Author: Anna Danforth

Anna Danforth is a TCK Training Instructor, author, and speaker who is passionate about helping expat families build strong, connected lives across cultures. Anna's cross-cultural journey began on her first day of kindergarten as the only non-French speaker in a class full of Quebecois kids. She moved to Cameroon at age 7 and later met her high school sweetheart, Sam, in Geometry class at Rain Forest International School. They raised their two kids on a farm in southern Africa—working in Business As Mission. Drawing on her experiences as a third culture kid, expat consultant, teacher, and missionary, Anna wrote Raising a Family Overseas and offers training on expat family health and effective ministry. You can find her at AnnaDanforth.com or by email at raisingafamilyoverseas@gmail.com.

Humility Is Not a Doormat

“Apology not accepted.”

It was the dumbest, most unreasonable email I’ve ever sent. It was 2010, and I hardly remember what happened, but I know I was fuming. The National French Exam hadn’t mailed my tests on time, and my students were at risk of losing something they’d worked so hard to achieve. Every year, they’d placed in the top ten regionally, and twice nationally, for French. Hence my venomous three-word email to whichever customer service representative had been assigned to Anna Danforth that day.

There is no way forward with “apology not accepted” people. Conflict resolution becomes a dead end, and hope for forward movement dims. That day, I was the problem.

That email is a window into the beast that comes alive in us when we feel cornered. It’s when that fearful question creeps in, “What happens to me if this doesn’t go my way?” Maybe you’re not fuming at a customer rep—maybe it’s your teammate who took credit for your work, your organization that increased your fundraising needs (again), or your director’s endless conflict avoidance.

The instruction to “live charitably” is a truth God knew that we needed spelled out. Whether in three-word emails, cold shoulders, or unexplained relational disruptions, He knew the arrogance we’d battle in our hearts. He knew the way we would destroy each other when the things we hold dear are threatened.

Why is it so hard to live charitably when the direction of your program is on the line? To live in unity when your teammate is causing friction? To assign best motive to the person who pulled from your donor team? To let love cover a multitude of sins—not abuse, but annoyance—when that person interrupts you in every single meeting? Humility goes hand in hand with unity (Ephesians 4:1-7), but how do we get there in a broken world, in a broken church?

I was confronted with the why last week as I prepared for a Bible study on Philippians 2. Words I’d memorized in high school suddenly became distasteful. Have one mind? Count others more significant than yourself? Paul’s call to humility and unity grated on me, and for good reason.

What if the person demanding my humility is the one abusing power?

I have my own scars from misuse of power by several in positions of authority in the church or Christian organizations. I know the feeling of being told not to “gossip” about leadership when addressing concerns and of cowering at the thought of losing someone’s support for speaking up when people in their care were being wronged. Before I knew how to be “innocent as doves and wise as serpents,” I worked hard to maintain humility, peace, and harmony at high costs—staying long past the point of harm to myself and others.

What, biblically, am I called to do in these situations? I had to know the answer. If you’re bracing yourself because you’ve been told that your resistance is a spiritual problem, here is what I learned.

Humility does not call me to ignore evil (Ephesians 5:11, Isaiah 1:17).
Humility does not call me to be a doormat (Matthew 23, John 7:1-10, Luke 4:30, Acts 9:23-25).
Humility does not call me to trust without discernment (Proverbs 26:24-25, Proverbs 25:19).
Humility does not call me to preserve false peace (Galatians 2:11-14).
Humility does not call me to stay in abusive relationships (John 10:39, 2 Timothy 3:1-5). Dear missionary, this applies even if you’ll lose your entire ministry or half your support.
Humility does not call me to enable manipulation (John 2:23-25, Titus 3:10-11).
Humility does not call me to accept spiritual coercion (Matthew 23:4, 1 Peter 5:1-3, Galatians 2:4-5).

Wrestling with what humility is not became a crucial step to understanding what humility is.

Humility is reasonable. Paul goes on to say, “Let your reasonableness be known to everyone” (Philippians 4:5). It’s the mark of someone rooted—someone who trusts in their core that God will supply all our needs (Philippians 4:9).

Reasonable people aren’t easily threatened. They still face threats and loss, but differently. Their peace is staked on something bigger than a customer service rep’s reply or the appeasement of a self-preserving leader.

Humility is caring. The patient unity we’re called to creates space for growth, for grace, and for mirroring our Father to each other. Caring people are patient with mistakes. They understand life is full of the curveballs—the twists and turns that shake us but also grow us.

Humility is confident. It’s remaining firm on core truths and holding things in tension. Confident people don’t need center stage. Their worth isn’t set in specific outcomes but in being grounded in truth while considering new angles and being curious about different approaches.

Humility is discerning. That’s something I lacked both in my email and in every fight for false peace. The customer service rep who missed a deadline isn’t the same thing as your leader silencing your concerns. You may be fuming at both. But one deserves grace. The other deserves directness.

That’s the humility I’m after—not a doormat, but a balance of grace and truth in the sticky situations of our lives.

Introducing an Interactive Tool for Expat Parents Based on the Book Nourished: Third Culture Kids and the Village They Need

Some seasons are harder than others. Now there’s a tool to help you see why.

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You look back on a particular year and think, “I don’t get why that was hard.” Nothing terrible happened, no family crisis, no personal trauma. Yet your child, or younger you, struggled. Something felt lonely. The support just wasn’t there, and you still can’t figure out why.

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One of the central insights in my new book, Nourished: Third Culture Kids and the Village They Need, is that children need specific support structures to build resilience – and for globally mobile families, those structures get disrupted over and over again. Transitions simply do that. When those supports go missing, it leaves a mark that feels hard to pinpoint.

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The Nourished Companion Simulator lets you see all of that, and it’s free.

You can build your own childhood story map by plotting which crucial support structures were in place and where they were missing. You can also build your child’s map alongside it. Suddenly, the harder seasons take a visual form, making sense in a new way. So do the wonderful seasons.

The simulator also includes a library of safe space responses based on the framework by TCK Training. These are phrases that turn hard conversations, even conflict, into connection points rather than walls. They build secure attachment right when things would normally go sideways. Then when a new move or season comes, you can download your story map, reset it, and start again.

Families of faith will also find an interactive Biblical study guide.

This simulator was built by Jason Weimer as a companion to the book, but you don’t have to read the book first. Just start building your map and see what patterns begin to emerge.

Try the Nourished Companion Simulator here — it’s free.

Making Growing Up Global Wildly, Outrageously Worth It

She bounded over the dirt hill, her pink shirt clashing gloriously against a red-and-green skirt, blonde ponytail bouncing, dishes allegedly done.

I was eight years old, American, and a rule-follower to my bones. Tirza was Swiss with a hint of spirited spice, and she had just put all the dirty dishes in the oven so she could join me to build a palm frond fort.

When she told me what she’d done, with nonchalance to boot, I could hardly believe my ears, and I lost all composure.

That was the beginning of one of the most formative friendships of my childhood in Cameroon. Tirza became my best friend, but she was also instrumental in unleashing my courage.

With her at my side, I ventured into parts of Cameroon I never would have explored alone — buying beignets in broken French, taking a canoe downriver for a midmorning picnic, and saying yes to adventures that felt risky enough to be thrilling and just a little bit dangerous. She turned, “But what if I get hurt?” into “Let’s give it a go!”

She connected me to the country in ways a classroom never could have. I grew insatiably curious about Cameroon and whatever adventure lay around the corner.

I didn’t understand the lasting significance as a child, but Tirza gave me what researchers now call one of the most powerful gifts a child can receive: a friend who helps you feel known, seen, and brave enough to explore an untamed world that’s begging to be discovered.

Growing up global can be outrageously scrumptious. Cross-cultural friendships, markets bartered in, metros taken solo, languages lived rather than memorized, and faith that expands beyond a monocultural lens. There is something deeply formative that happens when a child grows up, leaving no stone unturned in our big, blue world. I want to say that clearly before I say anything else, because what follows is in service of protecting something worth protecting.

What Tirza gave me had a name, it turned out. It was one of seven Positive Childhood Experiences, or anchors that researchers now know dramatically shape a child’s long-term outcomes. They all boil down to connection. Connection in the family and connection in the community. For TCKs, even when all three PCEs related to the home are perfectly intact, the four rooted in community disappear with every move.

When I learned about these PCEs, I knew everyone touching global life needed to understand this — parents, teachers, grandparents, sending organizations — because every one of them can become an anchor for TCKs no matter where they are in the world.

In 2021, TCK Training published research that woke up the expat community. In a survey of nearly 2,000 TCKs, research director Tanya Crossman found that the international life we love and believe in also correlated with higher rates of childhood trauma. In the general population, a little over one in ten children scored in the high-risk range for Adverse Childhood Experiences in the U.S. For missionary kids, that number climbed to nearly one in five. In the business expat sector, nearly one in three.

Does that mean growing up global is bad for kids? Well no, because we also learned something else. 71% of TCKs say global life is the best way to grow up, and 90% say their childhood was overall good. Global life is good. But something does need to change.

Positive Childhood Experiences are the very factors that mitigate those risks. TCKs with all seven were 63% less likely to be diagnosed with anxiety, 86% less likely to develop PTSD, and 2.2 times more likely to be proud of their parents’ work abroad. These kids weren’t just treading water with global life. They were proud of it. The anchors work — but only when they’re attached to the boat needing them.

The stats made sense. I knew the world needed to hear it because the adult TCKs I spoke with and the families I debriefed were all saying the same thing, “This stuff makes a difference, I wish I would have known this sooner.”

The stats needed flesh. The research needed to become personal and usable. But beyond that, I wanted parents to know more than risk mitigation. They needed to know just how incredible a global childhood can be and why. Nourished is what came from that need. It’s where research, story, empathy, and actionable steps meet in a user-friendly way for parents and caregivers who are already giving their all and who need someone who understands their story and what’s getting in the way.

When I started writing Nourished, I had no idea the magnitude of the task I was taking on. I was determined that four questions needed clear answers for each PCE, and anything short of that depth would fall short. For each one we needed to know: Why does it matter? What happens in adulthood for kids who don’t get it? What unique challenges do parents abroad face in providing it? And how do we actually provide it?

The rigorous research alone took an immense amount of time, and the pages kept filling up. I quickly realized that the faith-based integrations I cared deeply about were not going to be done justice if I tried to cram them into this book, so I developed a companion Biblical Study Guide, specifically for faith-based families.

Nourished isn’t a magic bullet for raising a family overseas. But it does provide language for why your gut might feel like something needs to change—and exactly what pivots might help. Or why your child does so well in one place and not in another. Or why two children growing up in the same home may have such different experiences and how to better support the gaps.

What I keep hearing from readers is, “I feel seen” and “This isn’t just for TCKs. All kids need this.” Which takes me back to something I wrote on page 54:

The public high school teacher in me wants to shout from the mountaintops that PCEs are crucial for all children. Whether you work with TCKs or monocultural kids, you’re changing outcomes for the kids in your care. But TCKs face unique vulnerabilities that make supportive relationships even more critical. We’re not just trying to avoid adverse outcomes. We want to actively unleash the beautiful potential that comes from growing up global.

At nineteen, newly repatriated from my childhood in Cameroon, I walked across a Midwest university campus drowning in a sea of people who looked exactly like me, but had no idea who I was. I started making choices that confused even me. I hadn’t lost my faith. I hadn’t turned into someone unrecognizable for no reason. I had simply lost too many anchors. And without them, even the most resilient, faith-filled child may drift in the storm.

I know now why having Tirza was a much bigger part of God’s plan for childhood than someone to build forts with. So was our English teacher, Ms. Baker, who made cookies for us after soccer practice, the annual missionary game nights, and the jungle that left its untamable imprint on my heart. These were the parts of belonging to a global village that God meant to work together for my good and His glory. TCKs feel it deeply when any of these pieces are missing. And when they’re present, so many TCKs grow to develop the exact strengths we crave to see in the world.

In your world right now, there is a TCK with the potential for exactly what Tirza gave me — a friendship that flings the door open to exploration, a knowledge that the world is huge and also within reach, and a global childhood that makes them ferociously alive. And friendship is only one of seven key anchors. Nourished is your guide to all of them, and to building the kind of village that makes a global childhood wildly, outrageously worth it.

Access Nourished here.

Access the companion Biblical study guide here.

You Were Never Meant to Break Alone

Content warning: This article contains descriptions of a tragic death.

If you’ve ever suffered alone, you know how unbearable it is. Suffering is bad. Alone-ness is worse. This is what Lent is showing me—that this liturgical practice of communal reflection, grief, and hope is a formative Christian discipline about togetherness. It’s teaching us how to hold together in the weight of human brokenness. It’s teaching us not to protect ourselves from grief or rush past it, but to sit with it, be changed by it, and move forward together in it.

I don’t want to be spared from sadness. I want to learn what to do with it, how to be changed by it, and how to live fully with others in the midst of it. I was eight years old when I first learned this.

“Something is wrong with Richard.” The name of my best friend in Cameroon fell heavy as my neighbor delivered grim news—the kind that is worse at night. Richard’s flu had taken a turn for the worse when his family sought a traditional healer, whose methods of cutting out the swollen uvula spiraled into disaster.

My dad, having the only vehicle in our village at the time, loaded the young teen into our family car/community ambulance and began the starry-night journey across wretched clay roads to a mission hospital two hours away.

As the sun broke through the night the next morning, I woke to wailing. My dad drove up our driveway and delivered my friend’s body to his horrified mother. I later found out that my father had to watch as Richard’s eyes grew wider and his lungs filled with his own blood, mission doctors and nurses desperately trying to provide relief that never came.

I remember falling silent and shaking on my front steps, overwhelmed by the sight of my village mamas who came running, screaming, tearing their clothes, fainting. The air filled full and loud, their wailing alerting the rest of the village that we’d lost our own. These women made grief a force that was fierce, collective, and fully alive. I was overcome. But I was not alone.

Then the rituals began. They are customs too sacred and culturally protected to write for the world to see, but they are ones that honor the pain of the living while honoring the life of the dead. Ones where the body of a child is passed around, and the women who once nurtured life into this being now metaphorically drink of the death that the body experienced. That day my village mamas gathered around a broken body and remembered—together.

This felt viscerally like communion.

Was I afraid? Yes. Did I crawl into my parent’s room the following nights scared that my own lungs might choke the life out of me in my sleep? Yes. Was the sight of my friend’s body being passed around in sacred ritual overwhelming? Yes.

But I didn’t need saving from the sadness. I needed to be taught what to do with it. I needed to see with my own two eyes that crying your lungs out with your neighbors is exactly what you do when life is lost. I needed to learn that shared shrieks of crushed hearts mean you’re not alone. I needed to see that falling to the ground and losing consciousness from grief is what mothers do when they put to rest the bodies that sprouted inside them—and that they have people who will do it with them.

We were breaking. But we were breaking together.

My Cameroonian mamas taught me to acknowledge sadness for the violence that it is on the soul instead of pretending it doesn’t exist. They taught me to hold the paradox that grief feels so constricting because life was first good, because we first loved, and now we have lost. My parents taught me that crawling into their room for comfort instead of panicking alone is exactly what I should do when I’m afraid.

Years later, I went to my first Western funeral. The stoic suits and stifled tears felt almost hollow. The room felt uncomfortably polite, and this form of grieving seemed to tell only a partial story as everyone sat perfectly spaced in their individual chairs. That is, until I saw my normally put-together friend drag herself to her son’s casket and lay herself fully across it, refusing to rush mourning for the sake of the ceremony. And the whole room broke.

It was then that I knew grief is universal. No matter the ritual, we need togetherness when anguish hits.

No one is truly protected from the shattering moments of life. But straddling worlds may mean there’s a little less insulation between you and death, poverty, war, injustice, bad medicine, and crime. Becoming one with our neighbors and bearing their burdens as our own makes these truths worthy of our attention, our energy, our love, and our sadness. And this sadness isn’t valueless.

As we sit together around the world in the reflection of Lent, may we heave a collective Christian sigh. One where we commune to honor the hanging of Heaven’s Child while also hungrily accepting His atonement. One where we refuse to rush through the observance so we can start life’s ceremonies. One where we are not protected from brokenness but are changed by it. And one where we break—but never alone.

Photo by Marianna Smiley on Unsplash

As an Adult TCK, I Was Resistant to Grief Processing. Here’s What Changed My Mind.

I first learned about the Grief Tower model while taking a course on providing care for Third Culture Kids. Some things weren’t new to me. I’m a TCK. I’m married to a TCK. And I raised two TCKs. But some stuff was.

In the course we learned that global childhoods are ampersand in nature and that we can honor both the good and the hard things that shape our backgrounds. We learned that global kids are twice as likely as monocultural kids to experience harmful risk factors—but that their international upbringing is also full of deliciously unique potential.

We heard how much expat parents love their kids—but also how goodbyes, starting over, losing people, exposure to trauma, and relationship disruptions can stack up during childhood until the body finally says, “This is enough,” and our health topples over, often when we least expect it.

These things made sense to me. For other TCKs at least. I could picture the faces of kids I knew who had experienced Big T traumas, and I began to understand why that first or second year of college was disastrous for so many, as they suddenly developed risky behaviors and health problems. They must have been going through a lot, and it all caught up.

Part of me wanted to interrupt the instructor with my perspective as a TCK and let all the eager participants know that most of us still love TCK life. But I held my tongue, literally between my teeth. Even when I disagree with someone or don’t like what I’m hearing, I believe in keeping an open mind.

So I tried to think of these new thoughts, the ones I was resisting, on a personal level. I thought back to my first year of college and remembered the unexpected turn my life took. If my parents hadn’t planned a home assignment for that same year, I don’t know where I would be today. My thoughts about “those” TCKs suddenly turned personal. I’d had some hard things stack up too. But in my fierce love for growing up global, I had brushed them off.

Our class was instructed to make a timeline of some of the harder life experiences that stood out to us. A disquieting malaise settled over me. Were we ever going to get to the good stuff? The adventures of my childhood in Cameroon felt strangely compromised by this exercise. I needed people to know that global childhood is wildly beautiful.

At the same time, I knew these instructors were experts in TCKs, and my single experience didn’t tell the whole TCK story. They were coming at it from a research background, while mine was totally anecdotal. But this exercise still didn’t feel very ampersand-y. It felt more like a betrayal to my entire life. So, do I say something?

I decided to wait and see if we would get a chance to write about our positive experiences too. My pen was ready to wordify the memories flooding my mind—

My whipping ponytail flying down dirt roads with five friends piled high on my bike. Stirring corn flour into fufu over eucalyptus embers. Joining the beat of goatskin drums and Cameroonian choirs to worship God in the way that became normal to me. Twisting horsehair into birdtraps and roasting our reward with my friends. Huddling around the radio to listen to the BBC chime of news every evening. My family of six devouring Mom’s pancakes made from precious flour and sugar from the capital city. Muddy soccer wars in torrential tropical rains with my high school friends. Learning from the actions of my international school teachers that Jesus doesn’t recoil from our ugly parts, He leans into them.

These were a massive part of my childhood, and I wouldn’t feel comfortable writing down the bad stuff without also acknowledging the good. It wouldn’t fairly represent me or my experience. And it might just scare my classmates off from the good work of raising their own kids abroad.

I was forming a model in my head for how the class could better balance the good with the hard. Then came the instruction: “When you’ve drawn your timeline of grief blocks, go ahead and write two emotions you felt under each block.”

I could no longer keep silent. I’d watched some TCKs get stuck there on an unforgiving path of retelling their hardship. So I formed my concern as a question: “Will we go back later and write down some of our childhood highlights? Those are really important to me.”

Her knowing smile told me she’d heard this before. Her look wasn’t patronizing. It was gentle.

“That makes sense. The good stuff is so important to honor. But the reason we focus on grief for this timeline is because the good stuff doesn’t weigh us down. Unprocessed grief does.”

If I’d been struck by lightning, the accuracy of her words couldn’t have cut any faster or truer to my heart.

The good stuff doesn’t weigh us down.

It’s there. We honor it. We remember it. We celebrate it. But the good stuff is not what caused some of the TCKs I knew in college to suddenly engage in risky behaviors, try drugs for the first time, abuse alcohol, start having nightmares, develop hair loss, become hypervigilant, have health crashes, or harm themselves.

It was the hard stuff that caught up to us. We ignored it because we were so busy focusing on the good stuff. Or we thought we couldn’t do anything about it anyway. Or we had internalized messages that anger and sadness are bad. Or it felt like betrayal to our rich experiences to acknowledge anything remotely negative. Or we simply hadn’t learned how to hold two truths in tension—that life can be both good and hard.

God was at work beneath my resistance, and the tectonic plates of some un-nameable thing in my core began to shift. I realized that I had learned the ampersand truth in my faith. Wrestling with God through hard seasons, devastating seasons, I’d learned deep in my cells that He could hold all of me, not just the best of me. He could hold my questions, my anger, my unhealth, and my valleys, alongside my gratitude.

But I’d not applied the same full care to my TCK story. On some level I had acknowledged the hard parts, but I hadn’t honored them with the space they deserved. For my spiritual life, grief and tension felt appropriate. For my global childhood, sitting a bit longer with the hard parts felt like a betrayal to the wonder that it was.

I began to sink my teeth into deeper truths about the incredible gift of a global childhood, but this time of acknowledging and honoring some of the harder things about globally mobile life truly impacted me.

And I didn’t get stuck. I didn’t negatively or irreversibly polarize my experience. Quite the opposite. This exercise unlocked an even deeper appreciation for my full life—all of me and all that shaped me.

I began to hold some of the beliefs I’d built up to the light and re-examine whether they were helping me, and whether I wanted to carry them into the next decades of my life. Beliefs like processing the hard parts diminishes the gift, anger is bad, and acknowledging hard stuff betrays someone or something.

My faith already had ampersand depth. Now I was being asked to apply that same depth to something I cherished as positively wonderful — my TCK story. God had already taught me the beauty of holding truths in tension. Now I was inviting Him to show me how to hold this full truth in tension. I was inviting Him to help me honor the goodbye to Cameroon that sucker punched me, the reverse culture shock that bewildered me, the cultural isolation that marked periods of my life.

This exercise unlocked something else of equal or greater value. The ability to hold all of my family and all that shaped and is still shaping them. My husband. My daughter. My son.

And this kind of ripple effect started to spread outward to other relationships.

I no longer feel compromised by making space for all of life—not only my own. As I work with expat families and their children, there’s a fuller and newer space for their entire story. We can synthesize the whole story—including the parts that haven’t taken up enough space—whether good or bad. We can talk about the joy of friends and the missing of parents at boarding school. We can talk about the thrill of travel and the hardship of living in a war zone.

If their story is mostly great, we can acknowledge the hard parts they might have glossed over—the lonely birthday party after a big move or the long, empty nights of a parent disappearing into the overwhelm of their own mind. And if their story is mostly hard, we can honor it and still be curious about the hidden sweet moments that may have been overshadowed for years—their host country nanny picking them ripe mangoes or the tropical sun streaming through banana leaves on a steamy morning. Because either extreme of grief—ignoring it or getting swallowed whole by it—isn’t helpful.

And now I understand better why some TCKs get stuck. They don’t get stuck because they’ve dared to examine the hard things—they get stuck because they’ve never had enough space to process them. Maybe they’d been rushed past their hardship too many times, told to focus on the adventure, the privilege, the good. Or maybe they weren’t told anything, and the silence was thundering. They never got a chance to catch their breath from those hard stories in the safety of loving arms. As a global community we need to make space for the full TCK story, not just the instaperfect parts we’re comfortable celebrating.

I’m reminded here of God’s tender provision to make a shade plant grow quickly over Jonah as he sat exposed and vulnerable to the sun’s pounding heat, grumbling about God’s grace to Nineveh. Scripture tells us the plant was to ease the discomfort that Jonah faced as he listed his grievances (Jonah 4).

Even though Jonah had just been the recipient of immeasurable grace himself, God didn’t shut his frustration down. He provided shade and a receptive place for Jonah’s reflection. And when Jonah still couldn’t escape his negative mental loop, God allowed the sun to touch him again, sparking an honest and welcomed conversation.

If God could hold space for Jonah’s fury without rushing him past it, then maybe I could learn to do the same. For myself. For the expat families I work with. For my own kids. I have a living picture of a God who didn’t say, “Get over it, Jonah. Focus on the good,” but made room for the mess. First He offered the comfort of shade, and then He initiated an honest conversation. He didn’t recoil. He stayed present to hold the whole story. It didn’t start with a lecture, but with shade.

In a way, all this grief processing brought me back to the same place I started. I have a more full appreciation of the hard and painful parts, and still I’d like to raise my hand to the whole global classroom and say, “And it was wildly beautiful. All of it. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”

Fighting for Awe and Wonder – And Why It Matters

It was her question that I couldn’t shake. The type of question where harsh reality clashes with idealism. And I couldn’t ignore the drive to chase an answer, even if it took months to unpack. Or in this case, twelve months.

“How do we maintain awe and wonder?”

She wasn’t asking because I knew the answer. She’s way smarter than I am. She was asking because she sensed that our souls earnestly wanted to discover some answers together—or at least start trying as we meandered the whimsical neighborhoods of Portland. Her poodle sniffed a statue of Ramona Quimby at the Beverly Cleary Park.

Speaking of awe and wonder while exploring my favorite childhood author’s hometown and secretly snapping selfies outside her childhood home was the backdrop to her inspired question. Standing where Beverly Cleary would have sipped lemonade and chased playmates in Mary Jane shoes felt surreal. Ramona, Beezus, Henry, Ribsy, and even Scooter, and their white-picket-fence lives were friends who flooded my imagination as a child. I devoured their stories—where the biggest challenge is the neighbor’s complaint of your scruffy dog—over and over by the flicker of a kerosene lantern in a village in Africa.

The spark of our awe and wonder conversation felt magical, and everything in me was alive. The fact that I was having this exchange with a brilliant children’s book illustrator made it all the more invigorating.

Until I found out the hard truths about Beverly Cleary’s dingy childhood. There wasn’t much sipping of lemonade and chasing of friends along idyllic streets like I’d always imagined. It seems like her writing was less of a memoir and more of an escape to places deeply longed for.

It hurt to shatter the romantic lens. It was also inspiring. Because there was no better place for me to begin to wrestle with the question of how to maintain awe and wonder in a dark world than outside the childhood home of an author who lived this tension.

How do I maintain awe and wonder in a world that’s bent on crushing it?

And why does it matter? In a world where the bodies of children are swept away by swirling waters in Texas, the children in warring strips of lands are paying for centuries of conflict, and the minority children in Cameroon have been prohibited from attending school for fear of their lives, why does it matter to the beating of my very soul if I fight for a sense of awe and wonder? These things feel secondary when I can’t even ensure the protection of the least of these.

Twelve months later, I still don’t have a clean answer, but I’d like to share what I’ve learned so far and open the conversation to learn from you. I’m pretty sure if you’re reading this, you’ve lived a hard journey across global borders, raised children in hard places, served the unseen, lost a lot, been hurt a lot, wrestled with God a lot, and maybe, just maybe, have lost some awe and wonder in the process. So I think this community has something to teach me.

Why does any of this matter? Why did this question resonate with me and all of humanity?

Because the opposite of awe and wonder is everything that tears us apart from each other and from God. They are the things that disconnect us, suck our souls dry, separate us from empathy for our neighbor, and drive us away from praise. In stark contrast to awe is cynicism, indifference, disenchantment, boredom. On the farthest end of the spectrum of the human experience from wonder is jadedness, apathy, detachment, contempt, and dread.

A dreary worldview leads us to disconnection, comparison, and inaction. It leads us to seeing others as less than fully human and a growing disdain for the many forms of the goodness of God. We lose our ability to love selflessly and take on pride, gossip, narcissistic tendencies, and even war.

I do not want to be accustomed to these things taking up space in my heart. They are diametrically opposed to awe and wonder. I can hardly think of a closer description of hell. Or things that take my mind further from the heart of God.

Against a landscape of evil, hardness, hyper-self-preservation, disconnection, ingratitude, and danger, I must engage awe and wonder because it leads me to

praise God better,
which leads me to softness,
which leads me to share,
which leads me to connect,
which leads me to appreciate,
which leads me to protect.

As a teen full of imagination and wonder, someone informed me that my rose-colored glasses were evidence of a head buried in sand and that my wonder insulted the pain of others. More than anything, I didn’t want to participate in disregarding the pain of others.

So, instead of learning to better balance the pain of the world with my bursting curiosity, I tried to be mature like them. Bury liveliness. Embrace cynicism. Because jaded people seemed super informed, albeit crippled by inaction.

As someone who has lived and worked overseas for decades, I’m painfully aware that the pursuit and expression of beauty may be interpreted as disloyalty and abandonment of those in hard seasons.

But the abandonment of wonder left me hollow. So, I’m back at this question again.

Practically speaking, how do we do this? For starters, we need to name the things that deoxygenate our awe and loot us of joy. Screens. Inauthentic experiences. Passivity. Pride. Hypervigilant self-focus. Reading comments online—where criticism is acutely trained to detect imperfection and is blind to the bravery it took someone to produce art or work.

But simply avoiding thieves of joy isn’t what makes us connected and full. Our beings were made to actively seek the beautiful things that make us fully aware of God and in tune with each other. Here are a few fertile places I’ve found.

Good theology matters. Perhaps there was some level of truth that my childlike awe and wonder neglected to acknowledge the hard things of life, a TCK phenomenon I am only now grasping in my line of work with TCK research. Perhaps a better worldview and a deeper theology would have me explore the complex and uncomfortable truths—learning to hold in tension the beautiful and the hard—and that sometimes the hard is beautiful and the beautiful is hard. Perhaps my heart was meant for deeper worship without reservation when I am called to build a more solid theology of God’s goodness, suffering, sin, and to honor the feeling of paradox of things I don’t fully understand now, but will someday. Perhaps the greatest way to honor the good with awe and wonder is to acknowledge the hard and whisper an invitation for the Holy Spirit to be my teacher (John 14:26).
Cultivate tenderness. Tenderness sees the brokenhearted, turns the throat-lump into sea water running down cheeks, delights in the petal formation of a rose, pauses to ponder the markings of a toad, rebels against the overloaded schedule, believes the best in disquieting misunderstandings, and makes creamy chai for the neighbor. If tenderness is a soft landing place missing from our ability to breathe, stop, praise, notice, engage, maybe it’s time to go back to the root of love—the type that bears, believes, hopes, and endures the things trying to break us (1 Cor. 13:7).
Throw off the things holding me back. With haste. A good, hard look in the mirror paired with the sacred work of the Holy Spirit burns the secrets holding me back from the Father’s innocence, joy, awe, and empathy. Hebrews 12:1 is a much sweeter bid to freedom than a list of shoulds and condemnation. It is the invitation to drink deep of the things that make me alive and release the things that threaten to sink me. It is a call to marinate in Shalom peace, receive it, root in it, fruit it, and share it.
Train my eyes upon the unnoticed things. God delights in the song of the sparrow, Leviathan’s froth from playing in the sea, and he even cares about the sorrow of the tax collector. It’s pausing to admire delicate forest fungi while hiking among towering redwoods or listening to the layers of music in a song you’ve heard a hundred times. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. The innocent delight in the little things. To be easily awed is an enviable art these days.

For the past twelve months and twenty-one days, I’ve been sitting on the question I bring to you today: “How do we maintain awe and wonder. And why does it matter?”

Perhaps the steps of Beverly Cleary’s childhood house was the perfect place to begin wrestling with this question. The gift of her whimsical stories didn’t stem from an idyllic childhood but from a place of longing. Joy and wonder didn’t erase the scarcity but became an intentional step out of the dreariness.

So what about you? How do you fight for awe and wonder?

Photo by Chris G. Pexels.

Could God Be Preparing TCKs to Meet the Deepest Needs of This Generation?

Growing up overseas offers children an incredible opportunity to develop a global perspective based on the lived experiences of forming personal connections across cultures. I’ve certainly seen that unfold from my own childhood, and in my work as an expat consultant, I’m watching the next generation carry forward a global mindset that is making an exceptional impact on relationships, identities, and a strong witness for Christ. But this doesn’t happen by accident.

My own story began as an American child living in Cameroon, where my parents served as Wycliffe Bible translators. Our missionary life started the day our ivory family of six spilled out of our Nissan truck and into the lives of an ebony clan who would become family, changing me forever. Two decades earlier, an elder of their village had written a plea to Wycliffe for a Bible translation in his language. He unknowingly forged the path that would make me a Third Culture Kid — someone who spent a significant amount of their childhood years abroad.

Growing up in Cameroon shaped me profoundly. It made other people’s experiences anything but distant. News of war in Africa wasn’t a faceless story. I shared life with people who were killed or displaced in Cameroon’s Anglophone Crisis. My husband is a TCK whose family lived through not one, not two, but several evacuations from war-torn countries. The people who experienced days without potable water, dehydration, hushing their babies while hiding in the bush, homemade bombs going off at social gatherings, retribution for speaking out, the terrible silence of ghost towns, and the wailing of women were not nameless people in a news article to me.

A childhood spent with these people also made their joys anything but distant. The children they birthed were babies I carried on my back and celebrated when they brought home their first report cards. Witnessing the people of my childhood hold the Word of God in their own language for the first time wasn’t just a media post I swiped past. It was sacred and deeply moving — the culmination of sharing 20 years of my family’s life with a community that fed me beans from the same bowls as their children, taught me their songs and stories around kitchen fires, boiled herbal medicine when I was sick, and cried shouts of joy when they hugged me home from boarding school. They were worth sacrificing for, and they felt the same way about us.

Growing up between worlds gives children the chance to experience the love, joy, loss, pain, and victory of our global neighbors in a deeply personal way — one that often moves them to action later as adults. Often unaware of their own strengths, Adult TCKs tend to be highly sought after in today’s job market due to essential skills that were developed as a result of their globally-mobile childhood.

According to wealth management companies Creative Planning International and Sable International, ATCK skills include compassion, empathy, adaptability, open-mindedness, independence, resilience, problem-solving, and the ability to consider multiple perspectives.¹ These qualities are increasingly rare and extremely attractive in a Western backdrop marked by divisiveness, screen saturation, and overstimulation. This growing recognition is fueling the rise of world schoolers, families who choose to work remotely to provide real-world, cross-cultural experiences as the foundation for their children’s education.

Globally raised children are poised to make a significant impact on the next generation on a spiritual level too. Their experiences abroad foster carefully curated skills that will directly address the projected societal deficiencies of Gen Alpha. Experts predict that Gen Alpha will face psychological challenges from digital lives, including unsustainable pace, relentless change, lack of genuine connection, lack of face-to-face contact, risk-aversion, real-world interaction deficiencies, fragmented attention, and more.² Additional challenges include social fragmentation, polarization, and difficulty forming meaningful relationships. We already see warning signs of this in Gen Z.

God’s heart for all people compels us to prepare ourselves and our kids with the tools necessary to minister to each generation’s unique challenges. 1 Timothy 2:3-4 reminds us of the breadth of God’s heart: “This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”³ So, how will we reach them?

I believe today’s TCKs are uniquely positioned to minister to Gen Z and Gen Alpha’s challenges with a clarity of the gospel that is a direct result of their global upbringing. TCK Training’s 2024 survey of 1,643 adult TCKs representing 92 nationalities uncovered exciting information about the third culture kid experience.⁴ Their strengths align remarkably well with the skills needed to meet future challenges:

93% of adult TCKs report having a broad worldview — a crucial skill in addressing complex spiritual questions in an information-saturated generation.
83% see themselves as bridges between cultures — a critical capability in holding the core truth of scripture in tension with an increasingly polarized culture.
83% report compassion as a strength — a necessary trait as Gen Alpha is projected to be more deficient in meaningful face-to-face contact than previous generations.
82% report adaptability — an essential skill as Gen Z and Gen Alpha face complex issues with unprecedented access to information.
78% report open-mindedness — an important tool in an increasingly globalized world.

When I consider the reported strengths of TCKs, I can’t help but wonder if God is purposefully building Gen Z and Gen Alpha TCKs to minister to the wounds of their own generation. Is it possible that God will use their upbringing between cultures to bridge the gap and equip them with a profound clarity of the lived gospel? Might this powerfully shake the world and bring healing to our spiritual sickness?

But here’s the caveat. This only holds true when it’s done well.

Over the last few generations, the international community has learned painful lessons about the importance of intentional parenting in the expat context. We would do well to learn from what works and what doesn’t in raising kids abroad. While the TCK experience offers a valuable and rich foundation, mishandling it can lead to grave repercussions. TCKs are at higher risk for Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) than other populations, which can result in long-term physical and mental health complications when left unattended.⁵

Does this mean parents should avoid raising children abroad? Absolutely not.

Consider this analogy: I’m at risk for plantar fasciitis. Should I avoid walking, hiking, or running? Recent studies show that a sedentary lifestyle is as harmful to my health as smoking and diabetes. In fact, not exercising was found to increase risk of death by 500%.⁶ Avoiding exercise is not the answer to my fullest and healthiest life. Instead, I researched triggers and mitigating factors and pursued an active lifestyle while investing in supportive shoes, stretching, and taking breaks when I detected pain.

In the same way, parents can raise TCKs while addressing specific risks and implementing mitigating factors. Due to mobility, the number one risk factor for TCKs is loss of connection—with primary caregivers and with community. Stress for parents, frequent moves, and the loss of familiar environments all heighten this risk.

This is where the power of TCK-informed parenting comes in. If loss of connection is the primary risk factor for TCKs, what would happen if TCK connection were centralized in the expat community?

In 2019, Dr. Christina Bethell conducted a study of 6,188 people at John Hopkins to determine which childhood factors built resilience instead of fragility in adult mental health.⁷ She found that even children who had experienced mild to severe trauma in childhood went on to have greater resilience and better mental and emotional health in adulthood if they also had positive connections with primary caregivers, peers, and the community.⁸ The study further showed that Positive Childhood Experiences, or PCEs, had a cumulative effect in that the more PCEs a child had, the greater their health in adulthood.

This study’s impact on preventive care science leaves us with hope that increasing access to PCEs may alter the trajectory of children at risk for trauma and higher ACE scores. It further explains the significant and lasting difference that caregivers and the community make in raising a healthy generation.

The eight PCEs are:

The ability to talk with family about feelings.
The sense that family is supportive during difficult times.
Feeling safe and protected by an adult in the home.
Feeling supported by friends.
Feeling a sense of belonging in high school.
Participating in community traditions.
Having at least two non-parent adults who genuinely cared (Pinetree Institute).
Belonging to a multi-generational group.

Each of the PCEs center on connection, starting with the primary caregiver and then extending to the wider community. Children who consistently had 6-7 PCEs were 72% less likely to develop mental illness in adulthood. Those who had 3-5 were 50% less likely to develop depression and poor mental health.⁹ Everyone plays a stewardship role in building vibrant childhoods — from parents, to peers, and the wider community.

Many of us in the expat community are painfully aware of crash-and-burn stories of TCKs whose needs were put on the backburner in a passionate pursuit of global work. Even armed with these insights as a TCK mom, I was not immune to my own blindspots and moments of disconnection. However, as an expat family instructor, I am deeply encouraged by today’s TCK parents and their strong commitment to centralize the needs of the family as a launching point for effective ministry, not a secondary consideration.

It is true that TCKs are at higher risk than other populations for a high ACE score largely due to mobility and loss of connection. Yet the good news is clear: Positive Childhood Experiences grounded in meaningful relationships have a protective and lasting effect. Even in the face of adversity, children who experience strong family bonds, supportive friendships, and a sense of belonging are significantly more resilient and healthy.

As an expat parent, it is within your hands to nurture your child’s potential to become spiritually whole themselves before becoming a globally aware citizen who brings God’s healing touch to their generation. It starts with TCK-informed parenting — knowing the risks, focusing on connection, and raising spiritually and emotionally vibrant children. The stakes are too high to remain uninformed.

If you would like to know where to start, here are resources I recommend.

Raising A Family Overseas book — offers practical advice and real-life insights to help families thrive while living abroad with concrete tools on travel, education, community, transitions, and family connection.
Raising Up a Generation of Healthy Third Culture Kids book — explores the benefits and challenges of a globally mobile life.
Pieces of Purple: The Greatness, Grit, and Grace of Growing up MK book — explores how TCKs uniquely navigate identity, hardship, and spirituality
Raising Thriving Kids Abroad TCK Training workshop — 3-hour course on supporting TCKs.
Free PCEs Miniseries — learn how to apply PCEs with your family.
Free Family Worksheets for TCKs — designed to build family connection.
Free Safe Space Responses Miniseries — learn how to respond to your TCKs when they’re navigating hardship.
Free TCK Training Podcast — get bite-size content about navigating the TCK experiences.

Footnotes
1 Sengelmann, Peter. Benefits of Living Overseas with Children. Creative Planning International. (September 23, 2024). Accessed 01/29/2025; Shrosbree, Leanne. 10 reasons growing up abroad gives your children a head start in life. Sable International. (June 6, 2019). Accessed 01/29/2025.
2 Nellis, Joe. What does the future hold for Gen Alpha? Cranfield Executive Development. Accessed 01/28/2025; Haidt, Jonathan. End the Phone-Based Childhood Now. The Atlantic. (March 13, 2024). Accessed 01/29/2025.
3 English Standard Version Bible. Bible Gateway. Accessed 02/08/2025.
4 Crossman, T., Wells, L., Vahey Smith, E., & Kanabar, S. (2025, January 20). First Look: Data from the 2024 Survey on the Impact of Childhood Global Mobility on Adult Wellness, 52. Retrieved from https://www.tcktraining.com/research/first-look-data-from-the-2024-survey
5 Ibid., 9.
6 Mandal, Anaya. Not exercising is worse than smoking, diabetes or heart disease finds study. News Medical Life Sciences. (October 21, 2018). Accessed 01/28/2025.
7 Bethell C, Jones J, Gombojav N, Linkenbach J, Sege R. Positive Childhood Experiences and Adult Mental and Relational Health in a Statewide Sample: Associations Across Adverse Childhood Experiences Levels. JAMA Pediatr. (2019):e193007. Accessed 02/01/2025.
8 Pinetree Institute. Positive Childhood Experiences (PCES). Accessed 02/01/2025.
9 Bethell C, Jones J, Gombojav N, Linkenbach J, Sege R. Positive Childhood Experiences. JAMA Pediatr. (2019):e193007. Accessed 02/01/2025.

This article expands on data shared in “Key Takeaways for TCKs” in Mission Frontiers, May/June 2025.

Photo by Mukil Menon, Unsplash.

Co-Grieving Loss with Your Repatriated TCK

We didn’t have words for TCK loss back then. Not when I left Cameroon at nineteen and stepped onto U.S. soil as a stranger to my own country. But just because there weren’t words doesn’t mean the ache of loss didn’t burrow deep. Nineteen and newly repatriated felt like drowning in a sea of people who looked like me and talked like me but didn’t know the red-earth-Africa that shaped me.

I hardly recognized the girl I became in the wake of losing Cameroon, my best friends, and everything that felt familiar. That season was one of the hardest – and one of the unhealthiest – of my life.

Now, after the years have fast forwarded to an empty nest, I find myself looking back, not just at my own story but at theirs. I think of my children, my third culture kids, who built rich and beautiful lives on South African soil, their home. How will they handle letting go? How will they carry the weight of leaving behind the people and places that shaped them?

When I saw Megan Norton’s invitation to write a letter to my recently repatriated TCKs for her upcoming book, Letters Now Sent, I knew exactly what I wanted to say. I know the grief of leaving a place that tattoos an indelible mark on your soul. As their mother and as a TCK myself, I want to co-grieve their losses of saying goodbye to a life they loved in South Africa. And I know where I want them to root themselves now, as they step into adulthood in the U.S.

This letter is a new beginning with new language for parents of TCKs. It is my way of opening the door to a safe and sacred conversation with my young adult children—one established in love, shared understanding, and the kind of hope that reroots through the cracks of even the hardest losses. While their reactions to my letter are deeply personal and honey to my heart, I can tell you that this budding conversation was met with warm reciprocity and open arms.

A letter to Elaina and Sawyer Danforth, 2025 (republished at A Life Overseas with permission)

My two dearest toasted marshmallows,

You are eighteen and nineteen now. University carries a steep learning curve for everyone, but especially for the ones like you who left home, country, and friends to be grafted back to the place of your heritage.

As second-generation TCKs, you belong to a tribe that your father and I know well. Your childhood was formed in the womb of the cradle of humankind, in KwaZulu-Natal, and it ended abruptly on the other side of a plane ride to the United States. But the things that formed you there still sing in every crevice of your mind and shape the way you see the world.

Repatriation is a season when the losses of the familiar sink in hard for TCKs. And these are the years when you become aware of your roots, the ones that have been transplanted to new soils and now feel wildly distinct and out of place. The places of your childhood are the places where your formative and deepest roots grow. And the soil of South Africa no longer surrounds or supports you.

You’ll remember from working on our farm that a transplanted plant often wilts for a while. It is learning to survive in a new and unfamiliar environment. Its roots aren’t sure what to make of its new home. They don’t know whether they can unfurl and take new life or whether the newness will be hostile to growth. Repatriating TCKs are the same.

While my roots in South Africa will never be as deeply formative as yours, I am here to co-grieve your losses with you. I did the same as a nineteen-year-old with my Cameroonian roots. And your father did too, at eighteen with his Congolese and Central African roots.

Some losses are obvious. Our imperfectly perfect little farmhouse and the stability of its cracked walls. The foamy blueness of whales flirting between the horizon and the Indian Ocean. The oneness of our multicultural, multi-lingual farm family. The wind-whipped cheeks from four-wheeling wild past giraffes. The saggy eyes after Minecraft all-nighters with friends. The laughter with your non-blood sisters farmsteading in the mountains. The crispy-edged pancakes hot off the griddle every Saturday morning. The seasonal ebb and flow of subtropical downpours and droughts.

But some losses are hidden. Some, you won’t even know you miss until you come across them years later. And you’ll be caught off guard by a sudden feeling of home. Hidden losses are the sounds, smells, and invisible things that God sprinkled into the backdrop of your childhood. They are the things that you didn’t even know weren’t everywhere on planet earth. Until they weren’t.

Your hidden losses don’t have to make sense to anyone else. They don’t even have to be pleasant. But something about these background sounds and smells had a profound impact on developing the unseen part of who you are today. And we honor those gifts by naming them.

The background sound of your childhood is the cry of hadedas filling pink southern skies and beckoning your sleepy eyes open. You didn’t even know the sound was missing until that first morning in a Midwest dormroom when the synthetic shock of an alarm clock demanded your attention.

It is the faithful singsong Xhosa greeting “Molweni” on your proud farm stoep. It is the mourning doves telling each other off gently and sternly. It is the inexplicable peace of violent rains threatening to crash right through tôle roofs. It is the baying of hounds, whether to threaten skelems or to give chase to dassies, outside your burglar-barred window.

It is the South African flavor in which people have always said your name. It is the twisted, segregated history healing in real time through the harmony of church songs in English, Afrikaans, and Zulu. It is the comfort of our family’s age-old call to meals that reaches back to the recesses of your first independently held spoon, “On va prier.”

The background smell embedded in the roots of your childhood is a eucalyptus flame licking Karoo lamb ribs on the braai. It is soft buttermilk vanilla steam from an Ouma rusk dunked in Five Roses tea. How can something be so moorishly crunchy and goopy at the same time? It is the barely-there salt in the air where the Indian Ocean laps at the sky. And yes, it is even the familiar sewage plant every time we try to hold our breath at that bend in the highway by Uvongo.

Your roots will fumble around in this new place of red, white, and blue for a while, figuring out what is friendly soil and what isn’t. And this is the time. Dit is tyd to close your eyes, take a breath, and rediscover the power of your one unshakable tap root. It is your deepest root. The most formative one. The most familiar one. The most stabilizing one. It is your one root that pushes far past all the others, past every good and rocky soil, reaching like life depends on it, to the source of life. Water. Living Water.

It is in Living Water that you’ve always found life and truth and all that is good. When everything around is unfamiliar, this source is the familiar.

You’ll find community in the taproots of familiar people planted there too. And you’ll come to know new people who are automatically family because their taproot seeks life in the same place where yours does. This is the good stuff, my toasted marshmallows.

While your secondary roots stumble around and try to make sense of star-spangled life, sink all your energy, all your questions, all your everything into your taproot’s source of life. It is the one and only thing that will never change no matter where you go, how far you fall, or how unfamiliar everything else seems.

Taprooted to the Source with you,

Mom (Anna Danforth)

~~~~~~~

Inspired by Ruth Van Reken‘s book Letters Never Sent, Letters Now Sent will be a collection of letters from TCKs, parents of TCKs, and system leaders to share personal stories about their experiences with TCKs, being a TCK themself, and/or raising TCKs. This book is a fusion of both memoir and anthology written in a specific “Dear [name]” format.

Here is the Google Form link to submit a letter with additional details about length and content prompts: https://forms.gle/jQyzq3TtFqfyznvCA. The deadline to submit a letter is March 31, 2025, and the book will be launched in July 2025 at Ruth’s 80th birthday celebration. Families in Global Transition is hosting the 80th Birthday party in Chicago on July 26, 2027, and registration will be live on their website soon. You do not have to be a member of FIGT to register for this event.

Emergency Contact

The sting in my eyes competes with the sting in my heart. I steady my hand to write out the name and number of one of my best friends as an emergency contact for my son-turned-man. We are visiting the hospital for the second time in twenty-four hours. When it rains, it pours with accidents and emergencies, as has happened to this child who has not been admitted to a hospital since infancy.

I’ve always tried to have a non-family emergency contact in addition to family members. The ink bleeds out my heart onto the sterile medical form. Athena Grady.

The sting spans a chasm between hollow, aching sadness and deep, joy-filled gratitude.

Every expat mother is keenly aware of the impending day when she will leave adult children in the care of others as she crosses the bridge from parenting to empty nesting. There’s an ocean between mother and child for the empty nesting expat parent.

The realities of the looming separation became cruelly clear in the months leading up to that plane flight away from my kids, and I asked myself if I’d taught them everything they needed to know.

We’ve spent years preparing for this moment by teaching them how to use laundry machines, check their oil, exchange insurance information after a fender bender, and respectfully advocate for themselves. But I know I’m forgetting things and that moments will arise when my failure to teach every aspect of adulting will hit home. And something about that stings sad.

That’s where I need someone to help bridge the gap.

I close my eyes and lean back in the waiting room chair. A moment of thanks demands my attention. Our kids are rich in their network of incredible grandparents, family, friends, church, and community. The village that has stepped up to take part in raising our kids both in South Africa and in the U.S. is the stuff made of dreams. So, when I choose the name of the woman who will be on call for my kids in case of emergency, something about it stings gratitude.

I choose a woman who has known my kids since they penned their first ABCs. She’s the woman who remembers their birthdays and has a card and present waiting for them at church every time we’re on home assignment. She’s the one who makes us feel very unforgotten even when years pass between our proximity.

She regularly has us over for tacos into the sacred space of her home. She is trustworthy with my heart when I have hard things to share. She bridges the gaps in my geographical absence of knowing who got married, lost a spouse, and who the new teachers are at the school my kids attend while on home assignment. She keeps me in the loop but never gossips. That’s an art.

She answers my questions about cultural shifts since I’ve been gone, American expectations, and how to have fun in the land of red, white, and blue. Her integrity surfaces when she has conflict with someone but speaks no ill of them, even privately. She texts my kids just to check on them and let them know she cares. I trust her implicitly to speak truth and life into their hearts.

She doesn’t mind when her body gets a little tired if the energy is spent on the ones she loves. Her tireless dedication to her kids and to her community speaks of a forward-thinking woman with a vision for the future. She’s the one setting up decorations and tearing down tables after graduation parties and funerals, but she’s also no pushover. That’s also an art.

If and when an emergency arises for my kids while I’m an ocean away, I want to make sure the life-altering phone call goes through to someone who knows them, loves them, and has already proven to move mountains to make sure they’re ok. I want someone who has the capacity to take the world on her shoulders and make a wise split-second decision if the moment calls for it.

In my work training expat families all over the world, I’m often met with quizzical looks when I speak of the need to establish a clear crisis plan while living overseas. In ministry, we speak often of succession plans and passing the baton when we’re no longer around. But do we make such clear plans for our children?

If something happens to both parents, who gets your kids? Do you have a legal plan for a caretaker to be able to step in? Will your host country allow your kids to exit the country with a non-parent caretaker? Does your emergency contact know where you keep your passports? Who will be your kids’ interim caretaker in the host country until family can reach them? Who is your kids’ emergency contact in the U.S. when they repatriate? These are questions we can’t wish away.

Growing up as a TCK in rural Africa, my dad was often involved in the security systems of our organization. As such, my parents had contingency plans in case of evacuation, medevac, or parent death. I knew who would care for me in my host country until extended family could get to me from the U.S. I knew who would adopt me if worst case scenarios became my reality. There would be no added trauma of rejection, surprise, or family warring over who would be my caretaker.

I knew exactly what would happen to me if both of my parents died, which is not unrealistic for many expat families living in extremely remote, low-resource, high-crime, or war-torn areas. I found comfort in knowing our plan. I lost expat aunties and uncles to plane crashes and sudden illness. I watched expat families evacuate in and out from Chad and DR Congo. I watched the panic of families trying to figure out logistics during the mental health crisis of a family member. As a child, I knew that no one was exempt from disaster. Having no plan would have terrified me.

My kids are second-generation TCKs, and they’ve also always known our plan. They knew who would take care of them in South Africa until family could come get them. They knew which state they would live in and which aunt and uncle would adopt them. They knew that aunt and uncle would move heaven and earth to make sure they grew up knowing both sides of their family. And now, as young adults, they know that Athena Grady is another safe, reliable adult grafted into our system.

I look into the eyes of the boy and girl I’m about to leave behind, and my heart stings sad. My gaze drops to the medical clipboard and lands on the name of the one of the strongest women I’ve ever known, and my heart stings grateful. I know my kids are in good hands.

Introducing a New Middle Grade Fiction Novel for TCKs

Sam’s Roommate Disaster released today on Amazon as the newest TCK book on the market.

Have you ever read a story and felt like you were reading your life? Growing up as a kid in Cameroon, I never had that experience – even though I poured over the books in our extensive homeschool library. My new book, Sam’s Roommate Disaster, is my attempt to change that for young TCKs.

TCKs can get exhausted from frequent change and loss. While there’s a lot of loss in the globally mobile experience, there is also precious gain, and that is the beauty of the TCK experience. I want third culture kids to have relatable stories where, even in the pain of unexpected change, they see that it is worth leaning into new experiences and new people to see what is on the other side.

I wrote this book for the kids whose backgrounds are underrepresented in children’s literature. I wrote it for the kid who doesn’t like school and who struggles with reading. I wrote it for the one who daydreams during class, the one who wants to be outside exploring. I wrote it for the kid who does something without thinking and then wonders, “Why in the world did I just do that?”

I wrote it for the kid whose friend moved away and they’re pretty they’ll never make a friend like that again. I wrote it for the kid who is misunderstood and doesn’t want anyone to know why.

I wrote it for third culture kids who live behind cement walls, the ones sitting in metros, and the ones running barefoot through jungles. I wrote it for their monocultural cousins who need a sneak peek at childhood overseas. I wrote it for the kid who needs an imaginative escape into a world of friends and adventures.

I wrote it for the moms who have to send their kids to boarding school. I wrote it for the dorm staff who became like second parents for TCKs during formative years. I wrote it for international school teachers who want a fresh book with settings that don’t have white picket fences and characters who make all the right choices. But mostly, I wrote it for your kid.

I wrote Sam’s Roommate Disaster right in the thick of an incredibly difficult season in my own journey as a global worker. It was a time when I needed to come up for air. And that meant revisiting the awe and wonder of childhood stories, both mine and my husband’s. It meant sharing stories with my kids around the dinner table.

It meant listening to the giggles of old friends as they told stories from their perspective. It meant opening doors to hear fresh adventures from my in-laws about their wild child, Sam, who did all the things, took all the risks, made some mistakes, and picked himself back up again. And it meant fanning a spark of creative writing which soon became a flame that brought me great joy.

Disappearing into these stories transported me back to steamy jungle rains, clunky old bikes with tales that could fill libraries of books, tight sibling bonds, and small schools where your youth group leader is also your math teacher. It took me back to the feeling of dread after doing something dumb and realizing you made a mistake. It awakened the feeling of hot tears on freckled cheeks, the rush of wind through hair on a runaway horse, that first crush. It made me remember small class sizes where even the tattletale belonged and the unforgettable innocence of childhood BFFs.

As your kids read this book, I hope it solidifies their belief that the world of third cultures is one in which they belong. This is their tribe and TCKs are their people, whether they’re in Thailand, Hungary, or Uganda.

If you grew up overseas and you read this to your kids, I hope it transports you back to a time of jungle rains, small schools, and BFFs. Mostly, I hope it unlocks your ability to share your own story with your kids, because that’s what they really need to hear.

Book Teaser:

“Sam’s heart pounded like a hot basketball in his ears. If he heard one more snore from his roommate, his anger might just spill out, and there was nothing more embarrassing than crying in fifth grade. Scrunching the covers tighter around his head didn’t do anything to muffle the noise rumbling from the bottom bunk. Being eleven at boarding school was hard enough, let alone sharing a room with Jordan, the only kid at boarding school who snored like a freight train.”

Buckle up for adventures in the jungles of Congo with boarding school kid, Sam! Hold on tight, because 5th grade for Sam includes a run-in with a highly venomous green mamba, a runaway horse, a heart-pounding close call on his dirt bike, and an angry mama pig. His biggest challenge, however, has nothing to do with snakes or pigs. Sam’s greatest challenge is his new roommate, Jordan.

Jordan is making 5th grade impossible. He’s loud and messy, and he ignores Sam. When Sam realizes there may be more to the story, will he decide to keep his distance or give his roommate a chance?

What kids are saying:

“I like the suspense, the love, and disliking feelings.” –Sam, age 11 (Indonesia)

“Readers beware: full of motorcycle chases, green mambas, flying lizards, and the

dreaded banana bread.” – Michael, 8th grade (Cameroon)

“I really loved how the descriptions made me feel like I was with them throughout their adventures! After reading this book I would really like to learn how to ride a dirt bike!” – Eliana, age 11 (El Salvador)

“It was really fun and exciting, and it was encouraging at the perfect time when I needed it.” – Charlie, age 9 (Hungary and Mongolia)

“This book was really great! I could really relate to my own life as a missionary kid and all the adventures I’ve had!” – Kora, age 10 (Colombia)

“It was cool to see what missionary life is like in other countries. Just watch out for banana bread and lizards with parachutes!” – Andrew, age 12 (Indonesia)

“I liked this book because there are a lot of different adventures, and it’s based on real life. It’s an exciting book, and there’s never a dull moment!” – Asher, age 9 (South Africa)

Fun Facts to share with your kids AFTER they’ve read the book:

Yes, the stories are based on true events from either Sam’s childhood or mine.

Yes, I’m one of the characters.

No, I didn’t meet Sam until high school.

Yes, Sam hates bananas that much.

Yes, soccer really was that big of a big deal. Jordan went on to co-found Petrichor Football Association.

Yes, Josh and his red-headed crush ended up together. They live on a happy little farm in Indiana.

Yes, the lizards were fine.

No, I’m not done writing kids’ books. I’m working on Book 2 of the Barefoot Around the World series.

Where to find it:

Head to Amazon now and grab your copy of Sam’s Roommate Disaster! Dive into exciting new tales that resonate with TCKs around the world. For a limited time, enjoy special discounts on b ebooks ($3.99) and paperbacks ($8.99) through August 23rd. Let’s revive storytime and make it an adventure your kids will love!

Follow Raising a Family Overseas on Instagram and Facebook for practical tips and conversations about doing global family life.

Lessons with a High Price Tag

If you are in the thick of some really hard things as a global worker, you’re in the right place. If I could, I’d invite you to my farmhouse in South Africa. We’d walk barefoot to admire the blooming birds-of-paradise and enchanting jade vine. We’d pick a dragon fruit straight off the vine and let the juice run down our elbows. And of course, you’d meet my chickens. They all have antiquated names like Mabel, Blanche, and Gertrude. Then we’d make coffee and sit awhile so I could hear your story and you could hear mine.

We’d talk about the raw beauty of the places we live. How we’ve changed since we came here. What we’ve gained and what we’ve lost. How we have communed with God and also how there’s been a felt distance. And eventually, we’d roll around to the things that left an indelible mark on our journeys as global workers. These are the lessons we paid a high price to learn.

We’d find out that we’re not so alone in some of the costly mistakes we’ve made and that we hope others can avoid. Because we know they are common missteps in global work. And we don’t want to keep paying for them.

These lessons were taxing and suffocating at the time, but I cannot be the same after learning them. I’m left with deep gratitude that God didn’t leave me in those places with the insufficient version of who I thought he was and the shallow version of who I thought I was.

And you would sip your coffee and nod in agreement.

I know you paid dearly for some of these lessons too. I’m sorry. I know they cost you or those around you. I also know that on the other side of these lessons lies a more robust and clear picture of who God really is and what freedom really looks like.

I’d explain how I wish I could spare pre-fielders and new global workers this messy process, but that it’s through this very process that we begin to notice smudges on the window of our worldview that don’t belong. We begin to see God’s sovereign brilliance more clearly. God becomes bigger, and he makes us stronger.

And then I’d share with you the lessons that came with a high price tag in my own life. And I know you would have your own to share.

God is the driver of change, not me. I am not capable of changing the inner workings of the human heart. Only God does that (Ezekiel 36:26). My sufficiency, ability, and responsibility ends with my love for and service to others, not in their visible transformation.

Some people don’t want to change. They want charity, but not change (Luke 15:11-32). And they will encourage my generosity with façades of change. When I recognize the motivation, I am reminded to slow down and respect God’s process, even if I’m already heavily invested.

I paid a high price in real life to learn that the father of the prodigal son did not chase after him, chain him to his home, and force him to stay. The father loved, released, and welcomed his son back home again once his heart was in a new place.

Early in ministry, I did a lot of chasing. A lot of enmeshing. A lot of enabling. I learned what codependence is and how it cleverly masks as true relationship. I paid dearly to discover that my attempts to force an intrinsic desire for transformation are futile. God changes the heart, not me. This truth freed me.

I tend to chase the outcome and not the source. God calls me to stay connected to the vine before chasing fruit for other people (John 15:5). Sometimes in our line of work, we run after the newsletter-worthy fruit in others to the detriment of fruit inside ourselves.

My approach to people and service has adapted as my understanding of God’s sovereignty has grown. I no longer seek someone else’s transformation as fruit of my work. My only work is to remain connected to the Vine. In love, I focus on investing and releasing people to own their process with God.

God calls us to be as innocent as doves and as wise as serpents (Matthew 10:16). In my ministry, this has played out as a call to balance altruism with discernment. I’m altruistic by nature. A therapist once told me that many global workers are. True love, after all, is to lay down our life for another (John 15:13-14).

But I’ve learned that altruism is often accompanied by naivety. And I’m not called to foolishness. God opened my eyes to recognize my tendency for altruism with pure abandon and helped me see that I have a duty to exercise muscles of discernment.

Suspicion doesn’t suit me, and I don’t want it to, but there is wisdom in discernment. I’ve learned to beware of people who require constant rescuing or live in a perpetual state of conflict and drama, for my nature is to think that if I just help them one more time, they’ll finally be able to live a fruitful life.

For those who are altruistic by nature, saying no takes a lot more effort than yes, and I have learned to lean into that when needed. Because the wisdom of God helps me to love others better.

God is a forgiver (Ephesians 1:7). It feels like I’ve sinned more as a missionary than I ever did as a pre-fielder. Whether that’s actually true or not, there’s a reason it feels like it’s true.

Stress is magnified in an environment where everything is unfamiliar and we’re learning to navigate a new life. We crave comfort. We crave the familiar. We need something to calm the heck down. We need to survive the moment so we don’t lose it on the people around us. Hard things start piling up faster than we can deal with them. They rage within and eventually claw their way out in the form of unhealthy habits.

Unhealthy coping mechanisms surface or resurface. This happens more often than you might expect in global work. And it’s devastating. Because you’re just trying to do the right thing and you just want to serve God well.

Here is also what is true. Cleansing lies in repentance (1 John 1:19). Change lies in seeking help (James 5:16). These two truths have been life to me. Maintaining a pristine reputation is far less important to me now than leaning into God’s forgiveness and seeking help when I need it. Because freedom lies in taking my humanity to him.

God gives me my daily bread and invites me to pray for it (Matthew 6:11). If you rely on support like me, our entire livelihoods depend on the financial goodwill of donors. My current status and my future could be a lot more secure if I gave donors what I think they want: a moving story that appeals to their emotions. Even better if I attach an emotionally manipulative photo of a crying, snotty-nosed kid whose pigment is darker than mine. With flies on their eyes. Those tend to bring in lots of money.

But that is not serving. That is not loving.

Growing up in Africa, I was impacted at an early age by a repulsion for the predatory nature I saw in the unfolding story of non-profit and humanitarian work around the world. The mindset seems to be, “If we can just get a good story, a great picture, we can get more money to help these poor people.” We lose sight of our daily bread promise and our duty to the image-bearers in front of us when we exploit the people we serve in order to gain a buck. Even if it’s for them.

This was a hard lesson I learned flipping through magazines at a young age. But God didn’t leave me in a state of anger and repulsion. I am eternally grateful for the honorable example that my parents set. They shared stories of the strength, beauty, ingenuity, and fortitude of the people in my Cameroonian community. I think they did this because they actually saw my Cameroonian neighbors as image-bearers of God. And because they trusted in God to move the hearts of their donors through stories of the strength and dignity of his people. Not through human efforts at emotional manipulation.

My newsletter readers won’t get the sexy, sensationalized stories from me. Or the pictures that prey on the dignity of the people God has called me to serve, though those stories and images do exist in my work. But exposing someone else’s story in order to make a buck is not the love to which I’m called. It’s proven to be the quickest path to making more money, but it’s not my path. And I hope it isn’t yours.

God is the creator of the people I serve, and they deserve honor. I am yoked to him in his work for his people, and his way offers life, freedom, dignity, and a love covering. He will take care of me. I don’t have to harm other people to get what’s mine. His daily bread is mine. And by God’s beautiful, miraculous grace, our incredible financial partners of 10+ years get that.

God has a pattern of redeeming the broken things and of showing us his goodness (Psalm 27:13-14). That may not be everyone’s story all the time, but it’s an overarching theme for many of us. In the hardest seasons when ministry has “gone wrong,” I’ve looked hard for that redemption. I’ve prayed to see his goodness. The puzzle pieces may not come together until years later. Or maybe not at all this side of heaven.

But more often than not, I’ve been surprised by my surprise when he does indeed fix broken things. It might have been nice to learn the depth and breadth of God’s redemption without having to lose “all these things,” but without the loss, I wouldn’t have truly understood that everything was his to rebuild.

When ministries fold, when plans A, B, and C don’t pan out, when partnerships wane and relationships crumble, I’m told to wait and look for his goodness. It doesn’t mean that every tragedy ends in a miracle. But boy, have I seen some miracles. God repairs dormant relationships, raises up new partners, creates better plans, and builds new ministries. He is so good.

We’d probably cry over the losses and laugh at how appalling some of these stories actually are. We’d curl up and drink two more cups of coffee until it was time to feed my chickens. We’d check on Mabel, Blanch, and Gertrude, and we’d be grateful, though still healing, from the lessons that brought us together. We’d share comfort in remembering the things that felt costly and in which more often than not, God became bigger and he made us stronger.

Photo by Taryn Elliot on Pexels.

What 7,300 Moons in Africa Taught Me

An outline of banana leaves framed the inky, glittering expanse that August night so long ago. My father raised his face to the moon and asked his father in heaven, “Lord, how many more moons will I witness in the African sky?” It was this farmer’s first night in Cameroon at the beginning of a Bible translation assignment that would span the next several decades of his life. With his homeland behind him, hundreds of moons would cross the Cameroonian sky before he would see an Iowa moon again. I was seven.

I have now witnessed over 7,300 moons in the African skies between my childhood and my adult life. Here are the stories I wish I could go back and tell that farmer the night he stared at the hollow moon and considered the cup he bore.

“Dad, a few weeks from now, under this very moon, my brother will fall deathly ill from malaria, his feverish body folded in a wool blanket. Your desperate prayers will be driven by the crushing story of the two young sons your friends lost to malaria earlier this year. My brother will look small and skinny, and you’ll be scared. Take courage. God will heal your son, and Mom will nurse him back to health. God’s grace is sufficient for you.

“Under this tropical moon, Dad, my imagination will spring to life chasing tales and adventures across hundreds of pages in hundreds of books with the help of a kerosene lantern and a healthy diet of Vivaldi playing in the background. God’s grace is sufficient for you.

“The moon will be weak the night you lay your exhausted head down after pulling lifeless men, women with bodies broken open, and babies with legs twisted backwards out of a horrific taxi accident down the street. Brace yourself. It won’t be the last time you do this. God’s grace is sufficient for you.

“The light of this moon will peacefully fall on the volcanic mountain ranges around our home each night, and your children will close their eyes to the sound of your and Mom’s voices filling our cement hallway with humble prayers uttered from your room, over each child, each family member, each Cameroonian family member. God’s grace is sufficient for you.

“This moon will faithfully mirror the sun night after night from the first word you learn in Nooni till the day you write your first speech in the previously unwritten language. God’s grace is sufficient for you.

“By the haze of this equatorial moon, I will memorize the deeply furrowed lines in the faces of my Cameroonian mamas as they rotate roasting ears of corn by the fire of their mud brick kitchens for their white child. God’s grace is sufficient for you.

“The moon will light up the sky every Friday night when Mom lovingly folds pizza dough on her rickety kitchen table and us kids pick out our favorite movie. You’ll whistle your way out under the stars to fire up the generator for our weekly huddle of six around a 9-inch screen. God’s grace is sufficient for you.

“The moon will shine a little brighter in your world as you sit in your prayer chair and ponder the gift of Mom. You’ll burst with pride watching her skillfully raise a family in a foreign land, make excellent food from scratch, trek mountaintops in a skirt and boots, navigate impossibly rutted roads like a pro, and work with a people you’ll come to love to write the rules to a language that’s never been written. She’s pretty great, Dad. I’ll learn what a woman can do by watching her. God’s grace is sufficient for you.

“A sliver of this moon will dampen sad and heavy the night that our family experiences a Big T trauma that will forever shake our lives. Dad, the sun will come up the next day, but there will be a lot of hard moons after that. God’s grace is sufficient for you.

“The rays of this moon will pierce through a burglar-barred window the night that I will find freedom and love in Jesus Christ as a 16-year-old under your roof. God’s grace is sufficient for you.

“By the glow of this moon, a boy I met in geometry class will take me hippo-watching along the banks of a muddy river in the Central African Republic. Did you know that hippos grunt so loudly you can hear them a mile downstream? It will be amazing, Dad. You’re really going to like this boy. God’s grace is sufficient for you.

“Dad, a few years later, our trusty moon will cast light on a red clay path for that boy from geometry class as he steadies his shaky legs and musters up the courage to knock on your door. He’s going to ask you if he can love me forever. You’ll be glad you said yes. God’s grace is sufficient for you.

“This orb will pierce the sky with light and a never-ending message of hope through our family’s most tear-stained bitter nightmares and our sweetest toasted-marshmallow dreams. God’s grace is sufficient for you.

“This moon will dance like glitter the night the last verse of scripture is translated into the Nooni language, breaking open access for people to read God’s word in their heart language for the first time. They’re the same people who, four decades earlier, wrote a fervent plea in the language of colonizers for their mother tongue to be developed in written form. God’s grace is sufficient for you.

“Thousands of moons later, I will also look up at the unchanged luminous sphere, but this time it will be framed by the outline of macadamia trees on a farm in KwaZulu Natal. I will have just sung my own babies to sleep and herded my Irish Wolfhound to her blankie. I’ll think of you and Mom, and I’ll start my own mooncount on foreign soil as an adult. Oh, and Dad, the boy from geometry class is the best thing that ever happened to me. God’s grace is sufficient for me.

“Dad, whether it’s your first moon under the unpolluted Cameroonian sky or your eight hundred and thirty-first moon choked out by harmattan winds, you will find that God’s grace is sufficient for you. 7,300 African moons later, I came back to tell you that the moon at this angle is beautiful. It’s going to be an integral part of our family faith story. I’ve wrestled with the same moon, and I’ve found the same thing. God’s grace is not only sufficient, but lavish, for me.”