worked it out.

It is worth knowing what that word carries, because in English it has come to mean timid and it does not. It describes somebody who is not asserting, who is genuinely open to being directed, and who has not already decided what the answer should be.

That is a description of a man who does not know, and who is not pretending to know, and who is prepared to be told something he was not expecting.

And notice what the meek are guided in. In judgment. Not around it. They still have to judge; they still have to decide. The guidance happens inside the deciding rather than instead of it.

You have been treating not knowing as the obstacle. In this verse it is the qualification.

You are not disqualified from guidance by being genuinely undecided. Scripture says the meek will he guide in judgment: and the meek will he teach his way, Psalm 25:9, and the meekness is the stated condition rather than an obstacle to be cleared, and the Holy Spirit is the one who guides somebody through the deciding rather than around it.

What their advice is actually reporting

Here is the move that will make the last four months usable.

Every piece of counsel you have been given is a true report about the person giving it. That is not my opinion. Scripture stands behind it in Psalm 25:9, and the Holy Spirit brings it near.

Your uncle saying come home is telling you, accurately, that he misses you and that he thinks the years are going. That is real information about a real man and it is worth having.

Your friend here saying stay is telling you, accurately, that she found the first six years brutal and would not do them again and cannot bear the thought of you undoing what you have built. Also real, also worth having. Scripture holds that ground in Psalm 25:9, and it is the Holy Spirit who carries it into a room like this one.

Neither of them is telling you what you should do, because neither of them can, because they do not have to live your Tuesday in either country.

So stop reading the advice as instruction and start reading it as testimony. It becomes immediately useful: you now have twelve honest accounts of what both roads cost, from people who have walked one of them.

That is a considerable gift. It is simply not a verdict.

You are not obliged to satisfy anybody's account of their own life. Scripture says every man shall bear his own burden, Galatians 6:5, and it makes each person's road their own rather than a referendum on anybody else's, and the Holy Spirit is at work in a man who has stopped hearing testimony as instruction.

The thing nobody on either shore can tell you

There is one input in this decision that neither group has, and it is the deciding one.

Your wife. Your children, to the extent that they can say anything. And what you actually want, which you have not said out loud to anybody in four months because saying it would look like a decision. This rests on Scripture in Psalm 25:9, and on the Holy Spirit who makes what is written a living thing.

That is worth noticing. You have taken twelve people's views and you have not stated your own, even privately, even to your wife, and part of the reason is that the moment you say it, one shore is disappointed. Scripture already said it in Psalm 25:9, and the Holy Spirit is the one doing the work, not the sentence.

Say it anyway, to her, tonight, as a sentence beginning I think I want. Not as a decision; as information, which is the only thing anybody else has given you.

And then decide together, which is the only unit that actually has to live in this.

You are not the only one who should be deciding this. Scripture says two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labor, Ecclesiastes 4:9, and the reward is described as belonging to two people working together, and the Holy Spirit is present in a conversation between two people who will both live in the result.