I just want to say a big thank you to all of you who reached out to me last week. I was overwhelmed by the messages and the love I received, and most of all by all those prayers sent up on my behalf.

I could sense the power of prayers surrounding me on Wednesday and the following days. In the hospital on Wednesday, things went as quickly as they possibly could have - I spent some 6 hours there before I was sent home. On Thursday, I didn't need painkillers any more, and I felt strangely energised. On Friday, I took a long walk in Stockholm's old town (and unintentionally got stuck in the crowd celebrating the king's golden jubilee) - 12 000 steps. And although I felt weaker and had more pain over the weekend, I have still been able to visit some lovely church members, we've been helping out at the renovation of our "church home", and on Saturday evening my father-in-law taught me how to bake proper British scones. :)

The sadness I feel is not on a surface level but somewhere deep down. 12 weeks is a time long enough to get used to an idea of a completely different future. It is a time long enough to start imagining what that little boy or a girl would be like. So, when things end abruptly, you have to take on the hard work of re-imagining life, the work of going back to the way things were before, of erasing all the pictures from your head of what could have been. It's very strange. 

It still hurts my brain to think about future. 

Other than that, I'm fine. I'm not depressed, I'm not crying myself to sleep, I'm not isolating myself from the world. I'm back to work again - a sermon needs to be written today and a Bible study needs to be prepared. It is good to do meaningful things.   

--

I found this poem a little while ago, and it resonated with me. And I can't help - every time I read this, I think about all those people in my life who are dealing or have dealt with major losses themselves. May these words help us see the wonderful stars in the middle of a dark night:

Two Sides of a Coin

It's as if we walked on water

It's roughly a year since I started working in Sweden. And it is only now that I begin to realise how very different my work here is, compared to the work I did in Estonia. Looking back at that first year, the things that make me the happiest are the things that I was never able to experience - for different reasons - in Estonia. My involvement on the local church level was limited there. Here, on the other hand, I have been able to take part in and experience all the different aspects of pastoral life. 

I call them The Big Four - a funeral, a wedding, a child dedication, a baptism. For the first time in my life, I have been able to do all of them. I had my first funeral early in spring, my first baptism in August, and my first child dedication and wedding now, in the beginning of September. Plus, I have also been able - again, for the first time ever - to take part in serving at the Lord's table. Like someone asked me when I told them this - what did you do in Estonia?

I didn't expect these things to mean so much to me. It has taken me by surprise that the services of The Big Four have touched me so deeply. It is a very special privilege to serve people at the happiest and saddest moments of their life, to break the bread and share the cup, to remember the Lord's death, to say an encouraging word when it is needed, to be in the long line of generations of Christians over hundreds and thousands of years who have taken part in these ecclesiastical services. It is nothing short of a miracle for me that I have been able to do these things and even if my work changed one day - maybe we will go back to Estonia one day? - I will treasure these moments dearly.

But of course, every coin has two sides, every equation has two sides. There are moments when I can serve others, do something meaningful for them, and then there are moments when I really need others to serve me, to do something for me that I can't do myself. 

Right now it is me who needs people to take care of and serve me. There is no nice way of putting it so I might just as well blurt it out - I am in the middle of my second miscarriage. This time we made it a little further, until the 12th week ultrasound. The baby was there, heartbeats weren't. Now, after three separate doctors have confirmed there is no sign of life inside me, I have to go to the hospital tomorrow (Wednesday) and go through the rest of the miscarriage there as they keep an eye on me, ready to help if need be.

If you are a praying type, please say a prayer for me tomorrow. I would appreciate it very much.

And that't the miracle of the church community. It is only by serving and supporting each other whenever the need arises that we know we will make it. And we will make it.   

Bottomless Well of Wisdom

We celebrated our first wedding anniversary yesterday which means that we have now legitimately become a bottomless well of experience and wisdom. But seriously speaking, one year is a time long enough to experience and learn some things. Not overtly much, but some. Yesterday evening after the church service and a lovely lunch at B & S, we sat on the seaside rocks in Grisslehamn, the place where S. took me on our first date two years ago. And we talked about the stuff we have learnt over the past year. Here are some of these things I have learnt:

1. Try and marry a really nice and kind and good-hearted guy, a guy who is not only nice and kind and good-hearted on the first date but also on moments when he is tired, hungry or irritated. That's the best thing one can do and this one, praise be to God, I have nailed.

2. Learn to know each others' love languages. I thought it was more like a mental exercise when we discussed it during our pre-marital counseling but I have found, with surprise, that it actually matters very much. There is a lot of silent beauty in the relationship when you know how your spouse tells you he/she loves you. I know that S's love language is quality time, so all our Sunday hiking trips and museum visits in Stockholm and discolfing and swimming are more than what they seem. They are his wordless way of telling me that he cares for me and loves me. And that makes all the difference in the world for me. 

3. Bad mood happens occasionally but it doesn't have to reign supreme. It is possible to control it.

4. Give space and air. I married a fully developed adult human being with his own habits and life patterns so the silliest thing for me would be to try to make him just like myself in every aspect of life. He has his own ways of doing things, I have mine, and that's okay. 

5. Some things in us that come from childhood have roots so deep that they are almost impossible to change. In that sense, a similar family dynamics and upbringing may help a lot. One of our differences that comes from my family of origin and has come up for about 87 times over the past year is our eating habits. From very early childhood, my mom hammered into us the knowledge that one does not eat in between the meals and especially, after dinner. And it is hugely difficult for me to break that habit. It just goes so deep. There have been some silly moments when S is like, hey, I bought some chips, let's have a movie night. And I'm like, *gulp* honey, I can't eat, it's way past dinner time. It sounds ridiculous but that's how it is. And only with telling myself that this is important that I eat those chips with him and that it counts as quality time, I have - for a handful of times - been able to break with my habit.  

6. Laugh together.

7. Try to make a difference in your head between things that are important and things that are not important.

8. Silence is okay. 

9. Keep your hobbies going. 

10. Shared faith and principles are a huge thing. It means a world to me that we can go to the church together, that we both put all work aside on Sabbath, that we take part in communion together, that we can pray together, that we have the same Christian hope... Just the other day, we were at the cemetery where my mom is resting, and I told S how much I missed her and how I couldn't wait for Jesus to come back and take us home. I could not picture a life where I wouldn't be able to express and share my deepest Christian longing with my husband like this. So, I am counting my blessings.

I hope the next year will bring new insights and wisdom.

How it started

How it's going

In a New League

One thing that has deeply impressed me about life in Sweden is the amount of time people spend outdoors. In Estonia, spending time in nature is much more random and less systematic. It's like, hey it's a nice summer evening today, why don't we go and have a bbq. But here it looks like everyone is out with all weathers and seasons, hiking, kayaking, ice-skating or camping. Everybody seems to have a whole wardrobe of quality clothes and shoes plus other equipment needed for winter and summer, rain and snow, water and dry land.

The ice-skating club in Stockholm that S. is a part of has 10 000 members. Ten thousand members. These are the numbers we're talking about. Crazy. 

I'm slowly adding items to my wardrobe, trying to catch up with everyone else. 

We have been out hiking as much as possible, which means almost every Sunday. Because, firstly, the nature here is amazing, secondly, we don't get enough steps in the middle of the week, and thirdly, it's just a fun way to have quality time together. I do my best to guard my Sundays from all sorts of meetings and obligations, and I also do my best to guard them from lazying around. Because in the end of a day when you haven't done anything, you feel kind of sorry and wish you had done something. 

So we go out. 

S. mostly decides where we go because during the lockdown he hiked through many nearby trails, therefore he knows where to go. It is very convenient to me - I have a guide and a driver and a hiking partner all in one person! What more could I ask for!

It was some 1,5 weeks ago when I gave S. a hiking guide book as a birthday present. And although we were already avid hikers before, now we play in a completely new league! Phew! I think we could become professional hikers, if such a thing existed. 

Over the long midsummer weekend, we were able to go on three half-day hikes. My phone claims that I made 48 000 steps, walked 30 km and climbed 88 storeys over these days. There were many wonderful views and wild animals, there was an ice-cream pitstop and a lunch on the rocks with fresh tomatoes all the way from my friends' farm in Estonia, there was sunshine and sweat, there was laughter and silence.

Later, back home, S. diligently noted down the details of our hikes in his book. If we could keep up the tempo of one hike a week, we would hike through the book in a year. That's a worthy goal!

What can I say? I really enjoy life in Sweden. 

Västeräng

Preaching

It was a bit more than a week ago when I had the privilege of preaching at the Young Adults' Weekend on Västeräng campsite.

Västeräng brought out all sorts of emotions and generated all sorts of thoughts in me. It's a place where maybe more than anywhere else in Sweden I have felt a bit of an outsider. Let me explain. It's nothing to do with the camp itselt or people I met there - all of this was wonderful, and everyone was super friendly! But nevertheless it is a place where the sense of past and my own historical baggage makes me feel somewhat alienated. 

The truth is - I've never experienced a place like Västeräng before.

I think the Swedish Adventist church bought Västeräng - which was just a big lake-side farm with its fields and forests - sometime in the late 1940s (please correct me if I'm wrong). So it has been a place where generations and generations of Adventists have grown up, quite literally. Just a few days before the campmeeting I had a conversation with Y. who sometimes sends me emails. I told her I was going to Västeräng to preach. She then shared with me her first childhood memory of a big tent meeting in Västeräng. Y. turned 80 a month ago... That's how old the place is. That's how deep this place goes in the collective psyche of the church.

On the other hand, in the late 1940s in Estonia no-one thought about buying a campsite for the church, all people thought about was survival. No-one dreamed about enlargening the church ministries, it was a time when church buildings were taken away from the church, when ministries were shut down, when books were copied by hand and in secret. The Estonian Adventist church has its own campsite now - bought some 5 years ago. It is a nice place with a lot of potential but without any roots. No traditions. No generational memories. No bonfire songs handed down from parents to children. 

That's why Västeräng brought out so many conflicting emotions in me. It was with wonder and awe and slight envy that I took part in the camp traditions, listened to the old funny songs sung at the bonfire on sunset, ate a big bowl of ice-cream on the last evening of a camp, canoed on the lake, and breathed in the dusty air of the old buildings. 

I will most likely always remain a bit of an outsider there. And that's perfectly fine. But I do hope that one day my own children (God willing!) would grow up, spending summers on Västeräng and breathing its air without the painful past of me and my parents' and grandparents' generations. I hope they will continue with all the traditions and songs. I may even let them eat some ice-cream on Saturday evening way past their bedtime. 😄  

It Is Finished

As most - or all - of you know, I defended my doctoral thesis on Wednesday.

This degree is probably one of the hardest things I've done in my life. Not so much study wise but just life wise. Studying while living on a college campus is easy - you get to do it full-time and with all the support you need from peers and professors. But studying while working, moving countries, getting married and generally being in the thick of life is much more difficult. Then there is no-one to tell you to take time for studying, you have to do it yourself. You have to fight for the study time. In that sense, getting through a doctoral course is a lot less about being a brilliant expert on a given topic (although, by the end of it, one should know a thing or two about one's area of research) and a lot more about the ability to stick to a project year in and year out without giving up. I have demonstrated that I can do it - I can take on a seemingly never ending project and see it to the end. It is a rewarding knowledge, truly truly.

The last months were difficult. One would think that the closer I got to the finish line the more relaxed I felt. Wrong. The closer I got the more anxious I felt. It was as if my thesis was a big balloon or a very delicate installation that kept growing bigger and therefore more fragile, so that in the end just one wrong move or an unfortunate sneeze could destroy the whole thing. 

It was about two months ago when I became convinced that I had not referenced everything properly and that there was one place in my thesis that could throw up red flags in plagiarism check. And then I started to believe, you know, rational adult as I am, that it would lead to me being expelled and publicly flogged. My anxiety got so bad that I had to tell S. who truly is the calm voice of reason in my life. S. said, well, if you think there is something wrong, instead of just sitting on it and worrying about it, you should tell your supervisor and see if there is anything you can do to solve the problem. Of course! So I wrote my supervisor a very awkward email and naturally it turned out that there was nothing wrong with my text. It was just me going insane.

But now it's over. Or will be very soon - there were a couple of editorial corrections the defense committee wanted me to make. They will take three hours to make. That's peanuts. 

The defense itself should remain behind the thick curtains of academic secrecy haha. It was tougher than I thought - a little less than two hours of question-answer ping-pong. But by the end of it, the committee didn't take long to deliver the verdict. Passed. Congratulations. Well done. 

I feel empty and tired. My head is like a pot of mashed potatoes. I will preach an old and worn sermon tomorrow, hoping for God to have mercy and show up and speak to His people despite my condition.

The happy feelings will certainly follow, too. If not before then definitely on July 9 when I will walk down - for the last time! - Newbold church aisle at their awards ceremony.

Bara Svenska, Tack

I am done with SFI, the first Swedish language school! After months of hard work and after the final exam, I almost heard the words, "Well done, good and faithful servant." :D But seriously speaking, I did feel the blessing of the Almighty upon me throughout the process. It wasn't just my own work that got me over the finish line, it was also the divine blessing of wisdom, a gift of grace I had not deserved in any way. 

It usually takes students nine months to go through SFI. It took me five.

But in case it sounds like a walk in the park, it wasn't. The toughest thing about intense language study is that on a day-to-day basis, you see no progress. It may sound contradictory to the last paragraph but these two realities can coexist without cancelling each other out - the objective speed of progress, and the early morning despair of having to leave the apartment at 7.12 every day without feeling any different from the last day or last week. The process of language acquisition is slow and deep, and it often feels like there is no development at all. Only in the long run, after having fought and won the battle of self-discipline and having sat in the classroom for 3,5 hours every day for months can you see how far you have actually come. 

But, I admit, compared to an average student at SFI, I also had huge advantages. First, I have studied linguistics for five years. I know how a language functions, I am familiar with all the grammatical categories, I like grammar. Sometimes one of my teachers would play a game of raising hands in the class, and often his last question would be, "Raise your hand if you love grammar", and among shaking heads and laughter, we two would be the only ones raising our hand. 

I also hear a lot more Swedish than most of my classmates. I have the luxury of going to church every Sabbath, sitting in a Swedish Bible study class (the only time I attented the English class since moving here was when my little brother was visiting me), listening to sermons, sitting at meetings, reading emails, visiting people... Most of what happens around me happens in Swedish. Just two days ago we had a lovely evening - we visited an old couple, A. and L., long-time friends of my parents. They had given us a beautiful painting as a wedding gift and we still had not delivered our thank-you card. So we had a fika (the most important Swedish word!) together and had a conversation that lasted more than three hours. At least 80% of the conversation happened in Swedish. For a language learner like me, this is a dream come true!

I had outstanding teachers. I have heard a couple of horror stories about teachers in SFI but my experience has been only positive. They were very systematic ank knowledgeable, friendly and helpful. Both of them used the method of only speaking in Swedish - even if you asked what this or that word meant. During the first weeks, it was very tiring to get used to the constant flow of foreign language, but later it became so normal I didn't even think about it any more.

Now I enjoy the luxury of sleeping longer and concentrating more on my work. I have time to read more books (right now, some gruesome and brilliantly written Nazi stuff by Philippe Sands). The last comments on my dissertation from the official "second reader" should arrive tomorrow - that process is hopefully coming closer to the finish line, too. And then, once the defence is over, I will take a deep breath and go to the next school for the next level of Swedish. Phew!