The Economics of Migration

Accuse me of leaving my homeland for money, dear friend, and you will hear me laugh in your face. Looooong and hard.

Back home, we had a car to drive. I had a cellphone. An electronic CASIO keyboard. An RJ guitar. My own 3-2-1 sofa set. A chandelier. A big TV. A refrigerator. A dining table. Our own bed.

Here? No car. No mobile phone, the brands are too expensive. No musical instruments yet, not on our basic priority list. No TV, the annual TV licence fee (required just for OWNING a TV set here in the UK) is way too much. And as for the couch, the dining set, the fridge, the beds--- they all come with the house we are renting, and none of them belongs to us.

Back home, O and I could afford to watch a movie every other week or so. We could all eat at Chow King's or Jollibee or KFC or McDonald's once in a while, after our family grocery time. We had househelp to leave the children with when we needed to go out on dates or meetings. We could sit at Starbucks or Seattle's Best and have one-to-ones over white chocolate lattes.

Here? Movies for juniors (at ₤1 on Sat mornings) are all we can afford. Regular movies cost ₤6 or more and are considered a real luxury. A simple family snack in a McDonald's here could feed a Payatas family for a whole day. Never mind KFC, where you get to eat the same breaded chicken for 5x the price back home. We have never been out on a date by ourselves, O and I, ever since we got here; registered childminders are too expensive. And oh, the times I've gazed longingly at Costa's or Starbucks while walking past...

Back home, we had full and constant access to a rich variety of relationships in community. We lived near brothers and sisters we had known half our lives, and needed just a reasonable amount of time to travel to meetings.

Here, we are geographically isolated from our community in London. To attend meetings each fortnight, we need to take two trains, spending an hour and a half just to get to West London.

So tell me that we left our beloved country to get rich or have an easy life, dear friend, and I will consider that the joke of my entire uprooted year.

Not that we are miserable, no! We have never been happier, more united, more at peace, more contented, more fulfilled than we are now.

Here, I have a husband who doesn't need to work 12-14 hours a day just to bring us to subsistence level. My children have a father who isn't away by the time they wake up, who isn't still driving home in heavy traffic by the time they nod off. O walks B to school each morning, and is home for our family meal by 6pm each evening. O gives E his bedtime bath, and has time for cuddles and stories with the boys. After the children are tucked in bed, our evenings are spent talking, laughing, watching DVDs, praying. There is time to share, to discover, to laugh, to mourn, to wonder, to seek, to be.

Here, we are never tempted to take community for granted. It is much too precious a resource to squander, those weekend meetings. We breathe in all the spiritual fresh air we can, like whales surfacing, filling up their lungs before plunging back down into the depths. And fresh air, we get, with God's grace.

But forget all that, the bottom line still is this:

We feel blessed because we believe we are where God intends us to be. He has a purpose for bringing us here. We prayed, we discerned, we didn't just decide on our own, or weigh the pros and cons. We were led here by His hand, and we followed Him in obedience. We had sought his Will, and once He had made clear to us why he WAS and WASN'T calling us out of our homeland, uprooting us from all we had known, we chose to trust His leading. He didn't lead us here to make us rich, He never promised us an easy life, He never led us to believe that we were here for our own ends.

God wrought our move here, from beginning to end.

He marked the path, He went ahead, and He rode alongside us each step of the way.

God promised us that He can and will give us Life wherever He chooses to place us. And that Life is what we seek, that Life of childlike trust, that Life of abandonment to His Will, that Life of simplicity, contentment and joy, no matter where we are.

So no, sorry, we didn't leave home to get rich.

But we have grown closer to Him, grown in our trust in Him, grown in our understanding of His ways, grown in recognising where He still wants us to grow. As spouses, as parents, as persons, as souls, as pilgrims in search of Home.

A year away, and what have we got to show for it? Not a nice fat bank account, I assure you. Not a car, or a house, or gadgets, or furniture.

Instead we show you our hearts. Our children. Our marriage. Our love. Our new friends. The wisdom we have gained from trusting God. The joy we have felt in obeying Him. The peace we enjoy by being with Him.

Yes, we have ended up with wealth beyond measure.

PS In case you think I'm for or against migration per se, I'm neither. I am, rather, all for seeking God's will and direction for our lives at all times, in all circumstances. And then, to obey, and to bloom where He plants us. If you are thinking about leaving your country, pray. Be honest about your motives. If you are struggling or torn in prayer, pray some more. And if you are confused or are hearing too many voices around you, telling you what to do, pray, pray, pray. On our knees, fellow pilgrims.