Happy Places Have Struggles, Too

2019 UK Trip – Day 6 (St. Andrews)

Hello, Day 6! We’re still in Edinburgh, but it’s our last day here. The kitchen in the flat is still covered in Eric’s clothes. If you remember, he has hung the clothes everywhere because the dryer doesn’t work. He has now decided to dry them by ironing them without steam. He has been working on that for a while now… slow process. Bless his heart. We are packing our bag, getting ready to catch a train to Leuchars, about 45 minutes away from Edinburgh. From Leuchars we will take a 15-minute bus ride to St. Andrews. I may be just a little excited to get out of this town. Just maybe. 

The train ride to St. Andrews was really nice. I enjoyed seeing the countryside and the ocean. I felt my heart getting lighter. When we got off the bus we meet an older couple from Missouri which was super cool. It is always nice to hear American accents, especially southern or midwestern ones. We actually got off the bus too early and we had to finish walking into town. The walk was nice and we got to sightsee. It is 11:00AM here. We are sitting at St. Andrews Brewing Company, a neat little restaurant and brewery on one of the three main streets in the city center of St. Andrews (yes, only three streets!) We are going to have lunch here. I am in love with it. Not only do they have a vegetarian burger but they also have gluten-free buns! I am a happy girl. I am going to hang here while Eric goes to meet with the professor at the School of Divinity at the University of St. Andrews. I am hoping he does not get lost. There is no threat that I will, because I am not moving from this spot until he gets back.

Ok, I moved three times but it was only to go to the bathroom. I did not leave the building. Eric has made it back. His meeting at the university went really well.  He met with Dr. TJ Lang, who gave him a tour of St. Mary’s College (the School of Divinity) and spent quite a bit of time discussing their programs and answering questions. Dr. Lang is the director of the Masters of Letters (MLitt) program. They have an MLitt in Biblical Languages and Literature, which makes Eric’s nerdy heart happy. Eric met Dr. Lang and his colleague, Dr. David Moffitt, at a teachers’ conference last summer in Dallas. The University of St. Andrews sent them to the Association of Classical & Christian Schools conference to promote their programs to teachers. Eric and I were already talking and praying about relocating to the UK for his post-grad studies. Meeting these guys put St. Andrews on our radar.

The University of St. Andrews is the oldest university in Scotland and the third oldest in the UK (after Oxford and Cambridge). It is also usually ranked the #3 university in the UK (also after Oxford and Cambridge, which are constantly swapping the #1 and #2 spots). This year, University of St. Andrews beat out Oxford, and it is ranked #2 in the UK behind Cambridge. Lots of important theologians and biblical scholars have studied at St. Mary’s College at the University of St. Andrews. Eric was really impressed by the demeanor of the professors (he met several) and the atmosphere of the school. He says it feels very positive. Dr. Lang described it as a “happy” place, saying that the relationships between the faculty and students are really good. Eric’s academic advisor at Gordon-Conwell got his PhD from the University of St. Andrews. He told Eric that he moved his family to Scotland in the winter, which was a rough start for them. (Surprise! Rainy, cloudy, cold weather with really short winter days!) When Eric asked him how his family adjusted and what their impression of St. Andrews was after the fact, he described it as a “golden season” for his family, that it was a wonderful place to live and study. That sounds good!

We are now on a journey to figure out how to get to our next flat. Once again, I am so glad Eric is good at this stuff. We decide to get on a bus to keep from having to walk so much. The bus driver did not understand our southern American accents and we did not understand his rough Scottish one. We are finding that there is a pretty wide variety of Scottish accents. Some are easy to understand, others sound like they’re not speaking English at all. Eric wonders if the Scottish accents that we don’t understand may sound more like Gaelic, an old Celtic language from Scotland. I have no clue, I just know I don’t know what the bus driver is saying. The bus was full of the sweetest people. They helped us figure out where we needed to be. Honestly, Eric knew where we were going… I was just second guessing him.  Regardless, we felt loved by the Scottish people on the bus.

Praise the Lord, we made it!!! Because St. Andrews is a smaller, more residential town, the housing is spread out a little more. There are no tall buildings with stories and stories of flats. We’re staying in a “mother-in-law suite” attached to a family’s house. The population of St. Andrews is basically the same as our hometown, but it swells a lot when all the students are present for school. In fact, Eric describes St. Andrews as a “Scottish Thomasville.” The downtown area feels kind of like downtown Thomasville… cobblestone streets, lots of interesting shops, busy but not too busy. (Sorry for anyone reading who isn’t familiar with where we live; Thomasville, GA is a cute little town down the road from us.) 

We have now met with the nice lady who owns the flat. She filled us in on how to walk to town and what buses to catch. The flat is actually a lot closer to the city center than it appears; she told us which road to walk to get there the quickest. We are just now taking a few moments to chill before we walk back into town to look around. 

The walk into town takes about 10 minutes. It is a nice walk. There are still a lot of people walking and riding bikes here, but not as much as in Cambridge. There are more cars here, but not as many as in Edinburgh. If we lived in St. Andrews, we would probably get a car… and learn to drive on the “wrong” side of the road! So far it has not rained much here, which is super nice. We’re seeing some more sunshine and blue skies. Because St. Andrews is on the coast, there are seagulls overhead most of the time. It’s refreshing to feel the nice weather and hear the gulls.

Eric was my tour guide at St. Mary’s College (he’s my favorite tour guide!) The University of St. Andrews was established in 1413. That’s 104 years before the Protestant Reformation and 363 years before America declared its independence. Think about it… the University of St. Andrews was older when Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence than the United States is today… by over 100 years. The city itself suffered a lot of violence during the Reformation. It’s really a sad story. At St. Mary’s college, the old library was built by King James himself… yes, the same King James who commissioned the translation of the Bible named after him. There is a thorn tree in the quadrangle that was planted by Mary Queen of Scots in the 1560s. It is cool to think that this tree has been alive in this spot since just a few years after the Reformation. Of course, Eric really enjoys all of the history of the universities. He knows a lot about the people who have been connected with them over time. I have to say that I am finding it pretty interesting, too!

After we checked out the town a bit, we went to a really neat restaurant called Forgan’s. If you like golf, you would like St. Andrews. You may know that it is considered the “Birthplace of Golf.” It has a really old golf course (the oldest golf course in the world) where the first golf tournament was played. The city of St. Andrews has been involved in the golf business for a very long time. Forgan’s restaurant is actually in an old golf club factory. The entrance to the restaurant was lined with all kinds of cute plants. It was like a tiny plant heaven. The food was SO good! I guess I did not learn my lesson from eating the fish and chips back in Cambridge because I had it again tonight. When we planned the trip, Eric said he wanted to eat the classic English and Scottish foods. Tonight he ate haggis, neeps and tatties… and he loved it!  Neeps are mashed rutabaga and tatties are mashed potatoes (we’re familiar with those from south Georgia!) If you’re not sure what haggis is, I’ll let you look it up. I’d rather not talk about it! Eric decided to try it at Forgan’s because this was such a good restaurant that he figured they would do a good job making it. After dinner we walked around a bit and then we went back to the place we had lunch to “people-watch.” I am really enjoying observing other cultures. Even though the English and Scottish cultures are closely related to our own, they are still quite different. For one thing, their vocabulary seems to be more “colorful” than ours. The guys we were watching definitely gave us an earful!!! Now we have walked back to flat to get settled in. 

Oh, how I wish I could end this post on a good note. After the tension of yesterday I really just wanted to enjoy this day and not think about the future. Getting to St. Andrews and exploring was really great. I enjoyed every part of it up to this point. I may have made some dietary choices that have landed me in the position I am in right now. I’m sure you have noticed, but my body is pretty sensitive to what I eat and drink. But honestly, the way I’m feeling might not have as much to do with the food as it seems. I think I have built up a lot of stress and it has to come out. I know guys – I am on a trip of a lifetime, yet time and time again I am met with struggles. Right now… I just came off a 30 minute panic attack. The attacks I have now are so different than the way they used to be. In the past, they controlled my whole life. In the past, they happened almost daily. So tonight I am thankful for how far I have come. They are much fewer, much farther between, and I have learned how to handle them. I may have had to lie outside half-dressed in 59 degree rain, but even in that struggle I am winning. Sometimes “winning” for one person may look like losing to another, so be slow to judge. I have come so far. 

Tonight I really stressed Eric out. He feels helpless. When I am having an attack, there is really nothing he can do. The battle is in me. I don’t want him to touch me or talk to me. I just let him know when I need something, but other than that he’s in the room but can’t do anything except watch and pray. I know it is hard for him. He wants to fix it. While I am laying in the yard having a panic attack, he is on the phone with our son who misses us, is homesick, and is worried about me. Poor Eric – he’s in the room with a person he wants to help but cannot and is on the phone with someone who wants his help but is 4,000 miles away.

I am finally in the bed and my whole body is shaking. I welcome the shake because it means the attack is over. Now that I’m at this point, Eric moves to the couch to get some distance. We are all turned around in our emotions, but we know our hearts are pointed in the right direction. In that very fact we are able to rest.