boarding school – A Life Overseas |

A Third Culture Kid’s Story of Faith

There is no single story when it comes to the third culture kid; the missionary kid. While we can learn and grow from research and the common themes that have emerged to form a perspective, each child has their own story. Like fingerprints, these stories are unique, formed by family of origin, personality, and life experience. There is no single story around faith either. Instead, the mystery of faith weaves through a life – sometimes accepted, sometimes rejected, but always present.

When I set out to write my memoir, Passages Through Pakistan, I thought it would be about belonging. After all, wasn’t that what I had worked through for a number of years? Wasn’t that part of my identity? But the more I wrote, the more I realized that the common thread woven through the narrative was not belonging. It was faith. So today I have included two excerpts from the book. My prayer is that if you are a parent or a third culture kid, you will know beyond doubt that your (and your child’s) faith journey is infinitely important to God; that he can turn ashes into beauty and mourning into oil of joy.*

*****

All adults can point to a time when they go from the naïveté and simplicity of childhood and cross over into the complicated world of the adult. Some of these coming of-age moments are dramatic, some are profound. All are life-changing.

It is easy to dismiss these moments. They may seem undramatic, insignificant. But to the individual, the drama they represent is a one-way passage out of childhood. Once we pass through we can never go back.

For many years, I would only tell happy stories about my childhood, stories of midnight feasts and camp outs, of traveling to beautiful places and life-long friends. Years went by before I could admit that some of my childhood memories were deeply painful. If I acknowledged just how difficult they were, I would be betraying my parents and my childhood. More than that, if I mentioned the painful parts, I would have to deal with the pain, and some of it went deep.

The real reason I didn’t want to tell these stories was more complicated than I wanted to admit. My parents’ faith had led them to Pakistan and sustained them through the years they were there. If I was a healthy child, then teenager, then adult, no one could criticize their life choice. Here was their best defense against those critical of the missionary life. If I admitted the pain, if I was truthful about the hard stories, their defense was stripped.

But was I really worried about them? Or was I more worried about what would happen to my own faith?

If I acknowledged the painful pieces of childhood, could my faith withstand it? Or would I be left with a “where were you God?” echoing hollow in my heart?

A friend of many years, a counselor with a specialty in helping children in trauma, helped me understand the distorted theology that was controlling my memories. When I finally began to admit that all was not perfect, I felt a profound sense of freedom and relief. As I became more honest about my life, I realized the depths of God’s care for me and his limitless grace in my journey. [Passages Through Pakistan – pp 114-115]

This I knew, and I knew it well: when you’re six and you wake up at five in the morning, away from home and unconditional love in a dormitory of seven other little girls, just as young and equally homesick and insecure, there is no one to comfort you. When you are twelve, and your backside aches for a week because of the beating of a house parent, there is no person to comfort you. When you question why dads and babies die in the middle of the night, there is no person to answer you. When you are sixteen, and you feel misunderstood by all those around you, unable to articulate your heart, there is no person to comfort you. When you are eighteen, and your heart is breaking at the thought of leaving all you know and all you love, there is no person to comfort you.

My faith was more than theology – it was a living, breathing entity. It wrapped me with a profound sense of comfort and love, and I knew beyond any previous doubts that God was real. I knew in the marrow of my bones, and the depths of my soul, that there was something greater than boarding school loss, stronger than the grief of goodbyes, deeper than the pain of misunderstanding. I knew that redemption was not just a theological idea, but that somehow it was more real than anything on this earth.

Faith was the story written on my life, and my life was witness to a greater reality. [Passages Through Pakistan – pp 166]

Passages Through Pakistan from Marilyn Gardner on Vimeo.

*Reference to Isaiah 61:2-3

Passages Through Pakistan: An American Girl’s Journey of Faith is available here:

The Kindle version will be coming in July of 2017.

No Easy Answers

children-1217246_1280

My mom and dad raised five children in Pakistan. At the time, options for educating children were limited. Here is her story about kids, trust, and ultimately learning that God loves and cares for her children. All five of us have come to know the God that she trusted.

*****

“Do YOU think it’s right to take innocent children to those heathen countries?”

The small elderly woman confronted me with the question. Ralph and I were newly appointed missionaries hoping to go to India. I glanced down at my tummy- had she guessed I was pregnant? I didn’t think it showed yet. I likely mumbled something about God’s will and tried to change the subject. We did take that innocent child with us to Pakistan, not India, and in the next 10 years we had four more. We were 20-somethings, full of hope and excitement and ideals. God in His mercy hid the future with its pain and struggle and tears of raising children overseas from us.

Not too many years later it had become clear to us that for most missionaries’ children in Pakistan boarding school was a part of that future. Our mission actively supported the founding of Murree Christian School in the northern mountains, eight hundred miles from where we lived. Five children from our mission were enrolled in its first year of existence.

“How can the Lord expect such an enormous sacrifice of us?” I asked myself. “It’s too much. I can’t do it. It can’t be right.” I struggled, asking how this could be God’s will for parents to send such young children away from home.

Eddie would start first grade in my home town during our first furlough. This timing put off our painful decision for a year. But God’s call to Pakistan was very clear to both Ralph and me. Did that call have to mean sending our children away at such a tender age?

In February 1959 Ralph went off to Karachi to arrange our furlough travel leaving me at home with the three children, behind the brick walls that surrounded our tiny courtyard. The Addleton family (Hu, Betty and their two little boys) were the only other foreigners in that small town in the desert and suggested we all go to the canal ten miles away for a picnic. Eddie was so excited that we were going to travel on the Queen Mary from England.

“I’m going to sail my Queen Mary in the canal,” he said, showing me the long string he had tied to a nail in the bow of his small wooden boat.

A couple of hours later, he stood at the edge of the canal, throwing his boat into the water and pulling it back. I kept an eye on him, but he was such a careful little boy. He would never fall in – Stan (his younger brother) might, but not Ed. A jeep driving along the dirt canal road, raised clouds of dust, and we checked the whereabouts of each of the children. Assuring they were all safe, we adults sipped mugs of coffee.

I looked around again just as the jeep passed us. Eddie was gone! I couldn’t see him anywhere. I jumped up and called his name, only to see his boat floating down the canal. Hu Addleton dove in, swam to the middle and began treading water, feeling the bottom with his feet. Bettie gathered up the little ones and the picnic things loading them into the Land Rover. I stood, helpless beside the canal. The water was so muddy, the current so swift. How could Hu possibly find my little boy in that murky water?

Then Hu called out, “I’ve found him!” He dove under and came up holding Eddie’s limp body. He handed Eddie up to me and somehow I knew what I had to do – that morning waiting for the Addletons to arrive, I had re-read a Readers’ Digest article about what was then a new method of artificial respiration, called “mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.” Eddie’s face was purple. I cleaned mud and sticks out of his mouth, before turning him onto his stomach to see a gush of water from his mouth. Laying him on his back, I started breathing into his mouth. Hu knelt beside us on that grassy canal bank praying loudly, begging God to give us back our son. How many minutes passed? I didn’t know, but then we saw a miracle! Eddie started breathing on his own!

I wrapped him in the picnic blanket and we hurried home in the Land Rover. Bettie took the younger children and Hu drove Eddie and me to the Mission Hospital fifty miles away. Eddie was still unconscious. I couldn’t voice my thoughts, “What about brain damage? How long had he been under water?”

But the miracle was not finished yet. As we neared the city of Sukkur, Eddie opened his eyes and sat up on my lap. He pointed to the lights of the irrigation dam across the Indus River. “Mommy,” he said. “That’s the Sukkur Barrage. Why are we in Sukkur?”

The Lord chose to give our son back to us, but He did not have to. We had given Eddie to the Lord before his birth. Three weeks later on his sixth birthday, my tears came in a flood. I sensed the Lord asking me to give my son back to Him, to relinquish ownership of all our children to Him, even if it meant sending them away to boarding school.

My prayers for our children began to change. While I had previously been focused on my feelings, my anticipated pain, my struggles, I was learning to ask God to fulfill His purposes for each of our children. I began to ask the Lord to show me ways I could prepare them for going away to boarding.

A year and a half later in Murree, I sat sewing name tags on Eddie’s school clothes. I heard a knock on the door and a friend walked in. She sat down and picked up a needle to help me. As we chatted, she shared a verse from Isaiah that the Lord had given her for her children in a time of crisis: “All thy children shall be taught of the Lord, and great shall be the peace of thy children.” (Isaiah 54:13 KJV)

In those verses I knew I could trust the Lord to teach my children.

This did not mean abdicating our responsibilities. We were still their parents, but He would also put others into their lives to influence them in ways we couldn’t. In making this decision my husband and I also promised ourselves that if any of our five found being away from home too difficult, we would have to move to a large city with the right schools or leave our work in Pakistan. God’s call on our lives was primary, but it was first and foremost a call to Himself. The life He called us to had to be right for our children, too. He never asked us to sacrifice their best interests, only to let Him show us what was best for them. And He reminded me often that best also includes the hard.

As I prayed this scripture for our five children over many years, I asked the Lord to bring the people of His choice into their lives, to use them to mold and shape each one. I prayed for good friends and healthy friendships. I prayed for each one a “Jonathan” who would strengthen his or her hand in God. (I Samuel 23:16) I prayed for kind and loving dorm parents and understanding teachers. At times I had to accept that those in charge of my children were not always kind and loving. In God’s sovereignty, He occasionally put difficult people into their lives. But I learned I could thank the Lord for those He chose to mentor our children. I think of Auntie Eunice, a teacher who gave up teaching to spend her life as a housemother nurturing the smallest girls; of Auntie Inger, a widow, who prayed that each of her little boys would receive Christ as personal Savior; of Uncle Paul, from New Zealand, a great dorm parent to our boys. Someone said of Paul, “He gave those boys a long leash, but they knew he was there to pull them back.” I think of Chuck, principal of the school during most of the years our children attended; of Debbie, sent by the Lord to influence our own daughter, as well as so many other teenage girls. There were many others, more than I can name here.

Would we make the same decision today if we were young parents living overseas? With the internet and the homeschooling options available now, we would probably keep them home longer.

I have learned that each situation is unique. Every family is different. Each child has his or her own personality and needs. For you who are raising your children overseas, there are still no easy answers to these questions. May our loving Lord give you wisdom to discern what is best for them and the courage to trust the Lord to be their teacher. May all your children be taught by the Lord and may they experience His great peace.

About the author: Pauline Brown and her husband Ralph spent over 30 years in the Sindh desert of Pakistan. Pauline has five children and is now grandmother to 17 grandchildren, and great grandmother to a growing number of littles. She is the author of a book, Jars of Clay that chronicles the journey of a small group of ordinary missionaries in Pakistan.

60% of key S.Asian water basin not usable: study

Bruising Seasons

I stand at the entrance to the airport with my arm around her. Four of our children slide backpacks and trunks through scanners, turn for a last wave goodbye. One, for the last time. He’s graduating from their boarding school this year. Mine won’t get that old, will they? I counted, on the drive to the airport. We do this three times a year. We have five more years of school. That makes fifteen times.

Fifteen times I will drive to the airport with my forehead pressed against the glass. Fifteen times I will try not to lose my temper all morning because that’s how I feel about people I love leaving. Fifteen times we will make double batches of peanut butter chocolate chunk cookies and cram extra toothbrushes into carry-on bags and remind them to call home on Sunday.

Her shoulders shake and she lists off the things in his trunk. The old medals and the school projects. Special toys and gifts from friends. Photographs and volcanic rock and broken pieces of coral. It’s a list of a life lived well and stretched out and moving beyond. The next time she sees him, he will wear a graduation robe and an Honor’s medallion. One more miracle. Like the time one child survived licking bleach on a challenge from his brothers. Like the time another child fell from the roof and walked away with a bruise. Like the time another whispered he was ready for Jesus.

Knowing the miracles, listing them and putting them in the trunks of our mother-memories, strengthens us to turn from the airport and go back home to only three plates around the kitchen table, only three pairs of shoes to trip over in the doorway. Back home to candy wrappers stuffed beneath mattresses and Legos, forgotten in dusty corners.

This is what it feels like to say goodbye to kids going back to boarding school.

Is this what it feels like to say goodbye to children and grandchildren moving to the Horn of Africa? Is this what I’ve been doing to my parents and in-laws all these years? Leaving them to count the airport runs, the passing years, the forgotten toys? Leaving them to count the miracles and to lean in hard, trusting for more?

It’s a bruising feeling. Deflating and depleting. And I want to say, to the men who tell us the kids have passed the visa checks and are out of sight, to our guard when we return from the airport, to the woman who taps on our window and asks for water, to my husband, can you let me be bruised for a little while?

There’s a bruised reed in Isaiah 42:3 and God does not order it to stand upright. He does not force it into a strong pose. He does not cut it down. He does not stomp on it or grind it into the dirt. He doesn’t laugh at it and he doesn’t demand it try really hard to be unbruised, or to turn away and mask the bruise.

He makes a promise. His Servant will not break it. A bruised reed he will not break. A bruised reed bends and hangs limp, folds in on itself and braces against even the slightest wind. It shrinks down heavy among other, stronger reeds.

And here comes a gentle hand, cupping the swaying reed. Fingers circle the bruised part and share the weighty burden of trying to stand while bruised. A voice whispers promises.

reed1

I will never leave or forsake.

When you walk through the fire, I will be there.

Nothing can separate you from my love.

I heal the brokenhearted and bind up their wounds.

Darkness is as light to me.

Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy.

I am El Roi, the God who sees.

I am your refuge and strength.

You are mine.

I will hold and strengthen.

Even on the far side of the sea…

Have you experienced a recent bruising season? In your bruising seasons, what promises sustain?

-Rachel Pieh Jones, development worker, Djibouti

Blog: Djibouti Jones, Twitter: @RachelPiehJones, Facebook: Rachel Pieh Jones

Related articles