Stories – A Life Overseas |

Sobs of Joy: Surrendering the Grief of Singleness on the Field

by Emma Bell

A few years ago, I flew back to the U.S. from my home in Thailand to be a bridesmaid in my dear friend’s wedding. It’s a common missionary experience. Occasionally, if the moment is dear enough to us that we just can’t miss it, we might fork up the money to fly back for such an important event.

As soon as I landed in the U.S., delirious with jet lag, I was swept up into the flurry of the wedding: getting nails done, preparing the bachelorette party, sleeping on an air mattress, squeezing in a trip to Chipotle. After just a few days of craziness, I found myself all dressed up, standing to the right of the altar with the other bridesmaids and watching one of my best friends walk down the aisle towards her almost-husband.

At some point during the ceremony, we all sang the song “You’re Beautiful” by Phil Wickham. I was already failing to hold back the tears, but they really started to stream on the last verse:

When we arrive at eternity’s shore
Where death is just a memory and tears are no more
We’ll enter in as the wedding bells ring
Your bride will come together and we’ll sing
You’re beautiful

I wanted to think that I’m just a sentimental person, that weddings are so beautiful and I’m just so tender, so that’s why I couldn’t keep my composure. But now, a few years later, I’m trying to be honest with myself: that moment was not only beautiful to me; it was also deeply painful.

I resent that singleness could make me feel pain. It feels embarrassing to care. It feels anti-feminist. It feels weak. I have spent years learning the gifts and the beauty of singleness and have preached it from the rooftops. I shout to anyone who will hear me, “Singleness is a valuable gift! Jesus was single! Paul recommends it! Marriage isn’t superior to singleness!” And I still stand by these things. At the same time, in my own experience, singleness has caused me deep grief.

I’ve been seriously processing my singleness since I was about twenty-four. At that age, it truly felt like everyone around me was getting married. I had two roommates who were planning their weddings, and that same year I was discerning whether or not overseas missions would be my long-term career. I imagined going overseas and being the only single woman in a missionary community of marrieds and their kids. I pictured the isolation on Christmas when others would celebrate with their families, and I would be alone. I pictured the humility of it — being regarded as less mature or less of a leader because of my single status.

[Praise God, most of these concerns have not been realized in the way that I had feared. God has given me wonderful friends—of both the single and married variety.]

It was age twenty-nine that singleness struck a new chord with me. I was twenty-nine when COVID upended my life. I found myself stuck in America, my home and possessions left behind in a country I had no idea if I’d ever get back to. Perhaps more importantly, I found myself living far away from my overseas team. I experienced, quite dramatically and suddenly, what I knew would come for me sooner or later: having to say goodbye to my teammates and closest friends — alone.

Because friends don’t come with a “till death do us part” promise, I parted ways with the friends I had come to depend on like family. I’ll always remember when I chose to relocate to Thailand in 2021, and my favorite married couple decided to stay in America and work on getting pregnant instead. They told me they would be exiting this next chapter of my life over a Zoom call. We stayed on the call and cried, hardly saying a word, for probably an hour.

About a month later, I packed my bags and joined a new team in a new country. The missionary life is full of goodbyes — goodbyes on goodbyes on goodbyes. But for single missionaries, it is uniquely difficult because we do it alone.

I saw a statistic once that said of all the single missionaries on the field, women make up 80%. This means a couple of things for us single ladies. First, it’s hard to meet someone out here. The odds are not in our favor. Second, I am mercifully not alone in my singleness. In fact, I feel more seen and understood where I live overseas by other single missionaries and single Thai sisters than I do back in my church community in the U.S. where it feels like everyone was married by twenty-three.

Are we missionaries because we are single? Do singles have more freedom to go to the nations than those who marry? That’s at least partly true. I can think of a few people who had dreamed of being overseas before they married someone who did not share that calling. So, are we missionaries because we are single? Or are we single because we are missionaries? Would I have met someone and been married with kids by now if I had lived in the U.S. for the last twelve years instead of Asia? Maybe. Not necessarily. I know plenty of single people who live in their home country.

Yet I find myself in a situation where my obedience to share Christ in an unreached part of the world appears to be at odds with my desire for marriage. I could “try” to meet someone, but again, there aren’t many options where I live. I could get online, but then I’d likely be meeting men who live somewhere else, so I’d have to be willing to at least consider leaving the field. Is my ministry calling more important, or is marriage? If a simple answer popped into your head, I doubt you’ve walked a mile in the single missionary’s shoes.

Singleness is a strange grief. It’s a grief that increases with time. I process it. I mourn it. I put it away for a time, only to take it out again and realize it’s grown bigger and changed shape.

I’m thirty-four now. Some days, singleness hurts. It’s not having anyone to bicker with. It’s the social smallness you feel in comparison to a couple. It’s a lack of physical affection. It’s having to build trust from the ground up all over again with another new roommate. It’s when your age is getting older and your life stage is the same as a recent college-grad. It’s the feeling of rejection compounded over many years. It’s when the conversation turns to pregnancy or kids, and I have nothing to contribute. It’s when baby showers have a new twinge of sadness and shame.

One night, lying in bed trying to fall asleep, my overactive mind stumbled upon a thought: What if God really loves me? A few days earlier someone had been praying for me, and as she prayed, she said this to me: “He loves you so much, Emma. He would do anything for you — just ask Him.” Those words stunned me. They felt so personal and specific to me. Days later, they were still ringing in my ears. Is she allowed to say that? How could she even know that that’s how God feels about me?

Yet I couldn’t deny that it had to be true. God’s Word says so over and over. Jesus said to his disciples, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). And a few verses later: “Whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you” (John 15:16.) Romans 8:32 says, “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?”

The idea that Jesus deeply loves me and takes care of me wasn’t brand new information, but that night, the Spirit allowed me to believe it in a way I hadn’t dared to before. I sat up in my bed and started to cry. I started to really cry. Sobs. I had to get a box of tissues. Sobs of relief. Sobs of joy. Sobs where my walls of self-protection were being dismantled. Sobs I thought I might have if a man ever told me, “I love you, and I choose you.”

And ever since then, I’ve consistently found it much easier to believe God really loves me. His love is not theoretical. It’s not just for theologians to muse upon. He is near to us. He heals our wounds.

When we arrive on eternity’s shore
When death is just a memory and tears are no more
We’ll enter in as the wedding bells ring
Your bride will come together and we’ll sing
You’re beautiful

I may never ever have a wedding day. I may have to continue dealing with my ever-expanding, ever-changing grief for the rest of my life here. But I will be at that wedding — the marriage supper of the Lamb (Rev. 19:9). Because of Jesus, I’m invited to be in that marriage. The marriage of which all marriages are but a dim shadow — the eternal union of Jesus and His bride, His people.

At that wedding, rejection and shame will fall off my shoulders as I am welcomed by the King himself. To be included and chosen on that day will far outshine any loneliness I’ve ever felt. And I know that on that day, when I finally see Him with my own eyes and worship Him alongside people from every tribe, nation, and tongue, no part of me will regret trusting God with my singleness. Not one part of me will regret putting my whole life into His hands. When I hear Him welcome me home, I won’t have any more questions.

~~~~~~~

Emma Bell has loved doing evangelism and discipleship with the unreached for ten years now — first in East Asia and now in Thailand. If you’d like to respond to this article, Emma would love to hear from you. You can contact Elizabeth Trotter, and she’ll connect you.

TCKs and the Power of Presence

by Brandon Jones

I’m at a theatre in Brazil with my daughter, Monica, who is just a few months away from finishing high school here in Brazil and moving away to start college in the United States, a country that does not really feel like her home. But, then again, neither does Brazil. At least all the way.

Our afternoon movie was Rental Family, which features a man named Philip who is an American actor that has spent the last seven years in Japan. During that time he’s picked up enough Japanese to get by, booked some gigs, and settled into an apartment from where he can watch so many neighbors. But all the time he’s alone.

For my daughter and me, this movie was quite the experience as we are in our eighth year in Brazil, have picked up enough Portuguese to get by, have settled into an apartment from which we can watch so many neighbors, along with their dogs. But we’re also kind of alone.

In the movie Philip often has conversations that mix English and Japanese as he fits in quite often in spaces and places, but yet he also always stands out. The cross-cultural stuff, however, is in the background of the movie. What stood out more to me was the theme of presence and how as humans we were created to be in the presence of others and gift those others with our own presence. There’s power in our presence, and the business Philip begins to work for, the rent-a-family business, cashes in on this power for better or for worse.

In some ways Philip is perfect for the part. Of course, he’s American, so he’s asked to fit western roles. For seven years he has also been trying to figure out how to be present in another culture that he will never fully understand. But above and beyond every culture is the same, universal human nature that creates it. And above and beyond us humans is the God who created us for presence, no matter how many apartment buildings or norms exist to keep us compartmentalized and apart from one another.

As the movie goes on this theme of presence collides with the question of honesty. Is physical presence all that powerful when it’s based on an act or a lie? Yes and no. The movie does well in letting us see Philip’s journey, introducing us to fascinating characters, and at the end letting us sit with the ambivalence of how presence, honesty, and relationships all intertwine, whether that be in Japan or any other part of the world.

Sitting there with my daughter, I realized the movie wasn’t just telling a story about Japan or rented relationships, but was gently pressing on something deeper within me.

Rental Family is not a Christian movie, but its characters and themes reinforce the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation. There is power in God’s presence with us. And that power would certainly be diminished were it based on some lie, were some of those ancient heresies true after all that Jesus wasn’t really God and really one of us, but some imposter merely playing a role—our Rental Savior.

As cross-cultural missionaries our whole family has dealt with feeling like imposters from time to time. Our passports say one country, and our Portuguese accents confirm it, but our hearts are torn. We may never truly feel what a Brazilian feels, but we’ve lived here long enough to talk like they talk and even think like they think às vezes (sometimes). And while this is true for my wife Marci and me, it’s even more true for Monica and her little sister Olivia, who have spent a majority of their developmental years in Brazil.

Monica is present in this humid, densely populated place, and its emotive people have shaped who she is. But she’ll never be Brazilian, even if her Portuguese accent is better than mine. Yet as she preps to “return” to the States, she doesn’t feel all that American either. Sure, she’ll look and sound the part, but the contours of her character have been permanently pressed by Brazil.

There’s a phrase for kids like Monica and Olivia: Third Culture Kids (TCKs). In a way they can “mostly belong“ in more than one culture, while not fully belonging in any of them. And so they are really their own third culture that is a mix of the two. Their mom was also a TCK from Kenya whose heart, in her own words, “always beats to the rhythm of an African drum.”

Philip, the movie character, and I are different from them. We grew up in just one culture and were formed by it before moving abroad. He’s from Minnesota, and I’m from Kansas City. Yet, culture has its way of seeping in through the cracks, so even though guys like us take on things from our new culture, it’s different than being formed by it — we can keep things more compartmentalized.

Toward the end of the movie Philip opens up about his regret in not going back to America for his father’s funeral. He never says why he didn’t go, even after showing up to the airport with his ticket in hand. There’s complexity to such things. His relationship with his father was not great. But there’s also ambivalence about “going home” for guys like Philip and me. There’s familiarity there, sure. But there’s also the heartache of familiar strangeness (or is it strange familiarity?) as well as the difficulty of yet another goodbye.

As our family looks ahead to prepping Monica and even Olivia for their re-entries to the States, a temptation is to let the laments of future losses pile up and rob us of our full presence here in Brazil. We must guard against it. We must also guard against giving our daughters the message that the culture they are returning to is worse than Brazil or just plain wrong. As we learned before coming to Brazil: cultures are neither right nor wrong, just different.

Marci and I have hopes and prayers for our daughters as they re-enter that they can come to peace with “mostly belonging” while they are in the States, and, looking back to Brazil, will see their unique journey as a bonus instead of a detriment.

Monica was recently asked to reflect on her experience as a TCK, including its pros and cons and said this:

Being a TCK is very difficult. No matter where I am, I am missing something from my other world. No matter how much I have in Brazil, I still miss my family in the US, and I still know that I will always be a foreigner in Brazil. I have dealt with jealousy of people who stay in the same place their whole life, but I moved past that, as I would never give up my life for the world.

Being bilingual is definitely one of my favorite things about being an MK [missionaries’ kid], as I have unlocked a new way of expressing myself. I have also learned valuable lessons about how to lose, grieve, grow, and thrive. I find my experiences of learning how to create my belonging in unfamiliar places very useful. I also like the uniqueness of my story.

Even though people who aren’t TCKs can’t understand me, I still value my unique experiences. To have your own third culture that’s a mix of both worlds is priceless. To mix languages and cultural norms from two distinct places is fun, and it’s a part of me. Looking back at all the hardships, I find what I’ve gained to be more than what I’ve lost.

As our family continues to split further into two hemispheres, the power of physical presence will remain a sore spot in my soul. Like Monica, I too feel that pull of longing to be with family in the States and treasuring my time there. But, at the same time, my home is not there. It’s here in Brazil. And it’s familiarly strange for me to be here, even after seven years. And that’s okay.

Hebrews has long been my favorite biblical book, and even more so since I moved to Brazil. Although there aren’t a lot of people who can understand my daughter or me, Jesus can. And Jesus is enough. I’m thankful for His presence. It’s beyond powerful. And it’s no act or lie. The family of God is not for rent.

~~~~~~~

Brandon Jones grew up in Kansas City, married a missionaries’ kid from Kenya, and with her has raised three children both off and on the mission field. He served as a professor and pastor in the States for several years before becoming an international missionary in Brazil in 2018.

Ready or Not, Here We Come: Our First Furlough After 10 Years

Black bins with yellow lids are beginning to fill the empty spaces in our house and a six-week countdown of little airplanes is now displayed on the fridge. I’ve got a stack of homeschooling books piled on the floor and a notebook full of lists started (an attempt to organize my brain a little more).

Some of our better-looking clothes have already been packed away, along with a few of our favorite games and a candle labeled Home, Sweet Home. Memory books with dust engrained over the years, favorite stuffed animals from earlier days, and my collection of words — poetry and prayers penned in the longest and hardest season of my life — are all carefully placed beside the bins, nestled against the wall.

We are currently planning our very first furlough back to North America. I have spent a total of nine weeks in North America over the past seven years. It’s recently dawned on me that we will arrive on the exact day we first arrived in Uganda back in 2016. We will celebrate ten years abroad by being welcomed back home to North America. A whole lot of life has been lived in the past decade, most of it in a very uncertain season for our family — with no end date, no return trips planned, or any idea of how the Lord would make a way.

It’s been a life lived dependent on the Lord in every area.

When circumstances crashed wildly and obliterated our expectations of serving abroad years ago, we were left with hands open in full surrender. But I can testify that the Lord has met me in this waiting place and even now as I’m trying to walk in a new space — transition.

It will be the first time we pack up the house to keep all the living things and dust from descending while we are away for nine months. It will be the first time to meet family members in person, the first time to experience playing with cousins, the first time to travel across the ocean with every member of our family, the first time to fully feel the relief of a challenging adoption journey, and the first break from an extended time serving abroad.

So, imagine what a gift it was to feel so understood in this new season of uncertainty. I couldn’t believe the timing of the conversation with a friend back home last week. It had been years since we had spoken in real time, and it was as if I was looking at a reflection of my own weary and joy-filled heart. Like we had been traveling parallel journeys unknowingly.

We chatted early into the morning my time (thank you eight-hour time difference!), but it was such a gift of God’s goodness to me and a reminder that He has gone before us even now.

For so long I have sought to discover the goodness found even in the hard, uncertain, and lengthy waiting place. Honestly, it has all caught me by surprise, with desperate prayers answered in recent months, absolute miracles paving the way, and a new season of celebration drawing us in.

I am so incredibly grateful, and I’m feeling the weight of what this life has been.

I feel as if I’m limping out of a war zone and shots are still being fired even now with the end in sight. I’ve never experienced being in transition like this before. My emotions are spilling over in tears of grief and joy and relief. My arms feel too weak to hold all this goodness and joy bubbling, and I could shout it from the mountain top of how faithful the Lord has been.

Even when things became really hard.
Even when chaos threatened to destroy our very hearts.
Even when saying no to corruption, knowing it would cost us time.
Even when choosing His way meant dying to what we wanted.

How gracious the Lord is to remind me that I have been securely held this entire time. By the hands who have helped us to take hold of our children, by financially covering us to keep serving others across the ocean, by cultivating a ministry that’s thriving, by the persistent prayers of those far away, and in all the ways the Lord has written His provision and His faithfulness into our testimony.

Even now, as I’m caught in the middle of feeling a whole lot of emotions.

The loss and the joy.
The celebration and the sorrow.
The overwhelm and the excitement.
The gratitude and the utter exhaustion.

Oh, the tears that have been falling as I struggle to find my footing in a new season of living in the AND.

Perhaps it’s the relief I am bound to feel as I’m embraced in a long-awaited hug, or meeting nieces and nephews for the first time, or the joy of seeing my children experience everything (and I mean everything) in North America for the first time. Maybe it’s the walks in parks with leaves changing colors, or knowing there are friends walking similar journeys back home, just traveling down different roads.

I’m learning to hold space for the whole story, because it’s not all glory and it’s not all pain. I have discovered there is a great deal of peace to be found in the wilderness seasons, but what about the grief I’m feeling in a season filled with so much joy? It’s a tender place of straddling the unknown of the “not yet” and the joyful celebration of “look what’s coming.”

In recent days, new immigration changes in our home country are implicating our already complicated life and we’ve just experienced the Lord move in an impossible situation that loomed before us. And He has made things even better than we could have imagined.

If you find yourself in at the threshold of a new season or you are feeling the tension of grief and joy, I pray this place of transition leads you to root even deeper in the Lord. Though the waves of uncertainty are trying to overturn us, though we may be tossed about by circumstances out of our control, He is in the boat with us saying, “Peace, be still.”

The words of Psalm 40:1-3 have been resounding in my heart lately:

I waited patiently for the Lord, and he turned to me and heard my cry for help. He brought me up from a desolate pit, out of the muddy clay, and set my feet on a rock, making my steps secure. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God.

Many will see and fear, and they will trust in the Lord.

God is at work in even the smallest details, even as I celebrate with tears flowing like little rivers of healing, embrace gratitude and the grieving, and live in the in-between places of this incredibly complicated life. I have known Him in the wilderness of waiting and persistent aching. And with a grief that lingers while praises pour from my lips, my heart is incredibly overwhelmed with the goodness of God. I can testify to His faithfulness as He continues to gently lead me in the uncertainty and the celebrating.

Short Roots Are Safer

By Lauren Wells

I used to think the discomfort of settling down was just another challenge of growing up as a Third Culture Kid. I was taught that because of the high mobility and transient nature of our upbringing, stability can feel more uncomfortable than constant transition. I saw that play out in the lives of many adult TCKs who, even though they claimed to want stability, couldn’t seem to stay in one place, or one job, for very long.

I saw it in myself, too, as I lived a shallowly rooted life through college and my early 20s.

I deliberately fought against those “TCK tendencies” during the six years we lived in Oregon, where we started our family. I was determined to learn how to grow deeper roots and very slowly inched them down into hardened soil. When we moved to South Carolina, the pain of ripping out those newly formed roots reminded me why I had avoided growing them in the first place.

The relationships we’d built in Oregon were worth the pain, but I knew South Carolina was a temporary layover. So I poured myself into my family and my work, holding a quiet readiness to be transplanted again when the time came.

Two years later, we decided to settle in Georgia. Our mantra was, “We’re here for the long haul.” We bought a home where I imagined raising teenagers. We invested deeply in community, church, and friendships. I made it a point to turn our house into a home from the very first day, hanging pictures before the boxes were even unpacked, as if willing my roots to grow deeper, faster.

We sought out friendships and opportunities to get involved in our new community, and over the years our family’s roots grew longer, fuller, and increasingly intertwined with the roots of the people we came to love deeply.

Four years and a few months later, those boxes are packed again, and my walls are bare. God, and my husband’s job, are leading us back to Oregon. This is not what I anticipated when I chose to let my roots grow deep. Nor what I wanted when I brought my children along for the root-growing ride.

As we prepare to leave, I remember why my younger self warned me against this. Ripping out deep roots hurts. Watching my children’s roots be torn up hurts. Watching dear friends grieve alongside us, when we all thought our kids would grow up together, hurts.

And maybe the hardest part is how familiar this pain feels.

I’ve known it before. At 13, moving to Africa. At 16, moving back to America. At 18, returning to Africa again. At 27, moving to South Carolina. I remember making quiet, protective decisions along the way to avoid feeling this again.

That part of me whispers, “This is why you don’t grow roots. You should’ve listened.” But there’s a louder, steadier truth the Lord keeps bringing me back to, the same one I keep speaking to my girls: “It hurts big because we loved big.”

These years of sinking roots deeper than I ever had before mean this uprooting is more painful than any I’ve known. Shorter roots surely would have been safer. I’m not looking forward to the time it will take for these freshly wounded ones to heal.

But I know this too: In the rich soil of Oregon, they will grow deep again. I’ll fight the battle against shallow, safer roots. Because maybe deep roots were never meant to keep us in place, but to teach us how to love well wherever, and for however long, we’re planted.

~~~~~~~~~

Lauren is a wife, mama to two girls, founder and CEO of TCK Training, and author of Raising Up a Generation of Healthy Third Culture Kids, The Grief Tower, What Made That Feel So Hard?, and several others. An Adult Third Culture Kid (ATCK) who spent her teenage years living in Tanzania, East Africa, she draws on both her lived experience and her background in Child Development and Prevention Science to support TCKs and those who care for them. Through TCK Training, her work integrates research-informed frameworks with practical, accessible resources that equip families, educators, and organizations to cultivate resilient TCKs.

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

Telling Our Cross-Cultural Stories Can Feel a Lot like Sharing Last Night’s Dreams

I’m on a subway in a crowded city . . . a group of orange-clad monks carrying bright-blue IKEA bags enters my car . . . now I’m not on the subway . . . I’m on a bus . . . some children next to me are nibbling on chicken feet . . . the bus stops for a dragon parade . . . with lions . . . a cat waves at me from inside a 7-11.

Sound like a bizarre dream to you, or just another day in a life abroad? Sometimes it can be hard to be sure.

We’ve all woken up from a toss-and-turn night with a vivid story in our minds that we can’t wait to tell to somebody, whether or not they are interested in hearing it. Sharing that dream can have a lot in common with telling stories about our mundane, or not-so-mundane, adventures overseas. How? Let me count the ways. . . .

Someone from back home asks you what life is like where you live. You tell them, and their eyes glaze over as your details get further unmoored from your passport-country’s culture and happenings. As the common touchpoints diminish, the interest often decreases. You won’t believe what happened to me last week! can sound an awful lot like You won’t believe what I dreamed last night!
You’ve told your dream, with vivid details and outlandish plot twists, to your friend, and they reply with, Oh, wow, that reminds me of a dream I had. It’s like when you tell someone about your monthly trek to a remote jungle outpost, and they regale you with a story about their trip to the Grand Canyon.
Most of my dreams wander around and I wake up before there’s a great resolution. That sounds a lot like some of my cross-cultural stories. Not everything gets wrapped up with a bow.
Have you ever wanted to go back to sleep so you could see your interrupted dream to its end? Have you ever heard that with practice, you can control the outcome of your dreams? Have you ever told a story during home service and you find yourself longing to be back overseas so you can reinsert yourself into the story again?
We often want to find meaning in our dreams, and people often offer up their dream-interpretation skills. Is God trying to tell me something? When you share what’s going on with your cross-cultural work, you may want to decipher what God is orchestrating, and others may want to jump in and explain it all. They may even want to work on tying that bow for you.
I think we’ve all had a version of the why-did-I-forget-to-wear-clothes-to-work-today? dream. And we’ve all had some embarrassing story from a language or culture faux pas overseas. Sometimes both are fun to tell. Sometimes, not so much.
Some refuse to tell the details of a bad dream because they’re afraid it will make them come true. Cross-cultural workers sometimes hold back details of their lives because they know they are true.
You know how much harder it is to remember the specifics of a dream the longer it is after waking up. In the same way, when you’ve been back from living abroad long enough, you start to get hazy on what really took place over there. While I was swapping memories with my wife a few weeks ago, she said, “It’s almost like it didn’t happen.” . . . Was it a dream?
And sometimes, sometimes, you find someone who listens to you with interest, and asks insightful questions, and then simply listens some more. Whether you’re talking about a dream or a true story, they listen because they know how much it matters to you. Ahhhh, what a someone. And when that happens, you happily ask, Have you had any crazy dreams lately? or Have you ever been to the Grand Canyon?

[photo: “2012 Chinese New Year Parade,” by Jason Pier, used under a Creative Commons license]

Why I Compiled Letters Now Sent

By Megan C. Norton-Newbanks

When I first dreamed of compiling Letters Now Sent, Volume 1, I had no idea what would unfold. What began as a quiet idea—a nudge to create space for heartfelt, handwritten reflections—quickly became a deeply moving, grand experiment.

Inspired by Ruth Van Reken’s Letters Never Sent, I wanted to invite people who have lived cross-culturally to write letters—not polished essays or anonymous journal entries, but real, signed, vulnerable letters to and from the people who have shaped their journeys.

What emerged was a cultural archive. A chorus of voices. A tender mosaic of identity, loss, belonging, and celebration.

These letters are powerful because they are honest. They contain apology, affirmation, disappointment, gratitude, grief, and love. They come from people who have lived between cultures and across borders—people who’ve had to say too many goodbyes, who’ve wrestled with where they belong, who’ve discovered joy in unlikely places. These letters are not just reflections; they are historical records. Primary source documents that speak directly to what it means to navigate life in multiple cultural worlds.

Every letter in this book was written with courage. Many were written without knowing exactly how they would land. Some with laughter still echoing, others through tears. But all of them carry truth. And that, I believe, is what makes them so beautiful.

One of my mentors recently reminded me, “If it’s a real relationship, it’s a truth-full one.” That stuck with me throughout this process. I wanted this book to be a place where real people could speak truthfully—where the messiness of humanity wasn’t edited out but held gently.

There were moments when the editorial team and I hesitated. Some letters are hard. Some may be misunderstood. But we chose to include them all. Because in these letters, there is an invitation: to lean in, to listen with curiosity instead of judgment, and to honor the complexities of our shared humanity.

I hold deep respect for the letter writers. What they’ve done—what they’ve shared—is no small thing. They’ve trusted us with their stories. And now, as readers, we have a responsibility to receive these letters with care.

These are pieces of larger stories. We don’t get the whole picture, but we do get something real—something significant. And in that proximity, in getting close to someone’s heart, we discover that our human experiences are far more alike than they are different.

Our lives are not tidy. They are sweet and salty, spicy and sometimes sour. They are paradoxical, contradictory, beautiful, and hard. These letters show us that.

I often return to a quote from Kate Bowler’s Have a Beautiful, Terrible Day: “It’s not every day that you see it, but sometimes beauty sneaks up on you with a tenderness, a sweetness, so lovely it hurts” (p. 93).

That’s how these letters feel to me. They sneak up on you. They stay with you. They break your heart open in the best way.

Letters Now Sent is for anyone who has lived between cultures, loved someone who has, or simply finds beauty in diverse stories. These letters are not about passports or perfect endings. They are about presence, truth, and connection.

This book is a box of saved letters, offered to you with reverence. My hope is that, as you read, you will pause. Listen. Hold space for the mess and the wonder. And maybe, just maybe, you’ll see a bit of your own story reflected back.

With deep gratitude,
Megan C. Norton-Newbanks
Compiler & Editor, Letters Now Sent, Volume 1

Read the collection: Letters Now Sent, Volume 1 on Amazon

Editor’s Note: The beauty of this book is that the letters are written by normal, everyday people. But global readers here at A Life Overseas may also recognize other names in the book, many of whom have written (or whose work has been referenced) at A Life Overseas in the past: Marilyn Gardner, Ruth Van Reken, Lois Bushong, Anna Danforth, Tanya Crossman, Kathleen Smith, and Chris O’Shaughnessy. ~Elizabeth Trotter

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Megan C. Norton-Newbanks (MA, MS) is an author, Third Culture Kid (TCK) consultant, intercultural trainer, podcast host of “A Culture Story,” and writer at adultthirdculturekid.com. Growing up as a U.S. diplomat dependent, she lived in six countries and has lived in four more countries as an Adult Third Culture Kid (in addition to six U.S. States). Her book, Belonging Beyond Borders: How Adult Third Culture Kids Can Cultivate a Sense of Belonging, equips and empowers globally mobile youth to recognize their cultural competencies and apply them in various contexts. She frequently leads both in-person and virtual TCK workshops, university retreats, and intercultural dialogue groups for a variety of international entities and sectors. Her writings and research are published in several magazines and online forums, and she currently manages the publication of several Third Culture Kid-specific books. Megan is actively involved with several organizations that support expats and Third Culture Kids (MuKappa International, Foreign Service Youth Foundation, Expat Valley, Families in Global Transition, OMF, Intercultural Transitions). For the past seven years, Megan has been the co-chair of the NAFSA Global Nomad/TCK Interest Group. She loves hearing TCKs share their stories and supporting their journey into their next “home.”

God is Faithful in All Our Stories

by Sue Eenigenburg

Everyone has at least one story to tell, and probably more. It could be an amazing thing God has done. Maybe the Lord saw you through a time of deep sorrow or confusion. Sometimes something funny happens, like a language blooper or cultural blunder. When we share our stories, we feel less alone. Sharing our stories builds community.

Stories affect us differently than facts. Facts teach us information, while stories touch our souls. We still learn, but we do so with heartfelt warmth and understanding. We hear another person’s experience, and our perspective changes. We can empathize. We can celebrate. We can relate, because when we hear another’s story, we realize we aren’t isolated in our own. Stories don’t have to be dramatic or amazing. They can be simple and still memorable.

Jesus told stories that people could relate to. He didn’t just teach truth but used stories to illustrate what truth looked like. He wanted people to experience “aha” moments.

God speaks to my heart in the stories I live out. The older I get, the more stories I have that point to God’s faithfulness, patience, and kindness. As I share my stories with others, I pray that my stories touch their lives. I invite them to join me in acknowledging that God is the author of all our stories. We aren’t on our own—even when it looks and feels that way.

In Bags Packed, Hearts Ready, I share stories of God’s faithfulness to me. Like the time when a technician left me in an MRI tunnel long after the machine had stopped. I was securely strapped in and unable to move much. I tried calling out, but no one answered. I counted slowly to one hundred before I pushed the panic button. And when I pushed it no one came, which caused me to panic! I was starting to try and wiggle my way towards escape when finally, someone came and let me out.

Another time it was the middle of the night, and I was wide awake weeping. Sitting on my bed in Spain, I was texting with my sister and my dad who were in Ohio. They were standing around my mom’s hospital bed as she left her earthly home to go be with Jesus. I felt heartbroken that I couldn’t be there. Far from family, I knew Jesus was with me, but I missed being there and I would miss my mom. Stories flowed at her funeral and prompted me to ponder my own values and priorities.

I’ve learned a lot through our many transitions. Even with practice, they are never easy. We’ve moved at least seventeen times. We’ve gone through seven international moves on four different continents. God has been with me in my loneliness. He has held my hand as I adjusted to the many uncertainties in unfamiliar places. He watches over my aging and my responses to it.

Sometimes my stories are simple life lessons from an everyday object. My frother reminded me about the importance of rest. Let me tell my frother story:

A frother changed my life. OK, maybe that is a bit dramatic, but it really did change how much I enjoy my coffee. I used to drink coffee black (with lots of sugar). Then we moved to Spain, and I started drinking “cafe con leche” and cappuccinos. Frothy milk made coffee taste amazing. I loved going out for coffee more than ever.

Then, a friend gave me a frother of my very own. I could use it at home and make my own frothy coffee. Now if I want to, I can have warm, frothy milk in my coffee every day.

I love my frother (sorry for more drama—I like it a lot). It is amazing. I heat up the milk and add a little sugar. Then I turn on my battery-operated frother and froth away. I combine the frothy milk with coffee and get ready to experience liquid yumminess.

Recently, my milk hasn’t been very foamy. I started frothing the milk a little longer and it was OK, but it wasn’t like it used to be. The change happened so gradually that I didn’t realize it. I began to forget what frothy milk tasted like. I haven’t been to a restaurant in months, so I didn’t have anything to which I could compare it.

But I wondered about it as it was taking longer and longer for my trusty frother “to do its thing.” And its thing was no longer what it once was.

I hadn’t changed the milk I used. I had the same brand of coffee.

But it wasn’t the same. I accepted my new reality, a little sad, but what can one do?

Don made coffee one morning. The milk was foamier than ever! I was so happy. What happened?

My hero realized my frother’s batteries were low and put in new ones. My frother was dying, and I didn’t even know it. It needed help. But it happened so slowly over time that I adapted to the new normal of whatever foaminess it could produce. It wasn’t quite right, but it was what I had.

We can be like my frother. We may feel tired, stressed, and drained. But it happens over time, and we adjust to the new normal and forget what full energy feels like. So, we keep going, though a bit slower. We may think about diet, exercise, packed schedules, or what might be causing our fatigue. But there are so many ministry opportunities, we assume we can’t or shouldn’t stop. We keep going, but we are moving more and more slowly with less and less energy.

We don’t take a day off.

We can’t remember our last Sabbath rest.

We can’t afford a vacation.

There are so many needs. Isn’t stopping selfish? We don’t realize we need recharged. Our batteries are dying. We need help. We must take the time to get recharged. We must be intentional; recharging doesn’t happen without effort.

Take a weekly day of rest. Every week. Relax. Exercise. Have a fun day. Enjoy a hobby. Listen to your favorite music. Read a good book. Take a walk. Go to a movie. Watch children play in a park. Pet a dog. Sit in silence. Breathe.

Buy a frother!

Don’t let your batteries die. Learn this life lesson from me and my recharged, fully functioning, happiness-inducing, delight-giving frother: Choose to recharge. (pages 138-139)

In our move back to the States last year, my frother broke. I got a new one. And a backup, if needed. God used a little appliance to highlight for me that sometimes we need to rest. Refreshment is essential in the middle of busy schedules.

Other people’s stories have enriched, challenged, and blessed my life. We all need to share our stories. Write them down. Say them aloud. God wants us to tell our stories.

Psalm 107:1-3 says,

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;
his love endures forever.

Let the redeemed of the Lord tell their story—
those he redeemed from the hand of the foe,
those he gathered from the lands,
from east and west, from north and south. (NIV)

The rest of this psalm hints at stories from days gone by. He mentions people who wandered and sat in darkness. He tells of those who suffered, sailed the seas, cried, rebelled, repented, and more. We read several responses to the stories told. But the psalmist repeats one phrase again and again in the psalm: “Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for mankind.”

May this be the response to all our stories!

You can order Bags Packed, Hearts Ready through William Carey Publishing.

Sue Eenigenburg has been in cross-cultural ministry since 1986 and lived on four different continents. She is married to Don. Their clan includes four children, their spouses and twelve grandchildren. She is the author of six books including her latest devotional, Bags Packed, Hearts Ready. She likes playing word games, reading mysteries and eating chocolate.

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.”

Can I Find Belonging in the American Church? {Wrestlings of an Adult MK}

by Jessi Bullis

As an adult missionary kid (MK) who grew up with a fairly mobile childhood, “home” and “belonging” have been tricky for me. I remember being as young as five years old and responding to the question “Where are you from?” with deer-in-the-headlights style anxious sputtering.

As I’ve grown, I’ve spent oodles of time processing how each different country I was raised in has impacted who I am as a person, and I’ve learned to weave them together to make up the mosaic of my personal cultural complexity. Nowadays, I have a ready-made answer for the “Where are you from?” question. But just because I’m prepared to answer doesn’t mean that internal confusion and childhood longing aren’t sometimes set off.

Over the years, digging into scripture and falling even more in love with Jesus, I came to know Him as my true Home. And since Christ’s bride is the Church, I desperately wanted the Church to be my earthly home.

Afterall, that was the one consistent “location” in my life. In England we attended a church with 300 members, while in Turkey we went to a house church that fluctuated from 20-30 people depending on the week and in whose apartment it was held. Visiting Tanzania, we worshiped in a mud structure, and in Germany church was held in the school auditorium. Each might have looked different, but the underlying feeling was the same.

So when I returned to the exotic, frightening, and magical land of the United States of America for college, my hope was that in the midst of my hardest transition, I would find a home-ful belonging in the Church.

However, while there was hope, I’ll admit there was also a bitter pessimism.

The American church has often felt like an unsafe place for me growing up. As a child, whenever we would return to the U.S. on home assignment and enter the church circuit, raising support felt like a job requirement to be filled rather than a place to be known and loved.

I felt like a hidden immigrant in the church — misunderstood, but also laden with high expectations to be “the perfect MK.” It was assumed that I would know all the ‘right’ answers to any biblical questions thrown my way, while at the same time I was confused by the jokes and cultural references made in conversation. I learned to play the part, but internally I felt like an outsider.

I also noticed that it sometimes seemed like American patriotism and Christianity were intertwined.

While my passport country is the United States, and I am legally a citizen, I have struggled to wrap my head around what that means. For many of my mono-cultural friends raised in the U.S., this has meant that the American flag elicits an emotional response, and July 4th comes with life-long traditions of celebration and reverence for American history. Because America was born from the drive for religious freedom, for some it seemed that being patriotic was the most Christian thing they could do.

I, on the other hand, didn’t know the words to “America the Beautiful” or even the Pledge of Allegiance. Whenever I attended sporting events (which I’ll admit wasn’t often), I moved my mouth around hoping it looked like I was saying the same thing as everyone else.

So when I attended churches where I heard pastors talk from the pulpit about how “America is the best country in the world” and where church members discussed how great a blessing it is to be American, I felt like an outsider. Many cultures have informed my faith, and the global perspective I have impacts how I read my Bible. I love that about myself and my story, so hearing words of American patriotism in the church feels to me like a sucker punch. Suddenly the separation between me and my fellow American believers seemed even wider.

In these church sanctuaries I found myself questioning: If I didn’t “feel” American, would I be fully accepted as a sister in Christ? Are we not brothers and sisters in Christ first – before our cultural backgrounds? If I voiced concern about patriotism and Christianity being conflated, would my character and faith be questioned?

In the New Testament, I saw that Jesus spoke with Gentiles as cultural equals. On days when the fear of not belonging has felt strongest, I’ve turned to Philippians 3:20 for comfort (“we are citizens of heaven”). And I always drew hope from Revelation 7:9, where we see people from every tribe, tongue, and nation worshiping together in blessed harmony.

As I considered these scriptures, I began seeing my own assumptions and prejudices arise. Sometimes my own religious comfort has been built from my cultural experiences, and I have had to repentantly unwind them at the feet of Jesus.

Culture impacts how we interact with God and how we worship. Sometimes this is beautiful and glorifies God in the diversity of His creation. But at other times culture becomes an obstacle to the true message of scripture. I have learned beautiful things about God, His creativity, the depths of His love, and so much more from every culture I’ve worshiped in — including in America.

I write this article not as someone with all the answers, but as someone who has so very many questions: for myself, for my fellow believers, and for the American church. Questions like:

How does national culture play a role in my relationship with God? And with my fellow believer?
Do I have opportunities to view Christianity from different perspectives and cultures? If not, do I need to find them?
Could I have blind spots towards my faith due to my national culture?
Do I feel closer to a believer from a different country than to an unbeliever from my own country?

It’s important for all of us to consider questions like these. I pray that each day we, the Church, become more and more like the Bride of Christ that will meet God at the shore of eternity.

“…there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people, and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb…And they cried out in a loud voice: ‘Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.’” (Revelation 7:9-10)

A great resource on navigating God and culture is the Perspectives Course, and if you’d like to know how to support missionary kids in their walk with God, I recommend Tim Sanford’s book I Have To Be Perfect, along with this training for Churches Supporting Missionary Families.

Photo by Josh Eckstein on Unsplash

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Jessi is an Adult MK who grew up in Singapore, England, Turkey, and Germany. She has a heart for TCKs and the unique struggles they face. She received her undergraduate in psychology and a seminary degree in counseling for the purpose of caring for TCKs well. Jessi loves getting to walk through the repatriation journey with Adult TCKs, as this season can be especially difficult to navigate. Her deepest passion is for TCKs to know and feel the love and goodness of God.

Digging in the Dirt, a new book from Jonathan Trotter, is now available!

Hello, all!

I am so excited to announce the release of my new book! It’s called Digging in the Dirt: Musings on Missions, Emotions, and Life in the Mud, and you can find print and Kindle versions here.

Digging in the Dirt contains some of my most heartfelt writings, and addresses things ranging from depression and anxiety, to TCKs and what flying taught me about missions.

It addresses married sexuality on the field, as well as what to do when the thief steals and the power goes out. It’s got some poetry, some top ten lists, and some laments. It’s also got some seeds of hope, and it is my deepest desire that it would encourage and bless folks all over the globe.

I’ll post the text from the back cover and the preface below.

I’m so grateful for the community here, and I’m grateful for my editor, our very own Elizabeth Trotter! Have a wonderful weekend, and may the love and peace of God be very near to you and yours!

all for ONE,

Jonathan Trotter

From the back cover:

Welcome to ground level, to the dirt and the mess.

We like the mountain tops and the sunshine. We like green grass under a clear blue sky. We like victory and breakthrough and answered prayers. But sometimes it rains, the shadows deepen, and life turns muddy. Sometimes God seems quiet. What then? What happens when depression descends, or anxiety hangs like a sword overhead? What happens when loneliness suffocates, the thief steals more than stuff, and you get blood on your shoes?

In Digging in the Dirt, Jonathan Trotter delves into the disasters, the darkness, and the deluge, and he offers comfort, presence, and a gentle invitation to hope.

With humor and prose, with poetry and Top Ten lists, Jonathan welcomes us to the dirt, to the places where we actually live. He invites us to boldly see life as it is, with eyes wide open, and reminds us that even when the digging is scary, we are never alone.

To the ones who are dealing with devastation and distress, welcome. To the ones who need to uproot, to pull out, to clear ground, welcome. To the ones who seek desperately to plant seeds of grace and hope in once barren soil, welcome. To the missionary abroad and the believer at home, welcome. Receive the invitation, and join with Jonathan here at ground level, together.

Come, dig in the dirt.

From the preface:

Hello and Welcome!

I’m Jonathan, and it’s such a pleasure to meet you. I look forward to journeying with you through these pages. Together, we’ll delve into the dirt of life and relationships, of sorrows, pain, and loss. And maybe we’ll plant some things too.

Perhaps, along the way, we’ll see small, green stalks of life and hope begin to poke through, watered with the tears of the journey. Digging like this can be messy, but it can be good too.

These musings will meander from the hot dirt of Cambodia to the sticky mud of American politics. Some of these musings are inspired by international missionary life; some of them are firmly rooted in an American context. But whether you’re American or not, whether you’re a missionary or not, I hope that you find them all a blessing, an encouragement, and perhaps sometimes a challenge. I wrote them for you, and I share them with you with my whole heart.

Start reading Digging in the Dirt wherever you’d like, and feel free to skip ahead or go backwards. Are you a cross-cultural missionary? Start there if you want. Are you interested in developing emotional intelligence, or are you exploring whether or not Christians are allowed to have feelings? Consider starting in the Emotions section. Are you reeling from recent life events that have left you feeling like you’re choking on the mud and muck? First of all, I’m so sorry. Second, breathe a slow, deep breath, look over the Table of Contents, and start wherever you need to start.

Wherever you are, and whatever your story, welcome to ground level, to the dirt. It is here that the real work happens; the good, hard, sweet, healing work. It is my deepest hope that here, among these musings, you may find grace, peace, and a hope that just might be strong enough to crack through the crust.

All for ONE,
Jonathan Trotter

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Check it out on Amazon here!

*Amazon affiliate links help support the work of A Life Overseas

Heaven’s Embrace

Pictured above: Mami Banla meets my daughter, Elaina, for the first time.

Eight Cameroonian mamas adjusted their head coverings and stopped their chatter to watch the colorless foreign family spill out of a truck and into their lives one day in the remote mountain village of Lassin. Father, mother, and four kids poured out of the vehicle, all with gecko-pale skin that the sun threatened to slice right through. Their hair looked unmanageably “slimy.” That’s the only word one chuckling mama could use to describe it.

The women had heard from the leader of their large, extended family that this foreign family was to come live many years among their nest of eight clay huts and two block houses. The mamas respectfully greeted the strangers and then got back to work making cornmeal mush and spicy spinach to share with them that night.

That was my introduction as a seven-year-old to the eight ebony women who would spend the next 13 years sharing life with me on the Kinyang compound.

We shared space. Bamboo stools in small, smokey clay kitchens, cooking in the dark over open fire, waiting hours for beans to cook to fill rumbling tummies.

We shared life. Gathering minty eucalyptus branches for firewood, pounding clothes clean at the waterfall, hunting for bats in a land void of light pollution, tugging goats home to safety at dusk.

We shared family. Papas, mamas, and babies eating spinach and corn out of shared bowls, hauling heavy baskets of vegetables and dried fish home from the market, working together to save a roost of dying chickens, even a formal adoption ceremony of the six white foreigners into the Kinyang compound, complete with food and traditional clothes.

We shared comedy. Listening to my best friend’s deep belly laugh as they told traditional folklore around the night fire, discovering sugar cubes together for the first time, playing hide and seek in thatched kitchens, and three kids piled high on my bike as we raced down dirt roads.

We shared healing. Watching a mama boil eucalyptus and citrus leaves in a cast iron pot to “chase” my fever, praying life into a baby slipping into death, later naming that baby Kembonen or “Blessing,” driving friends on death’s door to the mission hospital two bumpy hours away, and mourning, nay, screaming grief out the healing and healthy way when loved ones died.

We shared education. Making a sprawling dollhouse fantasyland out of braided grass on the soccer field, twisting horse hair snares to catch live birds for pets (and secretly collecting the horse hair to begin with), quickly escaping the wrong side of a green mamba.

We shared tragedy. My mom fishing two Fulani boys out of the bottom of a swirling river using only a rope and a hoe, visiting and praying over a deeply mentally disturbed woman, praying for the salvation of a boy whose body was being hollowed out by HIV/AIDS (the first case I witnessed), a baby falling into a fire.

We shared death. Losing one of my new best friends to traditional medicine malpractice, quietly staring at another best friend’s tear-stained cheeks as he stood over his father’s grave, two family friends being poisoned in a Salem-style witch hunt.

We shared new life. The most beautiful baby girl I’d ever seen with piercing ink eyes named Sheyen (“Stay and See”), a sweet nonverbal soul born into our compound family and named Peter, a young mama working in her cornfields up until the day of delivery, my mamas holding my own baby girl for the first time.

We shared love. Sharing meager amounts of corn, chickens, and firewood, being hugged tight by eight mamas when I went off to boarding school, and many years later, those same eight mamas washing my body with a bucket of water and dressing me for my traditional wedding to a very white husband who had to pay my bride price through a translator.

Love has a heavenly manifestation in Lassin. It is a literal physical embrace called “Ngocè,” specific to the region and used when someone has been away so long, you’re not sure if you’ll ever see them again. Short life spans, limited transportation, and no media communication at the time all contributed to the very real threat that you may never see someone again if they go off to the big city for college, boarding school, or a job.

If and when they do return, you drop everything right out of your hands, run to them, grab them with every fiber in your body, pat their back, and squeeze their arms almost in disbelief that they are standing in front of you. It is a symbol of astonishment, of amazement, of deep understanding of shared experiences, and of intense joy at reunification. It’s recognizing the gift of a moment you don’t deserve but are so glad to have. Ngocè is endowed through blood lines or adoption into a family, as we were.

I first experienced the Ngocè embrace from my mamas at age 12, after coming back from our first year-long furlough in America. I was back home, and I knew it. I experienced it again after coming home from boarding school in the capital city and when I brought my man home to negotiate a bride price of goats and rice with my mamas as a respectful (and fun) gesture. And again, years later from my dad, when I stepped off the plane from America to celebrate the 20-year project of the Nooni New Testament translation in Lassin.

A visiting friend happened to record the Ngocè heavenly embrace when I returned to Lassin that final visit for the New Testament dedication celebration. I hadn’t seen the video in years and pulled it up on youtube last night. Tears stung my eyes and a lump formed in my throat when I watched my dad, my mom, and my mamas Ngocè me back home. Just watching it felt intensely like coming home, and it broke open a piece of my heart that comes alive when I’m really, really home.

I can’t help but wonder if that’s exactly how I will meet Jesus in heaven. Running, arms flung open, in disbelief at the beauty of the moment and amazement at a new but long-awaited reunification, accepting a grace I know I don’t deserve but am so glad to have. We’ve shared space, life, family, comedy, healing, education, tragedy, death, new life, and love even longer and even more intimately than my Lassin family, he and I. The Ngocè embrace is the only way I can picture my first moments there with the one who so loves me.