Guest Contributors – Page 2 – A Life Overseas |

Where is God in My Grief Tower?

A wise man who looks a lot like Indiana Jones (and also happens to be my father) once said that in moments of deep grief you’re faced with a decision: either cling to God and let him be your source of comfort, or run from him and wade through the grief on your own.

You can’t make it through the expatriate life without experiencing the touch of grief. Grief is temporarily or permanently losing something that you loved. Living a life of high mobility, constant goodbyes, and exposure to big and little traumas causes griefs to steadily stack up along the way. I’ve written a couple of books on this metaphor, which I call the Grief Tower.

For many expatriates and their children (Third Culture Kids), grief comes in consistent stones of varying weight stacking one on top of the other. On their own, each stone might not feel very significant, but together they create a tall, wobbly tower that will eventually crash if this grief goes unprocessed.

When my company (TCK Training) debriefs families, we go through the process of writing out the family’s Grief Tower Timeline – putting paper and pen to the big and small hard things that have happened in the family’s life. Sometimes these butcher’s paper timelines are the length of the kitchen table. Sometimes they roll through the kitchen, down the living room, and out the front door.

As we excavate years’ worth of grief, a quiet question often fills the room. Where was God in my Grief Tower? This life I was called to has created this tower of grief – not just for me but for my children, too!

Even when we trust God’s sovereignty and believe he works all things for the good, the waves of grief still hit us hard. And when this happens, we respond both to our grief and the grief of others with whatever internal narration we’ve come to adopt. Our personal storylines tend to subconsciously ripple into an assumption that God responds the same way to our grief that we as humans do.

When people say, “Look at the bright side,” we think the right thing to do is to stay positive. We forget that God invites lament. When people say, “He works all things out for the good,” we forget that when it doesn’t feel good in the moment, God is still there to empathize, comfort, and acknowledge that this feels so hard. When people say, “You’re so strong for how you’re handling this,” we don’t remember that God doesn’t expect us to be strong. We forget that He is strong so we don’t have to be.

At TCK Training, we believe that TCKs should feel and know the love and goodness of God in how they’re cared for. In these raw spaces of grief we have to remember that God’s response is not to “stay positive,” “toughen up,” or “look forward” — and neither should ours be (whether to ourselves or to others).

Instead, He invites us to lament and ask, “Why?”

He allows us to mourn deeply and to take time to focus on the grief.

He reminds us that we don’t need to be the strong one because he is strong for us.

When we work with TCKs who turn away from God in their grief, it is most often because they have come to believe deeply that God’s responses to grief are a pep talk, a “get over it,” or an “it could be worse.” I think, perhaps, their belief comes from how they’ve been responded to, and that perhaps how they’ve been responded to comes from the subconscious beliefs held by those responding to them.

I encourage you to ask yourself the following questions:

How do I respond inwardly to my own grief?
Does this influence how I believe God responds to my grief?
Does that belief influence how I respond to the grief of those around me?

May we grow in our response to grief and learn to offer the compassionate heart of God both to ourselves and those around us.

Photo by Piotr Musioł on Unsplash

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Lauren Wells is the founder and CEO of TCK Training and the Unstacking Company and author of Raising Up a Generation of Healthy Third Culture Kids, The Grief Tower, and Unstacking Your Grief Tower. She is an Adult TCK who spent her teenage years in Tanzania, East Africa. She sits on the board of the TCK Care Accreditation as Vice Chair and is part of the TCK Training research team focusing on preventive care research in the TCK population.

Culture shock is hard no matter what. Dear newbie, be gentle with yourself.

by Katherine Seat

Dear Friend,

I’m so excited to hear you are getting ready to leave your passport country and move to my host country. It’s great to hear about all the preparation you’ve been doing over the past few years to get to this point. Now you’re at the point where you actually have to think about what to pack!

You asked what apps were good for language learning. Sounds like you are eager to get a taste of the local language even before your formal classes start. From the way you asked, it seemed like you assumed I would know. It took me a while to realise my answer: I used cassette tapes when I was at your stage.

My first year in our host country was difficult. Transport and medical care were constant challenges. I spent a good portion of my first year sitting on the back of a motorbike taxi trying to direct the driver. After all those bumpy roads my back needed physiotherapy. The drivers didn’t read maps, and the map only covered a tiny part of the city anyway. So it was up to me, my sense of direction and my brand new language skills. I was often lost and wishing public bathrooms were a thing.

But now that tuk-tuks are easier to find, I haven’t been on a motorbike taxi for years. With internet on our phones we can see the whole city map — game changer! Combine that with ride hailing apps, and you might not need to spend so much time taking scenic routes. My back is happy there are so many smooth, sealed roads these days. So you probably won’t have the same transport troubles as I had.

Options for medical care stressed me out. I was told there was one clinic I could go to, but one doctor’s appointment cost about the same as a month’s rent. Other clinics cost only $2.50 per visit, but I was told they were only for locals. Not only had I moved to a place with more diseases and traffic accidents, but there was also reduced access to good medical care.

Things changed quickly. In my third year a new hospital opened. It was cheaper than the other good option, and better than the cheap options. Hurrah! Finally, good affordable medical care. But now more than a decade on, I consider that hospital too expensive to go to. These days I overhear expats discussing which doctor they see. I even know of several foreigners who have given birth in-country. So you probably won’t have the same fears about not being able to see a doctor as I did.

Discovering all my first-year stresses don’t exist anymore, I feel jealous. Perhaps your first year will be a walk in the park compared to mine. In fact, you can literally go for a walk in a park right near your house. One of the things I missed that first year (and in the years since) was being able to go for a walk anywhere, let alone a nice, green park with smooth paths.

However, I know changing countries remains a huge adjustment despite some practical things appearing easier. You are already hitting a few of the top stressors just by relocating. Plus, you are in a different family and work situation to me, so you will have added challenges I won’t even be aware of. And despite some of the changes making things easier, other changes make things harder.

I had thought that after all my hard work making it through that first year, I would have some advice to share. I’m frustrated to realize that I don’t have any practical tips for you, but there is something I wish I had known at the time. Well, I did know it, but I didn’t get just how true it is:

Culture shock is really hard, so go easy on yourself.

Yep, that’s all. It’s hard, go easy.

Maybe you are already well-versed in this. I know I thought I was. I remember telling myself it’s unrealistic to get those 10 things on my to-do list done. It might have seemed doable in my passport country, but now I’ll be happy if I just get one of the 10 done. Culture shock is just so exhausting, and you don’t know how things work in your host country or what to expect.

Although I told myself that at the time, I’m only just starting to realise now, all these years later, that what I was up against was even harder than I had thought. Why did I even have a to-do list?

And while you are being kind to yourself, be kind to those of us who have been here longer.

You might hear us say “You can’t get fresh milk in-country” when clearly you can. Or “Don’t go out after 9 pm” but then find you are expected to be at a weekly work meeting that goes past 10 pm.

We’ve spent so much time and energy learning to live here that we feel we have expertise to offer, but we don’t know everything anymore as things keeps changing.

Some of my hard won skills are now obsolete. I felt I had conquered so much, but some of those achievements aren’t useful anymore.

So be kind to yourself. It’s harder than you think: you are going through culture shock.

Thanks for your graciousness towards me, and be kind to those who have been here longer than you. We might be going through culture shock upon culture shock.

And let me know if you want to borrow the language learning cassette tapes.

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Katherine’s childhood church in Australia launched her on a trajectory to Asia. After a decade of preparation she landed in Cambodia and married a local Bible teacher. Read Katherine’s other posts at Linktree and connect with her on Instagram.

Rice and Beans and the TCK Hybrid Identity

by Hannah Flatman

Rice and beans: the perfect combination! Where we live in NE Brazil, beans are often served first, with rice on top. That seemed strange to our family at first, coming from the UK where most people put their rice on the base and ladle the beans on top. One of my TCKs currently likes rice first with beans on top; she was born in the UK. My other TCK prefers beans topped with rice; he has a Brazilian passport. Although essentially it is the same meal, it does change your experience depending on whether you place the rice or beans on the base, top, or side by side.

This versatile meal got me thinking about the hybrid cultural identity of our TCKs. Which cultural influences are central to their identity? Which are secondary (or tertiary) at the moment? At what stages in cross-cultural transition do TCKs begin to identify more with their host culture than their passport culture?

In some ways the terms “host culture” and “passport culture” limit the multidimensionality of influences and experiences making up a globally mobile lifestyle. They don’t allow for multiple passports or multiple simultaneous hosts, and they assume that any one culture is self-contained and not already a melting pot of cultural influences. Alternatives such as “root culture” or “heritage culture” are less widely used, however, so for the purposes of this conversation, I’ll refer to the more commonly used “host culture” and “passport culture.”

All TCKs have a hybrid identity, but individual TCKs may emphasise different aspects of their cross-cultural identity. They may be rice-first or beans-first depending on the places they’ve lived, how long they lived in those places, and their age in each of those places. Their experience of the world is quite different from their monocultural peers, who may think in terms of rice-only or beans-only.

Our family has a third combination of ingredients on our plate. My husband had a long-term ministry and calling to South Sudan before we met, and I to Brazil. From our current ministry base in Brazil, we usually make an annual visit to South Sudan. We are discovering this was one thing as a couple, but another as a family with young kids.

When we got married, we wanted to remain true to our commitments to two countries on different continents. We chose to see opportunities rather than competing demands. With children, however, our time and resources are more pressured than they were as a couple. For this season as a family with two little ones, Brazil is our home, and South Sudan is the place we keep returning to.

When a South Sudanese friend spent a month with us last year, our children’s links to South Sudan came alive to them. They discovered that South Sudan is also “their place” (both have Dinka middle names). They now have another combination of ingredients, another colour to add to their kaleidoscope identity.

Having a wider pool of significant cultural influences than the traditional model of passport and host cultures is very common for TCKs. As we introduce our little ones to a fourth (or sometimes fifth) culture, we notice increasingly how different members of the family have different cultural identities. My husband and I came to South Sudan as adults; our children are having a significant experience of South Sudanese culture in their formative years through lived experience and ongoing relationships there.

Though children may have more cultural influences than passport and host cultures, we still use the term third culture kid to describe their experience. It is the experience of living cross-culturally, outside of their passport country, which is the Third Culture, not the number of cultures in the mix.

At different stages in their lives, and particularly during times of transition, TCKs’ palates change. The experience of cross-cultural living and engagement in those formative years shapes who they are. Our rice-first child was once decidedly beans-first, until we spent a year in the UK during the pandemic. We intentionally provided opportunities for her to engage with our serving country’s culture despite the distance, as well as to maintain her Portuguese and friendships whilst away. During that year our beans-first boy learnt to sleep under a blanket, and to eat rice without beans (literally and metaphorically).

Lauren Wells reminds us of the chameleon-like ‘ever-adapting identity’ of TCKs and gives some ideas about how to anchor their identity.¹ During those early years identity is constantly being constructed and moulded. What can parents and TCK care-givers intentionally do to anchor our TCK’s identities? This is an important question for both host(s) and passport cultures. Are we having an ongoing conversation with our TCKs about which aspects of their cross-cultural identity are important for them to maintain, for themselves or for the family, and why? How do we give them the tools to evaluate which aspects of the culture are good (and which aren’t), which are significant, and which will help shape them into Christ-likeness? Whilst there are some cultural practices of the host culture they need to adopt whilst living there, there are choices about which other ingredients they add to the plate which can be made together with their care-givers and family.

As a family we’ve added even more questions to the list. Each member of the family may adopt a different form of hybrid identity to the other. How do we cater to that? How can we support family members who struggle with an aspect of our host culture which we enjoy? Which particular family traditions or events are shaping our little ones? How can we intentionally create routines, traditions, and relationships which take the best from each culture? How can we help our TCKs to grow in Christ-likeness?

I often think about how our saviour was shaped by cross-cultural experiences, including being sent to live as a TCK on earth and his time as a young child in Egypt. His siblings and parents did not share in all these experiences. I wonder how Mary and Joseph navigated that. I wonder how I, as a parent, can navigate my children’s different experiences of the world.

TCKs are known for being sociable and quick to make friends. My two connect most readily with other rice and beans kids, or really any child who has lived a cross-cultural experience, whether that’s rice and beans, or yam and chicken, or ramen and kimchi. Sometimes their monocultural (just rice, or just beans) friends don’t get them fully.

Even if they might not completely understand, we appreciate when anyone takes the time to listen to our little ones and engage with their rice and beans identities and hear their beans and rice stories.

One of the rice and beans stories we tell in our home is A Fish out of Water. I first told this story to my little ones before a cross-cultural transition back to our passport country, the ‘home’ they couldn’t remember. It is the story of a little fish struggling with a cross-cultural transition, until a new friend with similar experiences reminds her about her home with the Creator. Conversation questions at the end help families to open up discussions with their TCKs about culture shock, loss, and how to support each other through a cross-cultural move.

I hope A Fish out of Water will give MK and TCK caregivers ideas about how to intentionally walk through a transition (before, during, and after) with their little ones. Let’s embrace every combination of rice, beans, and foods which make up the hybrid identity of our TCKs!

(You can find A Fish out of Water on several Amazon marketplaces globally. It is also available in Brazilian Portuguese through Betel Publicações.)

1. Wells, Lauren. Raising Up a Generation of Healthy Third Culture Kids: A Practical Guide to Preventive Care. Kindle Edition. p. 1984.

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Hannah Flatman writes about culture shock, transitions, and raising resilient Third Culture Kids. She has been serving as a missionary in NE Brazil since 2005 and is mum to two little ones whom she has already guided through several significant cross-cultural transitions. Hannah is the Short-Term Missions Coordinator for Latin Link Brazil and also serves in South Sudan, where she and her husband have an ongoing commitment to the Ngok Dinka community in Abyei.

Why is it so hard for missionaries to say “I’m not fine”?

“Why do you think it’s so hard for missionaries to say, ‘I’m not fine?’”

I recently posed this question to author and Third Culture Kid expert Ruth Van Reken. Her answer came swiftly and without hesitation, an answer that can only come from deep, personal experience.

“It can take your whole faith apart.”

Ruth is in her seventies, a missionary kid who learned in boarding school how to copy “I’m fine” from the template on the chalkboard for every letter she sent home. I’m in my twenties, a missionary kid who’s been an expert-smiler since as early as I can remember.

In different ways across different decades, we both learned that being a missionary and not being “fine” is, well… not fine at all. How has this belief snaked its way through the missions community and persisted across the generations?

One reason is that missionaries have historically been misconceived as spiritual superheroes among our Christian communities. I mean, how can superheroes not be fine?

Another reason is the fear that our hardships might cast an uncomfortable sense of uncertainty on the goodness of the God who called us. We sacrificed everything for Him, right? Why is life so excruciatingly difficult?

These subtle questions and misconceptions littered my childhood and contributed heavily to the “I’m fine” theology that I began to live out. To help you fully grasp how these messages contributed to always being “fine,” I’d like to invite you into a snapshot of my story (taken from my new book Stop Saying I’m Fine: Finding Stillness When Anxiety Screams).

From the time I was a little girl, I went to church every Sunday. My dad was a pastor on staff, so it’s what we did. On Saturday nights, I always washed my hair for church the following morning, and I’d lay out something nicer than the clothes I’d wear on a typical Tuesday. I was often known by our congregation as the good girl who recited her memory verses perfectly, was always polite, and never complained. Although these were good, God-honoring things, some of the micro-messages that crept into my heart were not good. Or true.

These micro-messages told me that being a good Christian meant always smiling and never talking about how you really felt.

I learned that putting yourself together and making sure you smelled nice is what you did before you went into God’s house. Although I knew these measures were typically heeded out of respect, I noticed that other people appeared especially happy with the polished version of me.

Is that how God felt about me, too?

When I was nine, my family sold our home and moved to East Asia. My parents planned to partner with local churches in efforts to advance the gospel. In the months leading up to our departure, we sold nearly everything we owned. One Saturday afternoon, I spread out all my toys, with parental instructions to choose three. Everything else ended up in a pile at our garage sale, sporting fifty-cent stickers.

I didn’t really know how to feel that day. I stood in the corner and watched strangers carry out our couch and kitchen table and silverware. I felt okay until a woman with short, spiky hair carried out my green bedspread. That was new bedspread. My throat tightened with a shiver of emotion. I loved that bedspread. I loved my room. I loved my home. I loved my life.

I suddenly really didn’t like this moment.

The losses just kept rolling in. But people kept telling me how excited I must be and how much we were honoring God by our commitment. I chalked up my grief to discontentment and determined to be fine. Wasn’t it silly to be sad about toys and bedspreads and ice-skating lessons when more important things (like gospel proclamation) were at stake?

Besides, I was the good little girl who never complained. The micro-messages seeping into my heart sounded something like this: Anger and sadness are not allowed. These emotions are bad. Being happy all the time is what it means to honor God.

So, I learned to be fine until the lights went out.

Curled up in bed at night, those pangs of loss would overwhelm me. No one told me point-blank that I shouldn’t cry, but the last words whispered to nine-year-old me before boarding that first flight overseas was, “Be a good little girl for your mommy and daddy.”

I wanted to be good girl, and everyone knew that good girls didn’t cry. No wonder Ruth told me that saying “I’m not fine” can take your faith apart. If you can’t hold faith and pain together, then being fine becomes your only option.

As missionaries, have we fastened the value of our faith to the faulty condition of being fine?

I’ll be the first to raise my hand here. As an MK, I wanted to please. I didn’t want to hinder the advancement of the gospel. But those honest hopes and fears eventually suffocated any sense of authenticity from my personal relationship with God. I forgot that the gospel of grace is for “I’m not fine” people. But I couldn’t go the Father in my pain and sorrow when I thought I had to hide it from him.

“There’s a difference between resignation and submission to God’s will,” Ruth wisely told me. “Submission is when we wrestle and eventually say, ‘I will believe that you are good and faithful and true even if I don’t feel that way today.’”

This truth is etched throughout Scripture, resounding of a different, more honest way of engaging in the Christian walk. Jesus at the garden of Gethsemane. David’s gut-wrenchingly honest laments in the Psalms. The apostle Paul’s declaration that the truth (not our tidiness) is what truly sets us free.

Today, perhaps the invitation for you and me is to breathe in grace. Breathe out honesty. To allow ourselves space to wrestle. And to recognize that, in the end, a whispered admission of “I’m not fine” is what oftentimes actually holds our faith together.

Quotes from Ruth Van Reken taken from personal interview with her, August 30, 2022.

You can read more of my story in my new book, Stop Saying I’m Fine: Finding Stillness When Anxiety Screams.

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Taylor Joy Murray is an MK, author, and speaker passionate about serving her generation in the areas of emotional health and spiritual formation. Her first book, Hidden in My Heart, which gives words to often unexpressed experiences and emotions of missionary kids, was published when she was just fourteen years old. Her new book, Stop Saying I’m Fine, was just released. She currently lives in Lynchburg, Virginia while completing her Master’s Degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling. Connect with her on Instagram @__taylorjoy__ or on her website at www.taylorjoymurray.co.

I thought I was here to meet people’s physical needs. Jesus showed me I’m here to meet spiritual needs too.

by Joseph

“What’s the point in helping people materially if there’s no change spiritually?” Our intern had been observing our work in a north Indian slum for a month or so. His question put words to something that had been bubbling in my subconscious mind for some time.

For the past few years I’ve been very busy helping my neighbours. My primary role is in literacy. My Indian colleagues and I have been able to assist several hundred children to become literate in Hindi, their mother tongue. This enables them to participate in schooling much more effectively – as they say, you need to learn to read before you can read to learn. We also started helping many people access government services – things like bank accounts, pensions, and gas connections. The government has many schemes for the poor, but those who are genuinely destitute are often unable to access their rights due to a combination of lack of knowledge, complex bureaucracy, and corruption.

Then Covid hit. Crematoriums and cemeteries were overwhelmed: the pandemic killed an estimated five million in India. Covid saw our education and development work take a back seat so we could respond to a more pressing need – food. Many of my neighbours live a hand-to-mouth existence, and the strict lockdowns meant cutting from three meals a day to two, then one, and, for some families, none. We were able to raise money from friends and colleagues in the West to distribute 30 tonnes of dry food (rice, flour, lentils, etc.) to 3,000 families during the worst of the lockdowns. It was a huge effort, but it helped many people get through.

During the last few years, we’ve seen an enormous number of people helped materially. However, our intern’s critique had some validity: we had brought much needed short-term help, but not longer-term or deeper change. I could point to hundreds of kids who had become literate and thousands who had benefited from our relief programs. But I could count on one hand the examples of significant attitudinal, social, and spiritual transformation – changes in the way people think about themselves, others, and God.

Such changes are less tangible, less controllable, less measurable. They are much harder to foster. My task-focused personality finds it easier to run a project than sit down and have a deep conversation.

Reflecting further, I realised that I’d been under a naïve impression that since ‘actions speak louder than words,’ I didn’t need to use words at all. I further realised that I had been reacting against a watered-down Christianity which ignores the hundreds of passages about God’s heart for the poor and economic justice. I think about verses like Matthew 25:40 (“Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me.”) and Luke 18:22 (“Go, sell all your possessions, and give to the poor. Then come, follow me.”) and how we fail to follow them. But God loves us as wholes – body and soul, individual and community, humanity and creation. In reacting against one narrow reading of the gospels which emphasises words over deeds and spiritual over material, I was perhaps imposing my own bias.

This year, after returning from a break in Australia, my family and I started inviting close friends for conversation over a meal. I had already followed Jesus quite literally in feeding thousands (Matthew 14:13-21); now it was time to adopt Jesus’ model of dinnertime fellowship. I don’t know any tax collectors, prostitutes, or Pharisees. Instead, our evening guests are ricksha wallahs (tricycle pullers), mochis (cobblers), and widows.

Our friends love coming out for dinner and often dress up in their finest clothes. Our one-room house, which Western guests struggle to adjust to, is like a palace compared to the dingy, flimsy shacks our neighbours call home. Mum (I grew up here as a TCK and moved back after my university years) makes the dinner, cooking up treats to add to the sense of celebration. We are often astonished by the amount of food our scrawny friends put away. They have learnt since an early age to tuck in when free food is available, as lean times are likely not far away.

After dinner, I ask my parents to share a little as to why they made the decision, some 27 years ago, to leave potentially lucrative careers in Australia to live and work in a slum. They talk about a turning point: the invitation from Jesus to forsake the pursuit of wealth for the sake of something greater. Our friends often recognise this idea, having heard similar exhortations in the Quran or in the Hindu scriptures. We agree with them that every major faith has similar injunctions to serve others, though few adherents actually do it. This leads to nods of agreement.

I sometimes tell a contextualised rendition of the parable of the prodigal son. It’s a powerful story to illustrate our understanding of God not as a distant, angry ruler (a common view in Islam and Hinduism), but instead as a caring father who is very ready to receive us ‘home’ should we be willing to turn around and come to Him.

The story is even more remarkable in this honour-based culture where the younger son’s insolence to his father is a crime beyond forgiveness. I asked one twelve-year-old kid to put himself in the story and imagine what his father would do if he had wasted all that money and then came back home. Prateek replied honestly, “He’d beat me with his belt.” Prateek’s dad looked sheepish but didn’t deny that it was indeed what he would do. In this context, our heavenly Father’s forgiveness is all the more remarkable.

Talking about faith with my Muslim and Hindu friends takes me out of my comfort zone. It is easier to give bread than to talk about the Bread of Life. Sometimes, though, it’s important to use words as well as deeds, to prioritise relationships not just tasks.

It’s hard to think about how to help address people’s spiritual needs in a context of overwhelming material need. As James writes, spirituality is empty without social action: “Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it?” Yet over a meal, in the context of a lasting friendship, there is space for spiritual discussion even with those facing the direst circumstances.

I’m not expecting to ‘convert’ anyone, but I hope I’m able to show some of Jesus’ love for my neighbours just as I also experience Christ in and through them. Sitting on the floor with our friends, I feel I am living the words of Jesus: “When you host a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind; and you will be blessed.”

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Joseph (a pseudonym) was born and brought up in India by his Australian parents. He is part of Servants to Asia’s Urban Poor, and he lives incarnationally in an urban poor community while volunteering for a local literacy NGO. In his spare time, you’ll find him on the soccer field or engrossed in a book.

How to Make Yourself at Home in the World

by Carol Ghattas

As a young twenty-three-year-old, I had so many preconceived notions about how life in cross-cultural service should look. I left for my first two-year assignment with newly coiffed, permed hair, a pressed linen blouse, modest skirt, and two hard (and heavy) Samsonite suitcases. Why I thought I would easily fit in upon arrival to my West African destination is hard to conceive.

I think my first meeting with reality came the day I pulled a load of laundry from my French washing machine. My beautiful linen blouse was now more of a tie-dyed, shrunken piece of fabric. Within the first couple of months, a trip to the local hairdresser left me with lice and no curls. No quick call to Mom for laundry and other advice in those days. I was on my own and missing home.

I made many mistakes during those first two years, but I learned a lot about myself and how God viewed my desire to serve him in missions. Thankfully, I was able to take some of those lessons with me when I later traveled with my husband to serve in the Middle East and North Africa. My desire by this time in my life was to settle. After all, I was newly married, thinking of children, and wanting to make a home. Again, God had other plans, and though he blessed us with two sons, we ended up moving to six different countries over the next twenty years—not all of them on our schedule.

The longer we served, the more the Lord taught me about how to find home wherever we were, including during furloughs and a final return to the States. If you’ve struggled to be at home in your place of service or are looking toward service and want to be better prepared, here are five ideas that could help.

1. Know yourself.
Recognize your natural giftings, personality traits, and even weaknesses. Ask questions about how each of these will be affected by the stresses of cross-cultural service. Be sure of your spiritual foundation in Christ. When we are outside of our comfort zone, Satan loves to throw darts at our vulnerability and shake our faith. What can you do now to prepare for inevitable attacks?

2. Remember that you do not serve in isolation.
We all need others in service. That’s the foundational nature of the Body of Christ, and it carries through to any ministry in which we serve. Take the time to recognize and acknowledge your need for people, from your family, home fellowship, and larger Christian community, in support of, not just your ministry, but you. Be willing to let them hold you accountable and help you through times of struggle.

3. Get to know your people group.
Not only will stronger relationships with your home support groups help to mitigate your longing for home, but coming alongside the people you serve and with whom you serve will also build a greater sense of home in your new land.

4. Establish boundaries.
Understanding yourself and building these relationships will do wonders for helping to stave off the homesickness that can so easily distract us in service. These are the foundations in finding home, but there are also some boundaries we need to have as part of these relationships.

When we have misguided ideas about contextualization, we can sometimes lose balance in our life. We can also find ourselves growing bitter about where we live and the people we serve when we fail to set limits in relationships and keep a healthy distance. It’s not easy, and I’m not a great example by any means, but I have learned from past mistakes.

Nothing can suck the joy out of service more than sheer exhaustion because we don’t allow for personal space in our relationships. Once the joy fades, the longing for home increases and many will leave the field.

5. Schedule time for maintenance.
Just as home appliances require regular maintenance and repair, being at home wherever we serve means we have to maintain our spiritual, mental, and physical health. How are you doing spiritually? How’s your walk with the Lord? Have you talked to him about what you’re feeling? I encourage you to start with him and make sure you’re keeping your slate clean and remaining spiritually disciplined.

Life is full of changes, and the same goes for Christian service. Our feelings about home can shift when children start school or go off for college. Aging parents, sudden illness, or a forced evacuation can set off the homesickness bug for your native country and sometimes for your previous place of service. By God’s grace, we can learn to handle such changes and continue to be at rest right where we are.

When your world is shaken, and Jesus seems to have disappeared—wait. Wait and ask the Holy Spirit to come and fill your home-shaped heart with his peace and contentment, no matter the circumstances. Jesus is the one who keeps us centered with whatever life throws our way. May you find your home in him.

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With thirty-plus years in missions, Carol Ghattas has made her home in over six countries and among a wide variety of peoples. She’s also had to rediscover what home looks like after returning from the field to her native land. A writer and speaker on missions, Islam, and other topics, Carol maintains an active blog site, lifeinexile.net. Her newest book, Not in Kansas Anymore: Finding Home in Cross-Cultural Service, is now available through online book distributors in e-book and paperback format.

Pandemic Reflections from a Single Worker

by Cassie

Covid has been brutal, and though the initial pandemic seems to have come largely to a close, the ramifications are now bubbling up to the surface. Lowered capacities. Heightened reactivity. Relational strains. Exhaustion.

It starts small but works its way out into massive messes. One solitary unaddressed childhood wound gets somewhat successfully self-medicated for years, until it meets the pressures of ministry responsibility, isolation, and temptation. What happens next resembles the chain reaction in the mine field in Finding Nemo. Just like in that scenario, one unintended slip – not the worst in the grand scheme of things, or in a different context – devastates a whole community. Brings ministries to their knees. And leaves those caught up in it hurt and disoriented, wondering what in the world just happened.

The disorientation and devastation are then compounded by lack of community, especially for the single workers.

For those of us in ministry as a single, it is so easy to feel like an afterthought, an add-on. The churches that sent us out may have long since dropped off the map, and the few individuals who continued to engage have started straggling in their communication. Everyone seems to be so focused on their own survival, overwhelmed by the things going on in their own life, and everyone thinks we’re fine, “living our adventure” on the other side of the globe. It’s as though everyone assumes we’ve got “other people” who “of course” are reaching out and providing community, because we’re “amazing” and “people love you.”

And yes, I am one of those workers, and I am “living my adventure.” Though I wonder sometimes if it’s an adventure I can afford to keep living. Not because of fundraising or challenges with the ministry itself, though those are definitely factors, but because of the lack of connection and cohesion and support.

Everyone has valid and deep needs for community. And everyone has the responsibility to own and name their own needs – people aren’t mind readers. They can’t know what we need if we don’t tell them. But how often do we share those needs, only to see the nod and the look away, to hear the perfunctory prayer that’s not followed by action? How often do we specify that we need community, only to get shut down, dismissed, or simply overlooked in the busyness of each family’s schedule?

We singles are expected to be the “strong” ones. We are the ones who dared go overseas without a spouse, without a designated giver-of-community. We navigated all the hoops on our own; we are the capable ones. Or should be. Those of us still overseas are the ones who have made it through Covid lockdowns and dramatic changes in ministry plans. We are the ones who had the audacity to expect believers to step up, because of all the talk of being “family.” Yet the church seems to have forgotten what it means to be a “family.”

And maybe that’s where the conversation has to start: with what it even means to be “family.” What did Christ understand the word to mean when He said that those who do the will of His Father in Heaven are His mother and brother and sister? Maybe before we do anything else to care for our single friends, we need to consider that church community needs an overhaul – whether we are in our passport country or a host country.

What would it look like if we were to take 1 Corinthians 13 out of the wedding ceremonies and apply it again to those in our local faith communities? It does come right after the chapter on spiritual gifts and all being part of one body, after all. And it comes right before a chapter on how the Body ought to engage in worship.

What would happen if we understood that genuine, deep love is not based solely on intentions? What would happen if we realized that love is not love if it is not understood by the other to be love? What would happen if we tried to understand how those in our spheres of influence receive love and then come alongside them – whether married or single?

What if we were willing to face our own wounds associated with the idea of family and clear them out, so that we could better love those around us? How might that reshape our communities to be places where we invite people to experience the expansive and inspiring love of a God who gave everything up to restore us to relationship with Him?

That kind of a community – that kind of a church – just might be something worth staying for.

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Cassie has straddled eastern and western cultures her entire life, having grown up in the Far East yet attending western schools. She now finds herself living in Europe and working among the scattered diaspora. Her life plan of getting married early didn’t pan out, forcing her to reckon with the mixed and distorted messages in the church surrounding singleness and marriage and to reimagine what the church is truly called to be.

What Did Jesus Mean When He Said “Blessed”?

by Yosiah

In the last couple of years, the film series The Chosen has become quite popular. The episode at the end of season two portrays Jesus preparing for what will become the Sermon on the Mount. In the show, Jesus is accompanied by one of his disciples, Matthew. Jesus is preparing the words for the opening of the sermon, and Matthew is sleeping. Suddenly, Jesus comes to Matthew’s side and wakes him up—telling Matthew that he has finally found the right words with which to open the sermon.

Jesus tells Matthew that these opening words are like a map. Matthew is confused, wondering what Jesus means by calling it a “map.” So Jesus explains to Matthew that these words of blessing (which we know as the “Beatitudes”) are like a map because they will show people how they can meet Jesus and get close to him: by finding the people Jesus describes in the Beatitudes.

As I watched The Chosen, the Lord reminded me that He does indeed have a heart of mercy for people that the world thinks are “unlucky.” But these are the people that Jesus calls blessed. Jesus wants to show us that the heart of God is with the poor, the meek, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the ones who mourn, the ones who hunger and thirst for righteousness, and the ones who are persecuted. If we want to meet Jesus and encounter him in our day-to-day lives, he has given us a map; he has shown us the way in which we can meet him and encounter him. We are to look for and meet the people that He calls blessed.

A few days ago, our family went to visit a church near our house. It’s only a seven-minute motorcycle ride, but it had been many years since we had visited this congregation. When we arrived at the church, a woman whom we have known for a long time greeted us and said: “Yosiah, did you come here to meet Jesus or to meet Irwan?” I looked around me, confused, as I did not know what she was talking about. “Who is Irwan? I do not know who he is.”

It turned out that Irwan was the new youth pastor who would be preaching that day. During the service, this new youth pastor preached a detailed sermon. He had clearly prepared with diligence. One of his sermon points was this: “Jesus is present in our Sunday morning services. Jesus met his disciples on Sunday (that first Sunday 2,000 years ago) after he had just risen from the dead, and so we as a congregation are required to meet together in church on Sundays, because Jesus is present here.”

There was nothing glaringly incorrect about this statement. I am sure that, yes, when we gather together as believers Jesus is indeed present. I believe that God is omnipresent and therefore of course is present in church. However, as we returned home after the service there were two questions that kept nudging my heart, and I have been pondering them ever since. Firstly, there was the question of whether I went to church to meet Jesus or to meet Irwan (someone that I did not know). And secondly, there was the question of whether the Lord Jesus is present in the church building every Sunday, along with the congregation. There is nothing wrong with these questions—or statements if you will—but in my heart a third question arose: Is Jesus only present in church? Can Christians only meet Jesus during the hours on Sunday morning when they sit inside a church building?

Multiple times, Christian friends have come to visit us in the slum in which we live. Bapak Sultan lives near us. He has a large body, dark tattooed skin, and long crazy hair. I always find it amusing (and yet slightly offensive) when our visitors ask, “Is Bapak Sultan dangerous? Has he bothered your ministry? Is he a trouble maker?” My answer is always the same: from the outside he may look like he is a “bad guy,” and perhaps he could do “bad things,” but he has always been friendly to us. In the mornings when we go for exercise walks, he is the first to greet us, and he often exchanges jokes with me. I remember one time he helped me push a broken-down car out of the way so that we could park our car.

Maybe these examples of good deeds that Bapak Sultan has done towards us seem like very small gestures, but to us they are not insignificant. People often want to add labels to others, stereotyping and stigmatizing people according to their outward appearance. However, I am convinced that Jesus invites us to meet him through people who are outsiders. People who are on the edges, are forgotten by society, and are viewed with suspicion like Bapak Sultan. The choice is in our hands: do we only want to meet Jesus when we are nicely dressed, wearing fancy shoes and a suit and tie in a church building? Or do we want to meet Jesus in our everyday lives, through people who are on the edges, who are oppressed, and even suspicious-looking? For it is actually these people that Jesus calls blessed.

If we call ourselves Christians, will we choose to continue to give negative labels to people—people who on the outside do not look like pastors, church elders, or other educated people—or will we have mercy on them? For it is people such as these who are poor, full of sorrow, hungry and thirsty for hope, and who have been persecuted all their lives (physically or mentally). Do we long to share the joyful news with them as Jesus did? Or do we just want to close our eyes and avoid them?

There is a beautiful image from the prophet Habakkuk: “But the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea” (Habakkuk 2:14 NRSV). One day the earth and all that is in it will be filled with the knowledge of knowing the Lord, the glory of salvation that Jesus worked on the cross for the whole world. This will be fulfilled when all believers are willing to meet Jesus outside the church walls and become bearers of the good news of peace and salvation through Jesus Christ in whatever communities the Lord places us in. May we seek out the people Jesus calls “blessed” — and learn to become them as well.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

(Matthew 5:3-10 NRSV)

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Yosiah was born and raised in Jakarta, Indonesia. He is married to Anita, and together they have lived and served in a slum community for the past decade with Servants to Asia’s Urban Poor. They have two young TCK sons. Yosiah loves making people laugh, washing his motorcycle, and playing music.

You Can’t Cross the Ocean on an iPad

by Beth Barthelemy

“My mom lives near where your Grandma lives,” my friend told my youngest, who looked up at her with her head tilted to one side. “No,” my two-year-old daughter said, “my grandma lives in the iPad.”

My friend looked at me, tears filling her eyes, because she lives motherless on this continent too. Because she had a two-year-old daughter too, who likely also does not understand her grandma as a real, full of hugs and love kind of person.

Without fail, one of the most common consolations I am offered when I share this hardest part of living an ocean away is the well-meaning, “Well at least you have technology these days.” Which is always said in love, with compassion. And which I always receive with inward tears, knowing its insufficiency.

Technology reminds us constantly of what we are missing, of what we are lacking. At the risk of sounding ungrateful, let me explain.

If my family had boarded a ship sixty years ago, we would have said our goodbyes knowing full well we may never see our families again, or at least not every person in them. The grief would have been intense. We would have arrived in a new country and built a new life, acutely aware of all that we had left behind. It was a different time, and I am not wishing for it. I don’t know if I could do this life sixty years ago.

In the 21st century, leaving looks like never fully leaving; we have a foot in each continent. We have double the relationships, double the lives. We build a new life while maintaining the old one, and we live in a perpetual state of grief, never fully saying goodbye. I don’t know that it is a better way to do life overseas; it is simply a different way.

When my daughters do crafts with Grandma over FaceTime, I am so grateful for her presence. I’m also aware that her hands are not here to guide theirs. I can acknowledge the joy that my children have a relationship with her even as I mourn that this relationship is one-dimensional on a screen. When I see my mom on the screen in front my daughters, or my dad strumming a song for them, there is joy and grief, every single time.

After the past couple of years, perhaps it is easier for others to relate than it would have been before. We have all found ourselves fatigued with online church, with yet another Zoom meeting, yet another voice memo instead of a chat over coffee. Not a single non-family member crossed the threshold of our door for many months. We have all been immensely relieved that life has begun to return to normal, to in-person church and meetings and coffee dates, and to friends physically entering our home and lives again.

Are we ungrateful to mourn the losses in this century of advancement when we live far from family and friends? What is there to do when we feel the insufficiency of technological relationships?

Technology is a gift; it also reminds us that we are not made for one-dimensional relationships. We are meant to look deeply into each other’s eyes, to exchange prolonged hugs, to hold hands, to interpret body language and hear all the intonations in each other’s voice. We are meant to live with those we love, those with whom we are in community, just as God dwells with us, not in some abstract, intangible way, but in spirit and in truth, and in flesh through Jesus.

As we do in so much of life, we can mourn and rejoice at the same time. I miss my mom and am grateful I can hear her voice over the phone, and I’m also grieving because I could use her warm hugs. My children know and love their cousins — and also there is no good way for nine children under ten to play well over Facetime. We are created for personal, tangible, physical relationships; one-dimensional technology-based relationships are a poor representation of the lives we are meant to live with those we love.

And yet. It really is not ungrateful to feel sorrow during a video chat. We know that our times together, fully together, are that much sweeter for all the time lost. And we can gratefully look forward to a time when we will live forever with those we love, in the presence of Christ.

My youngest has since felt the touch of her grandma’s hug, seen the smile in her eyes, and knows that she does not, in fact, live in the iPad after all, but in a real house. She has also had the gut-wrenching experience of saying goodbye for a long stretch of time, of delayed hugs and holding of hands and cuddling on her lap. We will enjoy talking to her over Facetime tomorrow, and we are counting the days until we are really truly together again.

(38, for those interested. Only 38 more sleeps!)

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Beth Barthelemy is a wife, mother to four young children, and cross cultural worker. She and her husband, Ben, have lived and worked in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, for the past five years. She has an MA in Christian Studies from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. You can find her online at bethbarthelemy.com and on Instagram as bethbarthelemy.

Home Assignment Is _________?

by Kayle Hardrick

Home Assignment is winding down. We are turning our sights towards preparing to return to our host country and to our work there. We are trying to fit in all the last visits we haven’t had a chance to make yet and purchasing the things we had been wishing we had in Cambodia with us the last few years. We are slowly starting to look at weight and space for packing our suitcases. I keep thinking about what Home Assignment is like. How do I describe it?

It is like packing up your family over and over to see people you love and feeling like each visit is not long enough with those people. It feels like fun family times in a car and new experiences because of generous friends and supporters—like driving an RV. It is getting to do things you never thought you’d get to do and being reminded of all the things you would be doing if you lived in your passport country. It is missing your host country and the things happening there while you are away. It is feeling at home in many homes because the people in each home love you like family.

It is buying groceries in many different grocery stores and cooking in a dozen kitchens. It is doing laundry in all kinds of washing machines and sleeping in so many beds of various sizes. It is hauling exhausted children to nine different states and being so proud of them for making friends, enjoying time with extended family, and having relatively wonderful attitudes throughout it all. It is meeting people you have never met in person and being so thankful they have lived this life and for the grace they have with your kids. They understand when your kids just can’t have the manners they should have that evening.

It is watching your kids feel safe and secure because they see and understand the vastness of the family of God. It is your daughter making friends in Sunday School at every different church you attend and opening up her world and her new friend’s world to more. Home Assignment is visiting so many different churches because people you love have found a community they love there, and you want to see it and engage with it. It is having conversations with your kids about all the different church traditions you have gotten to experience over your time.

Home Assignment is lots of coffee, trying old and new foods, and bonding with others. Home Assignment is encouraging others in their lives here in our passport country and being encouraged by them for our work in our host country. Home Assignment is lots of extended family time that you wish would last forever. It is finding a church you can just be in, rest, and enjoy. Home Assignment is being encouraged by the home office because you see more of the big picture within your organization. Home Assignment is far too long and far too short all at the same time.

Originally shared in a newsletter.

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Kayle and her husband Chris serve with Engineering Ministries International in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where they have lived for nearly six years. In addition to homeschooling their three kids, Kayle helps with onboarding and language learning at the EMI office, serves on the board of a small NGO-run school in town, and facilitates continuing education courses for cross-cultural workers around the world through Grow2Serve. She loves swimming, hiking, being outside even in the Cambodian heat, and spending time with people.

It’s Time for Research-Based MK Care

by Lauren Wells

We have all heard stories of Adult TCKs who struggle. We have also seen the triumphant stories of TCKs who seem to exude the positive qualities third culture kids are known for. But what influences which end of this spectrum a TCK migrates toward? Is it the number of moves? Parenting styles? Schooling choices?

I began asking this question over a decade ago. Working on the pre-field side of MK care, I was constantly repeating the same presentation about the benefits of being a TCK to parents about to embark on a globally mobile journey. As the years went by, I kept sharing positive aspects of the TCK experience. But I began to wonder – What about those who aren’t doing well? What about the Adult TCKs I know who don’t currently seem to be benefiting from any of these supposed innate positive TCK characteristics?

It was at this point in my life that I began to study the ins and outs of Prevention Science and analyzing what, for all children, is correlated with thriving in adulthood or not. Then I looked at the patterns of things deemed to be helpful childhood experiences and harmful childhood experiences, and I compared them to the lives of TCKs. I wrote for years about the idea of preventive care for TCKs, and I founded TCK Training on this premise: to cultivate thriving TCKs by providing preventive care. Preventive care does not mean taking away all the challenges of the TCK life, but instead, coming alongside those challenges with intentional care. The challenges themselves are not the problem, it is the way in which those challenges are walked through that determine whether they become resilience-building experiences or result in accumulating fragility.

But what are we preventing? Anecdotally, I had some ideas. In all my books I shared my hypothesis that TCKs have higher Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) scores, experience more developmental traumas, and are more prone to toxic stress than the majority of monocultural individuals. Those who have extensively researched these in the general population have found that a high amount of exposure in any of these categories is correlated with relational, behavioral, and physical unhealth in adulthood. So we began teaching preventive care methods, such as Positive Childhood Experiences (PCES) to encourage parents to care intentionally for their children and to ultimately combat their increased risk.

The Research
I knew, however, that statistical data on this concept was critical. In early 2021, TCK Training began the process of preparing to research developmental trauma in TCKs. In June 2021, we launched a carefully constructed and peer-reviewed survey for adult TCKs. The survey asked questions about ACE scores and developmental traumas, and by the closing of the survey on December 31, 2022, we had 2,377 responses. After applying exclusion criteria, we accepted 1,904 responses to be used in our data set. You can read the extensive methodology report at https://www.tcktraining.com/research/tckaces-methodology.

In our initial analysis, we’ve learned that our hypothesis was correct, particularly in regard to ACE Scores. We designed the survey with questions comparable to other ACE studies, in particular the CDC-Kaiser study of 17,000 Americans. The graphs below compare ACE scores between our sample of 1,904 Adult TCKs and the CDC-Kaiser study. A particularly important statistic is the percentage who experience 4+ ACE scores. Those with scores of 4 or higher show a significant increase in mental, physical, and behavioral challenges in adulthood. Of the TCK sample, 20.4% experienced 4 or more ACEs, compared to 12.9% of the general American population.

How Can Parents Apply This Research to Their Daily Lives?
So what do we do with this information? Our goal for this research is to develop practical advice that parents can follow that makes it more likely that their TCKs will thrive and be able to experience the benefits of the TCK life. We believe that the TCK life is an incredible one! We also know that it does not organically yield a positive childhood experience that results in healthy adulthood. Instead, intentional care of TCKs is needed.

The research confirmed that we need to support Missionary Kids (a subcategory of TCKs), especially regarding their emotional health. Of the ACE score categories, those pertaining to Emotional Health were the most statistically significant for MKs. 37% of missionary kids in our survey reported feeling emotionally neglected, compared to 15% of people in the CDC-Kaiser study. 40% of missionary kids reported that they were emotionally abused, compared with 11% in the CDC-Kaiser study and one-third of MKs said that they felt “unloved and not special to their parents.”

For children to feel emotionally supported by their parents, they need to:

Feel that they can express their feelings and feel heard and supported.
Feel their parents “have their back.”
Feel that their parents believe they are important.
Feel loved and special.
Feel that their parents will stand by them in difficult times/situations.

While we believe that most parents of missionary kids are wonderful, loving parents who want to be emotionally supportive of their children, the data shows that this intention is not coming across well enough to a significant number of MKs.

Some ways that we’ve heard it expressed are:

“My parent’s answer to my difficult emotions is always a Bible verse when I really just need a hug and to be told that this is allowed to feel hard.”

“If my parents had to choose between me and the people they’re serving, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t choose me.”

“My parent’s work is more important than me, because their work is reaching the lost and I already know Jesus.”

We often hear comments like these from the MKs we’re debriefing and from the Adult MKs we work with. Again, we believe that most of their parents had/have great intentions, but they simply didn’t know how to communicate this emotional support in a way that their MKs could feel.

One simple way that we teach parents to be an emotionally safe space for their children is by avoiding “Shut Down Responses” and using “Safe Space Responses.”

All of us use “Shut Down Responses” sometimes. What we want to do is know what they are, know which we tend to use most, and try to catch ourselves when we hear that type of response coming out. Sometimes, it means catching it after the fact and then turning around, apologizing, and trying again. No one is capable of always using “Safe Space Responses” and never using a “Shut Down Response,” but awareness of these responses can help us to aim for using mostly “Safe Space Responses” most of the time.

Shut Down Responses
What we say in our “Shut Down Responses” may be true; however, our response shuts the child down from continuing to feel or share their difficult emotions. Instead, we want to give responses that put out a welcome mat for them to continue to come to you when they experience difficult things. After giving “Safe Space Responses,” there may be time to narrate the truth, ask questions, give your perspective, etc., but we often jump ahead to this step, as in the examples below, instead of first being a safe space.

Downplaying – Communicating that the event or circumstance about which they are feeling difficult emotions is really not that big of a deal.

“We just evacuated and what you’re worried about is forgetting the single Lego piece!?”

Defending – Defending the decision that caused the grief and thus communicating, “If there’s a good reason or if I had good intentions, then you shouldn’t feel any difficult emotions.”

“We chose this school and are spending a lot of money for you to go there because we thought it would be best for you, so you need to be more grateful.”

Comparing – Comparing one person’s experiences to another person’s or comparing different experiences the same person went through. Both things can be worthy of difficult emotions; both people can be allowed to experience difficult emotions. There is enough compassion to go around!

“It’s not as bad for you as it is for your sister. Think about how hard this has been for her!”

“Look at the people around you without enough food to eat. What they’re going through doesn’t even compare to what you’re complaining about.”

Correcting – Correcting the facts when they’re telling you their feelings instead of compassionately ministering to the important heartfelt perception. This way of thinking assumes that “If they just had the facts right, this emotion would go away!”

“We didn’t actually move 10 times that year, it was only 5 times.”

“What actually happened was…”

Again, most of these responses are not inherently bad or untrue, they are just unhelpful when trying to create an emotionally safe space for children. Instead, use “Safe Space Responses” first.

Safe Space Responses
The following “Safe Space Reponses” will invite your children into emotional connection and give them the space to feel heard and supported.

Acknowledge – Acknowledge that they were brave for sharing this with you and that you are glad they came to you.

Affirm – Give affirmation that their emotions are real, valid, justifiable, etc., and that they make sense.

Comfort/Connect – Offer a hug, time together, a conversation, kind words, their favorite meal, etc.

Here’s an example of a safe space response:

“Thank you so much for sharing that with me. I’m so glad you did. It makes sense that you would feel sad that you forgot your Lego piece when we left. That Lego set was really special to you, and realizing you are missing a piece must have been really upsetting. We lost a lot of things when we left, didn’t we? Would you like a hug or to play together for a few minutes?”

This concept of “Safe Spaces Responses” may seem like a simple practical application of the vast research we are doing, and yet, looking at the responses we received on our survey, it is clear that many Missionary Kids feel they didn’t have consistent emotional support. It is likely they could have benefited from some more Safe Space Responses.

As we continue to analyze our data, we will continue to look at more practical ways that TCKs can be supported in such a way that their experience creates deeper family connection, yields many of the benefits that TCKs are praised for, and encourages thriving in adulthood.

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The “F” Word

by Julie Martinez

Freaked out. Frustrated. Fear. Failure. These are some of the F words that we have been slinging around the house lately. We have also been slinging around the F word Frittata, but that is a different story. We are in the process of transition, and it is creating moments of drama and tension. My son, who was born in Honduras and has lived in five different countries, is now returning to America to attend university and emotions are running high.

This is a boy who has grown up in airports. He can navigate any airport anywhere. From the time that he was three months old he has been flying across the world. I am afraid that when he remembers his childhood, he will tell stories of terrible airplane food and rushing through airport gates laden with carry-ons. Or will he talk about a lifetime of good-byes? Of constantly downsizing our lives to fit into two suitcases?

This is a boy who has lived an unconventional life. He knows how to barter in local markets like an Arab trader. He can hop on a motorcycle fearlessly and navigate unknown roads in third world countries. He is unique. He has been chased by elephants; he has climbed volcanoes; and he has stood where the Indian Ocean meets the Atlantic. He has seen the world and much of it on the road less traveled and all before he was 18.

So, how does he transition to the USA? How does he navigate the world of fraternities, finals, football, fast food, and other Americanisms? My son is a third culture kid, which means he is not fully American, nor has he taken on the culture of his host country. He has created a third culture—a culture unique to him. He travels to America as a hidden immigrant. As one who speaks the language and looks the part but is missing social cues and cultural meanings.

He knows this and he is fearful — fearful of failure — and is freaked out. His F word is Fear. Fear is paralyzing, sends people into tailspins. Fear is seemingly depriving him of oxygen and causing him to make questionable decisions. My F word, on the other hand, is frustration. I am frustrated because I can’t help him and truthfully, he won’t let me, which also frustrates me. He will be 18 soon and naturally wants to navigate life on his own. And the reality is, I can’t fully help him—he sees the world through a different lens than I do and he is going to have to figure it out.

Living overseas is wonderful, but there are prices to be paid, and they are paid by all. God calls us and He equips us . . . but there are aspects of this cross-cultural life that aren’t easy nor are there easy answers. I wish I could wrap up this story with a three-fold solution. There isn’t one. The only thing that I can offer is that maybe it is time for a different word. Not an F word, but a G word, and that is grace. I pray for this G word in my son’s life — that God will cover him in His grace and that God in His grace and mercy will lead him and that His grace will carry him in the hard places and through the mistakes and the hard times that are inevitable.

What about you? What carries you through your F seasons? How does grace meet you in weakness and uncertainty?

Originally published June 21, 2013

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Julie Martinez has served on the field for 25 years where she raised her two children. She has lived in Honduras, Chile, Zambia, and Cambodia. She currently works at Lee University where she is an Assistant Professor and the Director of the Intercultural Studies Program.