Tag: parenting Missionary Kids

Sparking an Interest in Missions in MKs

As a global worker and parent, I want my children to love God and to love missions. Although being raised in cross-cultural missions sometimes presents a pandora’s box of hardship and challenges for our children, it is also a precious gift we give our MKs. We have an opportunity to spark their interest in missions by inviting them to hear missionary stories and also to participate in mission alongside us. In this article I offer some ideas on how to thoughtfully do that.

Start with Storytelling

Stories and chats about stories are some of the best ways to learn. Jesus knew this. The Gospels tell us that He barely said anything to the crowds unless it was in the form of a parable (Matthew 13:34). British children’s author and poet, Michael Rosen, put it well when he said, ‘A child, a book, a read, a chat. This is the way the mind grows.’ For Missionary Kids it could be rephrased to ‘An MK, a missions story, a read, a chat. This is the way a child grows to love missions.’ The reflection and chat afterwards are so important to growing and learning.

God calls and uses Missionary Kids, so they need stories to equip and empower them to share the gospel in their schools and homes, in their everyday lives, as well as alongside their parents in cross-cultural missions, when appropriate.

Begin with Scripture: The Story of All Stories

Firstly, let’s point our children to our missionary God in Scripture: the call of Abram in Genesis 12; the books of Jonah, Ruth, and Daniel; Jesus’ mission statement (Luke 4:16-21) and miracles; the lost coin, sheep, and son parables in Luke 15; the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20); the Holy Spirit’s coming and empowering to share the good news (Acts 2); Philip and the Ethiopian (Acts 8:26-40); Paul’s missionary journeys (Acts 13-28); God’s heart for the nations (Revelations 7:9-10). These are just a few of the inspiring Scripture stories to share with MKs about God using ordinary people to reach the lost and broken with the gospel message.

Perhaps for older MKs, or those who have grown up in church, it is not about sparking an interest, but stoking it: adding the wood of a fresh perspective to a well-known story, or directing them to a lesser-known one, to fuel a mission flame and make it burn brighter. Consider Ebed-Melech, the Ethiopian who helped save Jeremiah from the cistern and interceded for the king (Jeremiah 38-39); the women who supported Jesus (Luke 8:1-3); Paul’s colleagues, church hosts/supporters (some of whom are mentioned in Colossians 4:10-15); and the freed Gerasene demoniac (Mark 5:1-20) — an unlikely gospel-bearer sent by Jesus to his home and people.

Remember the pattern: a story, a read, a chat.

The Power of Hearing Someone Else’s Story

God put missions to Brazil on my heart when I was sixteen years old; stories of past and present missionaries inspired and set a precedent.

Although they didn’t know it at the time, my parents’ gifting in hospitality played a large part in drawing me to missions. They regularly hosted 20+ church friends for a meal and then huddled around a screen looking at photos from Peru, or Central Asia, or Tanzania, listening to a recently-returned cross-cultural mission worker share about their ministry and how God was at work in a particular place. Throughout my childhood and teenage years, hearing mission partners share their stories and passion for bringing the good news to other people groups happened regularly enough that I considered it normal to serve in missions.

One of the best ways to spark a love of missions in children and teens is for them to hear, in person if possible, mission partners sharing their stories. Churches can inspire their children and young people by making space for mission partners to share. 

Read Mission Stories

Whilst seeing and hearing mission partners in person is impactful, reading mission biographies can be too.

I recently read Steve Richardson’s Perfect Peace Child with my six- and eight-year-old MKs. They were captivated by the colourful and vibrant illustrations of the New Guinean jungle swamps, bugs, and descriptions of the Sawi people’s lives. We had a good conversation about the joys and challenges for a young MK and his family of contextualising and sharing the gospel with the unreached Sawi during times of intertribal conflict. We chatted about how that meant living alongside them and learning from them as ‘experts in jungle living’ and how much we all need a deep-down, forever peace that can only come from having Jesus in our hearts.

For those who are familiar with Don Richardson’s well-known story or film, what struck me about this child-friendly retelling by their MK son was less of the Sawi’s identity as head-hunters and cannibals and more of God’s presence and provision — often unexpectedly using their MK family, despite the challenges of limited language and cultural understanding.

God’s Child: A True Story of Brave Faith in Ethiopia is an engaging story for parents to introduce their middle graders (eight- to twelve-year-olds) to the realities of the persecuted church. There are not enough mission biographies about Black Africans, especially ones so well-researched and written. It tells the true story of Negussie, a boy who grows up near a missions base in rural, communist Ethiopia during the 1970s. He joins an underground church during the Red Terror, is persecuted and jailed for his faith, but finds ways to share the gospel and hold onto hope in dark times.

Some children will be greatly impacted to learn about the persecution and suffering many Christians face in their daily lives. I was glad to have read it cover-to-cover before introducing it to my eight-year-old so that I could be prepared for the questions which came. For us it was a prompt to look again and pray for the persecuted church and to encourage our MK that God is at work even in the darkest times and places.

The stories of God at work through mission workers can be powerful and faith-fueling for little ones. As well as the pioneering missionaries I grew up reading about — Amy Carmichael, William Carey, Jim Elliot, Gladys Aylward, and Hudson Taylor (see the Heroes for Young Readers series or Irene Howat’s Lightkeepers series) — there are now more mission biographies of Black missionaries for younger readers, including the Do Good for God series which includes Maria Fearing and Betsey Stockton. We look to Global South authors to write biographies of your mission workers, of whom far too little is known or written.

Lead Conversations about Missionary Stories

The chat about the book could be as simple as, ‘Are there any ideas that are new to you in what you are reading?’ or ‘How did they handle challenges?’ or ‘Has anything like that ever happened to you?’ Take time to actively listen to understand, rather than just to teach. 

In Third Culture Kids: A Gift to Care For, Ulrika Ernvik suggests offering children ‘bubbles,’ especially for harder conversations: floating a comment, often connected to a deeper feeling, and allowing the child to engage or let it drift by if they do not feel ready to reply. 

For example: ‘Imagine growing up, like Steve Richardson, in a place where none of your friends have heard of Jesus.’ Or, ‘Negussie must have felt a bit lonely when his friend John left Ethiopia. It’s hard to say goodbye to friends.’ In essence, we wonder out loud with our kids present. Sometimes the reply comes days later. Reading, listening, and wondering together are the goals: sparking an interest and curiosity in missions and connecting over it.

Create a Mission-Oriented Home

While stories are important, the most impactful introduction to worldwide mission for MKs is their parents’ lives and ministries.

Partnering without Pressure

We don’t assume that just because our kids are growing up in a missions environment that they will one day be missionaries. Neither do we assume or impose on them the weight of the title ‘little missionaries.’ 

However, we know that our children are already learning missional living through watching us. We now step beyond watching, to participating and doing. We hope to engage them and invite them in; not forcing participation, but finding appropriate and optional ways to be involved in our ministry, according to their ages, interests, and giftings. 

As young MKs, for now, my children’s involvement means occasionally praying or singing in services in the church plant we lead in Brazil, as well as their favourite way to help — as Daddy’s assistants at weekly chess club. As they grow and continue to be open to this, we plan to increase their engagement and responsibility. It is important to us that they don’t feel the pressure to perform or be perfect, either in the places we serve or when visiting our sending churches.

Prioritizing MKs

Missionaries often, though unintentionally, put our children off missions and even God. Sadly, many adult MKs feel their childhood bore the brunt of their parent’s calling in lack of quality time with their missionary parents, feeling that their needs were always second to those of the people their parents served, feeling they were always on display and needed to be perfect, seeing profound suffering and hardship around them, and experiencing trauma, stress, and financial instability, to name a few. 

My husband and I read up on those pitfalls and work to avoid them, although we are mindful of our limitations and make plenty of mistakes of our own. We have come to understand the importance of listening and apologising when we get it wrong. Equally, as our children move towards adulthood, we expect them to take ownership of their lives and choices, irrespective of the childhood they had.

Missionary parents can be the most influential advocates for their calling to their children. By prioritizing quality family time and holidays, practising self-care, inviting their children to serve alongside them without pressure, including them in decision-making processes, and explaining the ‘why’ motivating their actions and choices, missionary parents can model missional living as a privilege rather than a burden — even amidst sacrifices and difficulties. In prioritizing family as our primary mission and maintaining a balanced life, we model a lifestyle that can attract them to missions.

The Gift of a Cross-Cultural Childhood

Despite growing up in a small, rural village at the foot of the North Downs, England, I lived near an agricultural college in a neighbouring village that drew in PhD students and their families from all over the world. It was only as a young adult that I began to appreciate how blessed I was to have had such an ethnically diverse group of childhood friends. 

When I was a very young child, one of these families became close family friends. They are Brazilian, and this must have been when God started to ignite in me a love for Brazil, which led me here as a teenager and to twenty years of serving in missions in Brazil. A childhood surrounded by a diversity of cultures is a good training ground for learning skills for missions like flexibility, open-mindedness, and even other languages.

The Gift of Growing Up in a Missionary Home

Missionary parents can invite their MKs into a conversation with a missionary who drops round or ask for their opinion on a mission-related subject that comes up. Kids overhear parents discussing how to respond to a challenge in ministry. We can see it as an opportunity to involve them, including asking their opinion during chats over the dinner table. 

Discuss the family’s missional giving with them. Ask them to contribute to newsletters. Attend and serve in a mission-hearted church. Our everyday interactions and conversations are their training ground. Parents know best the depth to go into challenging topics and the sensitivity of their child. Whilst even young children can contribute to decision making, the parents make the decision, bearing everything in mind.

Inviting and Involving Your Children

Many MKs have an interest in global affairs. My husband and I take prayer points from the global news to bring to our family intercession time. Creative prayer ideas like prayer chains, drawing, or prayer calendars can make prayer more interactive. 

My husband makes annual visits to South Sudan, and my six-year-old, who is the only member of the family yet to visit, has begun to learn a few Dinka phrases. We cook South Sudanese recipes and pray for friends, pastors, and communities we know. The kids chat to those friends on video calls. My eight-year-old loves Japan. And because she is interested, we order in sushi and learn origami, and she learns Japanese on a language learning app. We attend some missions fairs, conferences, and events with them. 

Children can tithe to missions by setting aside a portion of their monthly pocket money specifically for a mission worker or mission project of their choice. Once, after leading children’s activities on missions at one of our sending churches, the kids surprised us with an offering and gathered around to pray for us and our MKs.

How about connecting with another MK and finding out about their host country’s culture and parent’s ministry through emails and photo journalling? Or re-gifting toys and books they have grown out of to the children of a local mission worker? Or simply inviting your MK to interview you during some sending church visits? There are so many creative ways to engage their interest, to invite them in and involve them deeper in missional living.

An MK’s childhood is a crucial moment to support and train them in godly, missional living. Like arrows, sharpened and released into a broken world (Psalm 127:4), we direct them to carry the transforming gospel message and make a lasting impact on the nations. Nurturing an MK’s love for missions requires the same intentionality as any other area of their discipleship. They are our inheritance and gift: a blessing to us and to the world. We pray that their lives — shaped by our stories and the stories we tell them — would become the next story that inspires others to love God and to love missions.

 

Use the discount code MISSIONKIDS25 to receive 25% off the paperback, hardback, and ebook editions of Perfect Peace Child and God’s Child at Mission Kids. Offer valid through February 28, 2026.

If at All Possible, Take Them Home

The tears started when we got out of the tuk tuk and stood at the edge of our old neighborhood. My teen girls wanted to meander from the main road, down the hill, around the corner. They wanted to walk slowly home, taking it all in and letting the memories come as they may.

We were five years late, but we had come home.

Our furlough was supposed to last from April to August of 2020. As the world began to shut down, we talked with our medical advisors and bumped our flights up to mid-March; we packed our suitcases, wore our masks, hoped all six of us would remain fever free, and boarded our flights from Phnom Penh to Taipei to San Francisco to Kansas City. The flight board in Taipei was nearly all red, full of cancelled flights. Thankfully, TPE to SFO was on time.

We didn’t know it then, but this was how we were wrapping up eight years of life and living in Asia.

About a month into our time in the States we realized the doors were closing on Cambodia. We cried, we planned, we wept. We ate a lot of ice cream.

And we did our best to end well during a global pandemic and without the chance to say goodbye in person. Our kids kept meeting with their international youth group virtually, we used Google maps to “walk” down our streets, we tried to do what we could while also figuring out how to survive in the vastly altered America we had just landed in.

***

But now, five years later, I saw my girls enthralled with the country of their youth. They were coming back to their childhood, and they were loving it. During the late-night taxi drive from the airport, they rolled down the windows and said it felt like they never left. The sharp smells, the weight of the air, the Khmer throngs, the Chinese neon blinking signs.

We went to the Japanese mall where our family spent many Saturdays, we walked through the Russian Market and bought trinkets and shirts. Some of our favorite restaurants had had to shut down during the pandemic, but some made it through, so we ate and ate and ate. We were tourists who didn’t feel like tourists.

We went to our old church, a place where we all experienced the beauty and complexity of the global, international Kingdom. We were the last ones there that Sunday, walking around the church compound, remembering hot Sundays playing in the grass and eating samosas from our Pakistani friends.

My girls loved hearing Khmer again and feeling the humidity and swimming late into the night. They loved the French pastries, leftovers from a not-too-distant colonial time. They said the visit changed their memories of Cambodia, that when they thought back of Cambodia now, it wouldn’t be all loss and empty space and a shapeless goodbye. Their memories would now include long walks with teenage eyes, good hugs, the beauty of long friendships across oceans, and laughter at how our 7th floor hotel room flooded because the bidet exploded while we were touring the Royal Palace.

***

When we walked down the hill and turned the dusty corner of our street, we were known. Our old neighbors, cooking and chattering away outside their houses, saw us from several blocks away and started waving their hands wildly. They welcomed us back so sweetly and with such smiles; I will cherish their gift for a lifetime. They asked about the family, about America, about work. They showed us how five years had grown their children too. We visited with our old landlord, who surprised us with an invitation to walk through our old row house.

We climbed the stairs, peered into the old spaces where we lived. The girls saw some of their old furniture, repurposed now by a Cambodian family. They went out on the little patio, my youngest’s first “garden,” the place where she first tended to living things. What a beautiful, unexpected, wonderful gift.

The trip was so much better than I had even hoped. I knew I wanted to get them there; for five years I had known that somehow, someway, I needed to get them there. And I am so grateful.

***

We stood at the Phnom Penh airport, departure tickets in hand, and breathed. The girls wanted to recreate the last photo we took in Cambodia in 2020: at the top of the escalators, just before immigration, looking down on the airline check-in counters. Arched ceilings framed reliefs of Cambodian scenes. The girls are much taller in these new photos, and their smiles are older too.

We were all sad again, a little bit. And we were happy too. This time, we were leaving a Cambodia that had been home, that still felt like home in many ways, and we were also going home. Soon, we knew we would land at a little airport in Southwest Missouri that would also feel familiar. We would greet the rest of the family and tell all the stories. We would go to church on Sunday, a place with dear friends and kind hearts where we, once again, feel known and cared for and seen. The global church, it turns out, is in Missouri too, with all her beauty and complexity.

We would recover from jet lag in our own beds, and we would sit around our own table once again and laugh and laugh. There aren’t palm trees outside, and we can’t usually smell our neighbor’s dinner. The air isn’t thick year-round with humidity and incense, and there are no geckos. But we can walk down our not-so-dusty street. We can fall in love with the four seasons of an American Midwest. We can drive to our new favorite Asian restaurant. We can still live.

Because, wonder of wonders, after traveling there and back again, we have come

Home.

It is not always possible to return to a once-loved place. For ideas on what to do when you can’t go back, check out The Day We Didn’t Go Home. Also, if you’re not familiar with TCK Training and all their excellent resources, visit their website at tcktraining.com. Marilyn Gardner has written a beautiful piece for adult third culture kids on returning home: So, You Want to Go Back ‘Home’?

I asked a lot of questions during our trip: Has anything surprised you? What is this like for you? Is there anything left undone? What are the things you really need to do here or the places you really need to go? I didn’t really have much of an agenda at all, and I didn’t really try to anticipate what they would want or how they would feel.

After the trip, I asked one of my daughters for her advice to families making a return trip. “Let the feelings feel,” she said. “Let it be happy if it’s happy, and let it be sad if it’s sad. And if the feeling’s anger or frustration, let that be too.”

The Hidden Stresses of MKs Who Love Missions

Ormiston Gorge, Central Australia

I’m writing this from my sister’s dining table. Despite the depth of Australian winter, sun streams through the high windows, gradually moving across a beautiful original artwork by a local indigenous artist here in the central desert region of the country.

Over the past six weeks here I’ve leaned into my own artist heart by spending hours sitting in the beautiful red desert landscape, painting watercolours. If you’ve ever painted with watercolours yourself, you’ll know there is a lot of patience required. I paint a layer, wait for it to dry, then paint the next layer, slowly building a picture layer by layer, one colour at a time.

During this time as I’ve sat down at my computer, I’ve leaned into a different part of my heart, one with a different kind of artistry – data analysis. While research and data analysis may not sound as artistic, entrancing, and interesting to you as it does to me, it is something I am passionate about.

There is something akin to the patient layer-building of watercolour painting. The most interesting and important answers don’t come to light immediately. Yet as I filter and layer the huge amounts of data offered to us by the adult TCK community, pictures begin to emerge. In this post I am going to share with you just one of the pictures emerging over the last few months.

Surveying TCK Experiences 

In our cumulative decades of work with TCKs, we’ve heard some things repeated time and time again — opinions about their parents, opinions about their childhood, joys and struggles. When we developed our latest survey, we drew on that experience to see how widely certain sentiments were shared. 

Among them, we offered four key statements related to a sense of identity with parents’ work:

  1. “That I belonged to something greater than myself (identified with their work/purpose)”
  2. “Proud of my parent’s work”
  3. “Desire to ‘follow in their footsteps’ in some way when I grew up”
  4. “Indifferent to my parent’s occupation abroad (no different to anywhere else)”

We also offered four key statements around various stressors related to their experiences living overseas during childhood:

  1. “Pressure to be ‘perfect’ as my behavior reflected on my parent’s employer”
  2. “Anxiety as a result of duties assigned to me (i.e. tour guide, translator)”
  3. “Pressure to ‘perform’ while visiting our passport country”
  4. “Worry that misbehavior on my part might result in our family having to leave the country”

From this we had some wonderful initial stats, and some troubling initial stats – all of which we shared in our First Look research report. With more analysis over time, deeper connections led to a discernible pattern: groups who identified strongly with their parents’ work and purpose abroad also carried higher levels of stress, anxiety and/or pressure connected to it.

Similarly, the more indifferent a group was to their parents’ occupation abroad, the less likely they were to experience these pressures. For example, TCKs who grew up in corporate families were far less likely to express a sense of connection to their parents’ employment; in fact, nearly half said they were “indifferent” to their parents’ work, and only 16% felt a sense of belonging/purpose connected to it. Yet corporate TCKs were also far less likely to feel the various pressures listed above. “There seemed to be benefits to this ‘disconnect’ from parents’ occupation” (Corporate Adult TCKs & Mental Health: First Look at the 2024 Research).

What This Means for Missionary Families

This pattern is crucial when we talk about missionary kids. Missionary kids expressed a really strong connection to their parents’ work abroad – something most of us want to see and encourage! Three quarters of missionary kids felt proud of their parents’ work, and they also identified with the sense of purpose it created; more than half wanted to follow in their parents’ footsteps. Only 10% of missionary kids said they were “indifferent” to their parents’ work (Adult Missionary Kids & Mental Health: First Look at the 2024 Research). These are statistics to make hearts that love missions and missionary families leap for joy.

And yet.

More than half of missionary kids felt pressure to be ‘perfect’ while living abroad (compared to a quarter of corporate TCKs).

Even more missionary kids felt pressure to “perform” when they visited their passport countries. More than any other sector of TCKs – in fact, more than twice as likely than most other sectors, including corporate TCKs.

Why does this happen?

Let’s think about one missionary kid, rather than the huge group who contributed to this survey. Think of a child or teenager who is very proud of the missionary work their parents do. They feel their whole family is involved in this work, and so they feel a sense of connection, of being part of this work, and derive a sense of purpose from being in this overseas country in order to do this work. 

Because of their emotional investment in this work, they will naturally develop a sense of responsibility for the work. They want to do what they can do to help. But what does that mean, when their day looks like going to school and being part of the community? Perhaps they even ask their parents how they might contribute. And their parents let them know that simply living their everyday lives as witnesses is powerful. 

Because children can easily extrapolate concepts well beyond what well-meaning adults intended, soon we have a child who has internalised the idea that everything they say and do in public impacts the work their parents – their whole family – is doing. Slowly, they feel a burden of responsibility that goes beyond the everyday witness their parents intended.

Or perhaps think of a child who enjoys their life overseas but suddenly finds themself in their passport country for home assignment. Every weekend they stand in front of a new group of strangers (some of whom call them by name and act like they know everything their family does) and perform stories or songs of what they do in the “foreign country” that is the only home they know. They field odd questions, talk about daily routines to laughter and astonishment, and throughout it all make sure to smile brightly because they realise at least on some level that their family’s livelihood depends on these people who know nothing about their life.

A child who on the outside seems to be invested in the mission and well behaved may be carrying a heavy burden of stress on the inside.

Leaning in with Intentional Care

Praising the benefits of missionary life without acknowledging the difficulties does missionary families and missionary kids a disservice. The picture emerging from the data is that these two sides of missionary kid life are connected.  Understanding that this connection exists allows us to be intentional about providing targeted preventive care that supports missionary kids and their families.

A Life Overseas is a great repository of resources for missionaries, member carers, and supporting churches. This includes a range of articles that acknowledge potential pitfalls in seeing missionary kids as extensions of their missionary parents. Three great examples of this are My Kids are Not Little Missionaries, 3 Ways to Care for the Heart of Your Missionary Kid and Don’t Call Your Kids World Changers. 

Another way to help MKs with internalized pressures is by asking great questions to facilitate open and honest communication. A Life Overseas also has some great posts with suggestions for questions to ask TCKs – whether you are a parent, a caregiver, or a supporter in a church lobby! These include: 10 Questions to Routinely Ask Your TCKs, 10 Questions Missionary Kids Would Love to be Asked, and Questions Third Culture Kids and Their Parents Love.

Of course, we always recommend learning about Positive Childhood Experiences (PCEs) and their proven relationship to long-term wellness. TCK Training offers a free video miniseries on PCEs designed to help parents implement these fundamentals intentionally in a globally mobile life. 

Meanwhile, I continue to paint – with watercolours and with data – as I complete a few projects that mean the world to me. I’ve been teaching my nine-year-old niece to paint watercolours, while painting a local ring-necked parrot she ‘commissioned’ from me.

And after months of painstakingly layering data analysis, I have completed new research on Protective Factors that Improve Long Term Wellness in TCKs (launching September 16th, 2025). You may not be a painter, but I hope you enjoy the picture painted in this research report. It provides joy and hope for all of us caring for the hearts of TCKs around the world.

Attachment Styles and the Faith of MKs

I began studying Attachment Theory a while back. The deeper I dug, the more I realized its possible implications for MKs—how our relationship with our parents can shape our Attachment Style, and how our Attachment Style in turn might shape our relationship with God.

Attachment Theory is a complex topic with layers of fact, perspective, and nuance involved. And it certainly isn’t original to me—countless books have been written on the scientific research that has illuminated its realities. So please consider this merely a conversation starter. I’ll try to break some of the key concepts down into bite-sized pieces, but I encourage you to continue your own research as you seek to apply these theories to your understanding of yourself as an adult TCK or to the children you’re raising as TCKs.

I hope this overview will do for you what it did for me: shed a clarifying light on the relational dynamics of my very early years and how they impacted both my future relationships and my faith.

In the interest of brevity, I’ll leave you to read more about the history of Attachment Theory in the original article and podcast I’m linking below. But for now, let’s take a look at each of the four Attachment Styles.

The Four Attachment Styles

In the ministry world, the fact that our parents serve God will be intrinsically linked with any exploration of Attachment Styles. To the MK mind, if God inspires our parents’ work, values, priorities, and passions, it’s easy to assume that he inspires their parenting too. And the security or insecurity it builds into our psyches might just as easily be attributed to God himself.

It’s important to remember that Attachment Styles represent a framework, not a guaranteed outcome. Unusual personality traits, unique circumstances, or strong relationships outside the core family could divert a child’s Attachment Style from what would otherwise be predictable. The research into this topic identifies reliable trends, not universal truths.

1. Secure Attachment

This Attachment Style is characterized by confidence, optimism, and vulnerability in relationships. This kind of security is fostered by parents who are consistently present, loving, supportive, and reliable—particularly during those critical early childhood years when a sense of value, importance to others, and safety in relationship gets imprinted on our spirits.

A TCK with this form of attachment will feel comfortable with both closeness and independence. She’ll trust others and feel worthy of love. She’ll have the capacity to form healthy and lasting relationships.

The core question for Secure Attachment might be: Why wouldn’t I believe that someone can love me?

2. Anxious Attachment (also known as Preoccupied Attachment)

Anxious Attachment is characterized by uncertainty about our worthiness. This is often related to parents who were not consistent in the attention and care they showed their children—sometimes available and involved, and sometimes distracted or absent. The child with this Attachment Style yearns for connection but gets stuck in a pattern of trying to earn it somehow—because he learned early in life to question his value and lovability, as well as his ability to maintain the attention and commitment of others.

A TCK with an Anxious Attachment style will still reach for closeness, but fear rejection and abandonment. He might appear more needy than others. Be overly sensitive and insecure in relationships. It can show up in contradictory ways too: in inordinate clinginess or in a self-sabotaging impulse to end relationships before the other person has the chance to reject him.

The core question for Anxious Attachment might be: Is there anything about me than can earn consistent love?

3. Avoidant Attachment (Dismissive)

Avoidant Attachment is characterized by low (or no) expectations. It is a mirror of the absence of caregiving that person experienced as a child from relationally unengaged, dismissive, or seemingly uncaring parents.

Though we all by nature have a deep-seated longing for true connection woven into our DNA, the avoidant person will convince herself that she really doesn’t want or need any form of vulnerable relationship. She’ll tell herself that it probably won’t be returned anyway. And that it’ll hurt a lot less to live without hoping for more.

A TCK with Avoidant Attachment will prefer relational independence to connection and closeness. She might come across as ultra-self-sufficient, aloof, and disinclined to emotional intimacy.

The core question Avoidant Attachment Style might be: Why would I ever think that someone could care for me?

4. Disorganized Attachment (Fearful/Avoidant)

Disorganized Attachment is characterized by relational inconsistency. It shows up as volatility in relationships—like a desire for closeness paired with fear of vulnerability. Or in contradictory behaviors—like drawing someone close only to push them away. Where Anxious Attachment desires connection and tries to earn it, Disorganized Attachment has a pattern of opening the door to attachment then slamming it.

A TCK with Disorganized Attachment craves connection as desperately as he fears it. He’s confused by his early relationship with caregivers, set off-kilter by their unpredictability, instability, and chaos. Sometimes there was love. Sometimes there was contempt. Sometimes he felt nurtured and sometimes it seemed those entrusted with caring for him didn’t even know he was there.

When parents are neglectful or dizzyingly mercurial, the adult whose understanding of relationships was formed in that uncertainty will apply the same pattern to future relationships.

The core question for Disorganized Attachment might be: Why should I risk trusting or depending on anyone?

The Impact of Attachment Styles on the Faith of MKs

As I’ve sat with this research for the past few months, I’ve wondered how Attachment Styles might also impact our faith. The Bible, after all, uses the term “Father” to describe God, and faith is primarily framed around relationship with him.

Looking back at my own life, I can see how the defense mechanisms I learned in my early years were directly reflected in my approach to God—how they complicated and undermined it. I’ve seen the same challenges in the MKs I work with.

But I want to affirm that an Attachment Style is not inflexible—whether it be in our human relationships or in our faith. There is room for growth. For hope and for healing. For reimagined connection with others and with God—the Father who can disarm the self-defenses we might have learned in our ministry-saturated childhoods.

God the Father is a comforting image for so many believers, conjuring care, provision, and presence. Those who have experienced human parents who loved them well will easily project those same traits onto the spiritual being also referred to as Father.

But for people who spent their early years with caregivers whose love they perceived as less than fervent, committed, or dependable, our understanding of the word “Father” could trigger the same unhealthy Attachment Styles we learned in hard childhoods. And we’ll assign to him traits that will validate our fear or hesitancy around a dependent relationship.

Those of us with insecure Attachment Styles may even narrow our reading of Scripture to just those stories and descriptions that legitimize our misgivings, not out of conscious self-deception, but as a form of subconscious self-protection—reminding ourselves that he may not be safe. Our expectations of who God is can indeed be shaped by our early human relationships.

If we grew up with Secure Attachment, we’ll be able to go to God the Father with confidence, knowing that he sees and loves us, that he wants our flourishing, that he is patient and kind and faithful. That’s what we learned from growing up with our own parents.

And the Bible will validate that perception. We’ll dwell on the passages where Jesus shows his goodness. Where he is present and comforting. Where he heals and provides. We’ll look back on our lives and see his “Fatherness” in the blessings we’ve experienced—and our sureness about his father-heart will allow us to place responsibility or blame for the harm we may have endured along the way on other forces and factors. We know that fathers love their children and can be trusted.

The faith statement for Secure Attachment might be: Since my own busy, missionary parents found a way to make me a priority, I know the Father they serve will too.

If we grew up with Anxious Attachment, we might question whether we’re truly lovable to God. There were times when our parents treated us like precious gifts to be cherished and nurtured, and times when we couldn’t seem to hold their attention. So we might expect the same from God, wondering if he loves us in a devoted way or if there’s something we need to do to earn relationship with him and care.

And in our minds, the Bible seems to validate this view of God. There are verses in which God’s love shines right off the pages—where we see him moved by the need, fear, and deaths of others. But there are also the passages where he rages against humanity. When people beg for him to see and hear them, but he doesn’t seem to. We might bypass the “in his own image” message of Genesis that paint us as good and beloved and see ourselves instead in the passages where we’re called fallen and unworthy

The faith statement for Anxious Attachment might be: I don’t think there’s any way that I can earn God’s love—but I’ll give it a try.

If we grew up with Avoidant Attachment, viewing God as the Father might paint a picture of someone who doesn’t even know we exist. We don’t think relationship is possible because we don’t think we matter enough for him to take time away from saving the world to pay attention to our needs and concerns—let alone abide with us in everyday ways. “Father,” in our Style vocabulary, means uninterested and unreachable.

We resonate with David’s statement that “God doesn’t care! He has closed his eyes and will never see me!” (Psalm 10). Our prayers have gone unanswered. We’ve witnessed tragedies in which he didn’t intervene. We’ve lived through trauma inflicted by people claiming to act in his name. And we’ve never sensed his compassionate eyes on us.

The faith statement for Avoidant Attachment might be: My own missionary parents didn’t show any desire for connection with me as they served God the Father, so I can’t expect anything different from him either.

And if we grew up with Disorganized Attachment, the notion of relationship with God feels dangerous. We honestly don’t know whether he is kind or cruel. Yes, we’ve seen him do great things for places and people. But we’ve also seen him angry and vengeful.  

And we can find evidence of that in the Bible as well. The God who created the universe and said it was good then destroyed it with a flood. The God who loved Mary and Martha let them suffer at the death of their brother. The God who said, “Let the children come unto me,” allowed Herod to kill thousands of babies.

The mercurial parents we knew seem reflected in what we’ve learned about God the Father, and our faith will mirror that. We may love and need him one day, but fear and distrust him another. Or both at the same moment. That makes it impossible to really commit.

The faith statement for Disorganized Attachment might be: I never knew what version of my parents I was going to get, so I’m going to go ahead and trust the Father as long as he seems trustworthy, but I’m going to bail the moment he’s not . . . until I need him again.

Hope for Insecure Attachment Styles

Here’s the good news: Attachments Styles can shift. There’s some debate about whether they can be “reprogramed” vs. “managed,” but there is clear evidence that we are not condemned to a life controlled by early relational self-defense mechanisms. It may not easy and it likely won’t be quick, but it can happen.

I should know.

For most of my life, I was stuck in a powerful form of Avoidant Attachment, both in my personal relationships and in my faith. Looking back, I can see the cost of that kind of self-protection in so many ways.

But I can also see how people who followed Jesus and loved me well began to soften my rigid stances. How an honest acknowledgment of parental shortcomings gave me the freedom to reach much less grief-bound conclusions. How therapy and worship and incremental changes drew me small-step by small-step into a healthier and “realer” vision of who I am, of who God is, and of what can be both released and learned from former relationships.

Although healing is a process that plays out until our last breath, I can attest that the person I am today is so much more secure in my relationships and so much more dependent in my faith.

The path to wholeness and more secure attachment will be different for each of us. On a human-to-human relationship level, finding freedom and rewriting our patterns might involve a collection of approaches:

      • Pursuing personal self-compassion and growth
      • Finding help through therapy or support groups or both
      • Intentionally entering friendships with trusted people who understand our tendencies and whose healthy attachment styles won’t force us into repeating known patterns
      • Exploring and internalizing the unconditional love of God as expressed in his Word and demonstrated in his Son

    There are so many resources that address healing in this area—books, podcasts, scientific articles. I’ll leave it to you to search for the ones that are written/produced by reputable sources and apply to your specific scenario.

    But healing is possible on a spiritual level too. There are a number of approaches that may be helpful if this is what you’d like to explore for yourself. Note that this is not prescriptive! The following are suggestions of possible first steps on a much longer journey that you’ll want to tailor to your situation and needs:

        • Examining how the Attachment Style developed through our parental relationships might be coloring our view of and engagement with God
        • Processing our relational influences and behaviors through honest conversations with trusted friends who might see in us what we don’t
        • Seeking help from appropriate forms of counseling, in order to move toward spiritual renewal and freedom from past scars
        • Praying for God to reveal his true self to us through what he shows us in his Word and in his Son’s life, in whatever “language” our soul hears best: Scripture, music, nature, conversation, art, science, or narrative
        • Learning more about his heart for us as we look back and find him already woven into our story
        • Gradually—as our capacity grows—investing more of our trust in him, finding him worthy, and then investing some more

    Our Attachment Styles are symptoms—self-defense mechanisms—not immutable traits. They can soften. They can bend. They can be redeemed into something honest and good.

    This is the truth I want MKs to live in.

    Parents of still-growing TCKs, I hope you haven’t read these words as an indictment or as judgment. We can only do what we know. If this is new information for you, I encourage you to dig deeper into this topic, to examine your practices, and to check in with your children about what they’ve learned from your parenting and how it might have colored their perception of God. Growth is a continuum, and it’s never too late to start.

    My prayer is that we’ll all, whatever our status or stage of life, be attuned to our own needs, aware of any unhealthy self-defenses we harbor, and mindful that the way we care for others, especially children, might inform their understanding of God. His love is not dependent on our worthiness or determined by a capricious willingness to engage.

    It is steady. Sturdy. Without conditions and undimmable.

    ~~~~~

    Want to learn more? Here are some suggestions for a place to start:

    You can find the extended version of this article and podcast episode here.
    Photo by Dan Dennis

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

    Motherhood photo by Mukil Menon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    The eight PCEs are:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     

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

    Photo by Mukil Menon, Unsplash.

    Emergency Contact

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Home Invasion: Giving Missionary Kids Their Safe Place Back

    When I was two years old, after my parents and I returned to Australia from our first time living abroad, our house was burgled while we slept. The thieves took our TV and probably a few other things I don’t remember.

    I don’t remember the theft itself, but I clearly remember a nightmare I had a few years later. In my nightmare, men I didn’t know who were silent and invisible came into the house while I was in bed. They picked up my bed with me in it, turning me invisible and silent as well. They carried the bed (and me) out toward the front door, through the living room where my parents were watching TV. I jumped off the bed, at which point they could see and hear me. 

    When I told my parents about the nightmare, something clicked for them. The living room I described was the old set up from before the robbery, with the old couch and the old TV. Though I didn’t consciously remember the event, something about it had rooted in my subconscious – and with it, a fear of unseen and unheard men entering my house, making me less safe.

    According to Statista, New Zealand had the highest burglary rate per capita in 2018, with 1.3% of homes burgled. Australia’s rate was 0.7%, and the U.S. was 0.4%. If we make the bold assumption that different homes were targeted every year, over the 18 years of childhood that makes 23%, 13%, and 7% of families overall (respectively) that would experience burglary. Yet when TCK Training asked missionary kids if they had experienced a break-in, 38% said yes – compared to only 15% of non-missionary TCKs.

    A significant part of that 38% were present during a home invasion: 15% of missionary kids were present in their home when a break-in occurred. These MKs were 35% more likely to have a high-risk ACE score than missionary kids overall (23% vs 17%). With more than one third of missionary kids experiencing a break-in during their childhood, this makes it a fairly common experience among their MK peers. Stories of break-ins are common among MKs. If it didn’t happen to you, it happened to your friend(s). 

    One MK I interviewed talked about a home invasion his family experienced on the field while he was in elementary school. The thieves cut power to their home before entering, and in their rural area there were no streetlights or other external light sources, so the entire experience took place in the dark. He remembered huddling in his parents’ bedroom, with them and his younger brother, in the pitch black. They heard the noises downstairs, the hushed voices and the things being broken. For years afterward, he carried a matchbox in his pocket; he needed to know he could create light if he ever found himself in darkness again.

    A teenage MK I interviewed spoke of living in a home with a grill of thick bars across each window and still feeling unsafe inside their home. A thief used a long pole to reach through the bar grill when a window was open, using it to steal small items. This made the MK feel imprisoned at home, with windows shut and thick grills over the closed windows — even during hot and humid days. They would close the curtains to block out the community in which these thefts took place.

    Every story of theft, break-in, or home invasion is different. The emotional consequences are similar. Our home becomes less of a haven, less of a safe place, when we learn that ‘bad’ people can enter at any time without warning. They could take our precious possessions, entering our home while we sleep (or hide).

    This affront to our sense of safety, security, and comfort in our own home is true for both adults and children. Children have less control over their living situations, however, and sometimes are not given much information about what has happened and what the future may hold. This lack of information (and control) can lead to additional anxiety. When home doesn’t feel like a safe place, children/young people stay ‘on alert’ without feeling safe to fully relax anywhere in their world. This leads to a state called ‘toxic stress’ which has negative impacts on the brain and body.

     

    What Do We Do?
    Feeling safe and protected at home, and especially feeling that there is an adult in the home providing this protection, is one of the Positive Childhood Experiences (PCEs) that provide a buffer for children who experience difficult things. PCEs enable children to thrive as adults even if they meet with adversity in childhood.

    It is crucial that we provide missionary kids with a strong sense of safety at home. This will look different in different contexts, but there are a few principles that apply anywhere.

    Explain the safety measures you have in place – no matter what they are or how obvious they look. Talk your kids through what you are doing to create a safe environment for them. Whenever you stay the night in a different place (including hotels, friends’ homes, and visits to your passport country), have this talk again, and go through the safety measures in place there.

    Ask your children what makes them feel safe. Help them identify the feeling of safety and security. Have conversations about what that feels like and looks like, and discuss ways to create it in our homes, families, and even our schools and friendships. (This is a important tool for children to learn at any age, for many reasons.) These conversations will give you insights into how to make your child FEEL safe with you and in your home. Remember to model this for them – explain what makes you feel safe and what safety feels like to you.

    Encourage your children to tell you if they feel unsafe – and listen to them! Something that seems obviously safe to you may feel uncomfortable, unusual, or even unsafe to your child. You won’t know how they are feeling unless they tell you, and they won’t tell you unless they know you take their concerns seriously. Taking their concerns seriously might look like validating their emotions (“I see this is troubling you; how can I help you feel more safe?”) before talking about the ‘reality’ of a situation (“I understand that it seems this way, and I’m glad you let me know. Can I show you what I see going on here?”).

    Initiate regular conversations around safety. This idea is not about teaching lessons on how to be safe, but rather checking in with how everyone is feeling. Has anything happened in your community that impacts how safe you feel? Has their friend’s home been burgled? Has something been in the news? Keep creating opportunities to talk about what it is like to live where you live, as well as how each family member feels about it – it’s quite likely you’ll all feel differently at different times.

    As a small child having a nightmare, I woke upset and went to my parents for comfort. They listened to me, made the connection with the robbery in the past, and were open with me about it. My parents talked to me about the robbery, validating my fears, thus assuring me I wasn’t afraid for no reason.

    They also explained the likely motivation behind the theft (they were probably people without much money looking for something they could take away and sell but weren’t wanting to hurt me) and ways they keep me safe (explaining about locks on doors, etc.). I don’t recall having another dream like that or significant fears related to home invasion again.

    Even when we do our best to provide a safe home for our children, we live in a broken world where bad things sometimes happen. Providing safety for children is therefore both about objective safety (what we do to create physical safety) and also about our perceptions of safety – what makes us feel safe. Parents, the ways you act to make your children feel safe are vitally important. Engaging with their emotions, validating their fears, and talking to them about the situations you face as a family will make a big difference for them long term. 

     

    Photo by Nicola Nuttall on Unsplash

    It takes a village – including for missionary families

    There’s an old adage that ‘it takes a village to raise a child.’ While it’s often called an African proverb – and there are several that come close, like the Kijita/Wajita proverb from Tanzania, “Omwana ni wa bhone” – the specific origin isn’t important for today’s discussion.

    When I say ‘it takes a village to raise a child,’ what I mean is that parents can’t do everything needed for a child’s raising on their own. We are, each of us, designed for community. We need each other – and no less so than when faced with the blessing and burden of child-rearing.

    Research into what helps individuals thrive, even when their upbringing is difficult, identified eight Positive Childhood Experiences (PCEs) which act as a protective buffer. Five of the eight PCEs take place outside the home. To raise healthy children who thrive long-term, we really do need to be in community and to rely on each other. 

    Sometimes that can be a scary prospect. It’s scary to think we can’t do it all ourselves. It takes some of the control out of parents’ hands. On the other hand, it also acknowledges that parents are not supposed to carry the entire weight of ensuring their children’s future all on their own. We are, all of us, created for community.

    But what happens when you live internationally? Community may feel hard to find, hard to break into, or hard to hold onto. There are language barriers, cultural differences, and time zones separating you from people you care about. People move away. You move away. Sometimes it really seems like the best option to turn inward and focus your energy on your immediate family, on being your own community as a family. 

    In this article we’ll look at the five PCEs that take place in community and what these can look like for missionaries. My goal is to encourage you to see value in continuing to invest in community that meets your children’s needs throughout their lives.

    Belonging in Community

    The first two community PCEs are about being part of a community: feeling a sense of belonging in a wider community and taking part in community traditions. Churches, mission organisations, and school communities can all be wonderful sources of these community PCEs. These communities are not just for us – they are for our children. Ensuring that our children feel at ease and feel a sense of belonging in the groups where we spend our leisure time is essential to their long-term thriving. 

    The traditions we participate in also connect us to our communities – both the specific groups of people we celebrate with and the local community we observe traditions with. When your family moves locations, look for ways to bring traditions with you. Examples might be celebrating Chinese New Year with your new friends in France, introducing your Australian friends to Songkran, or observing three different national days for three different countries your heart is connected to.

    Most often, our biggest hurdle here is finding the emotional energy to continue to invest in community when our lives are busy and it gets hard to make time for all the things we could possibly be doing. Knowing that community is important for our kids’ wellbeing helps provide us with motivation to keep investing in community. This also means that community life needs to be a priority — even if it means we need to cut back on other tasks, such as ministry commitments, in order to have the time and energy to commit to community engagement.

    Peer Relationships

    The next two community PCEs are having supportive friends throughout childhood and having a sense of belonging in high school. Do your children have supportive friends? For some parents, this is a stressful thought. Perhaps one child does, and one does not. Perhaps you have watched your child lose a best friend every year as families move away from your location. Perhaps they sometimes play with local children, but the only friends who speak their heart language live hundreds of miles away. 

    TCK Training’s white paper “Sources of Trauma in International Families” has a section on Peer Relationships. In this section we share research explaining why “Peer relationships in childhood are an important part of social development that is necessary for childhood wellbeing and also for gaining important social skills needed in adulthood,” and cite a study which demonstrated that “93% of children surveyed could understand and can articulate the feeling of loneliness and lack of peers by age eight.”

    The good news from our research was that more than half of TCKs (and 46% of Missionary Kids, or MKs) had a peer group their own age. 15% of MKs had only their siblings for company. 10% of each group had no appropriate peers, including 2% who had no peers. Homeschooled MKs were less likely to have peers: only 17% had peers their own age, 38% had only their siblings, and 6% had no peers at all.

    TCKs with peers their own age reported fewer Adverse Childhood Experiences, and this was true across all sectors, ages, and education types. 13% of MKs with peers their own age had a high ACE score – compared to 12.5% of Americans in the baseline Kaiser study. By contrast, 21% of MKs with no peers or only siblings for peers had a high ACE score.

    But language comfort also mattered. When the peers an MK spent time with spoke a language they were not comfortable speaking, 29% had a high ACE score, almost double the rate seen in those who shared a fluent language with their peers (15%). While 24% of MKs spoke with their peers in a language they weren’t fluent with, only 8% said they spoke a language they weren’t fluent in with their closest friends.

    Held together, these different types of research are all telling us something similar: our kids need friends they can share their lives with. Friends they can speak to easily. Part of meeting children’s needs means providing opportunities for them to make connections with peers around the same age who could possibly become this type of friend — and supporting the continuation of those connections wherever we are in the world. 

    Mentor Figures

    The final community PCE is having two non-parent adults who take a genuine interest in you during childhood. There are lots of ways this PCE can be met! Grandparents, aunts, uncles, and family friends can fill this role. Teachers, coaches, tutors, and pastors can fill this role. Nannies, babysitters, and other community members can fill this role. It is not about the quantity of time an adult spends with a child but about whether the adult really makes the child feel seen and valued whenever they are around each other. 

    I’ve heard stories from MKs about very significant adults in their lives whom they saw once a month or even less often. I will never forget overhearing a teenage girl who lived in far north China and came to Beijing twice a year to attend youth camps I ran explaining to her friend who I was: “This is my youth pastor from my youth group in Beijing.”

    These adult connections are extremely important to children and teens. Here are four simple things that can make a significant connection with an MK, even if you do not see them regularly:

    1. Know their preferred name and use it.
    2. See them as their own person, separate from their family and their parents’ ministry.
    3. Learn and remember their individual interests.
    4. Follow up on previous conversations.

    The ease with which a connection with a caring adult can become significant to a TCK could explain one of the findings in our research. We asked the 1,904 Adult TCKs in our survey if anyone in their household (adult or child) or any caregiving adult (who did not live in their home) passed away during their childhood. The type of death associated with the most significant rise in ACE scores was that of non-residential, non-family caregivers — which points to their importance. 

    36% of TCKs who reported the death of a non-residential caregiver during childhood had a high risk ACE score; when the caregiver who died was not a family friend or family member, 43% had a high risk ACE score. In contrast, only 24% of TCKs who reported the death of a household member (adult or child) had a high risk ACE score.

    We don’t believe this means that a death in the family does not greatly impact children. So what does it mean? There are few things that might explain this correlation. First, it may reflect the importance these adults have to the family as a whole: their passing impacts not only the child, but their parents as well (which then impacts what happens in the household, along with their ACE score).

    Second, it may reflect that household deaths are seen as a significant event, so families receive support and space to grieve. On the other hand, the death of a non-residential caregiver, while sad, may not result in the same recognition or support. Whatever the reason behind it, these numbers demonstrate that adults who provide care to missionary kids and other TCKs can have a significant impact.

    What can we do about this?

    The communities supporting families living abroad are essential to these families’ long-term thriving. If we want to see missionary kids thrive long term, we need more than good parenting advice; we need to be the community these families need. 

    If you are parenting abroad, take some time to acknowledge the village that is helping you raise your child/ren. Show your appreciation to those who are there, supporting you and supporting your kids.

    Next, look for the gaps in your village. Are you missing group community, people to celebrate traditions with? Are your kids lacking for peers, especially those they share a language with? Are you in need of more adults to engage meaningfully with your kids? Identify the particular gaps, and target those areas for more community engagement. Don’t be afraid to ask people for help; child-rearing was never meant to be a burden that you shouldered alone.

    If you are living abroad, look around to notice any missionary kids and families you are in community with – or whose village you might be able to join. Could you be part of their regular community life? Could you take the time to know their kids by name and engage with them when you routinely see them? Are there other ways you would like to offer community?

    If you are supporting a family abroad, whether you are a sending church or family/friends ‘left behind,’ look for creative ways you can stand in the gap for the missionary families you know. How can you be part of their village? What can you do that acknowledges their children as individuals and not just the missionary’s kids? What traditions can you make part of your interaction with their family? How can you help them feel connected to what you’re doing in your community in another land?

    No matter where you are, there is something you can do to support the missionary families you know. You are part of the village, and you are needed.

     

    Photo by Tyler Nix on Unsplash

    10 Questions to Routinely Ask Your TCKs

    by Lauren Wells

    It is important for parents raising children anywhere to be continually engaging and checking in with their kids. When you are raising TCKs, this is even more important. TCKs are privy to struggles that mono-cultural children don’t often have to face, so being aware of that and taking time to routinely ask questions such as these can strengthen your relationship and show your kids how much you love and value them.

    Set aside time routinely to talk with your TCK. Ensure that this time is not tainted by distractions and that you are not attempting to multitask, but instead be fully engaged and interested in their answers. If these types of conversations are not something you have had with your TCKs in the past, it may take a few times before they truly trust that you care about their answers and that they are safe to answer honestly. For this reason, it is critical to create a safe space for them to speak openly.

    Listen and encourage them to explain their answers or elaborate, but be careful to not be too pushy or to respond in a way that invalidates their answer. Remember that the purpose of asking these questions is not to provide a solution, but to open up the communication between you and your child. You might ask your TCK all of these questions, or just have them on hand to ask one or two when you’re spending time with your child.

     

    1. How are you doing?

    It seems simple, but asking this question is one of the best ways to show your kids that you care. Make is clear that there isn’t a right answer and that it is ok if they really aren’t doing “just fine.”

     

    2. What are some things that you enjoy about living here?

    Their “favorites” may be different than you expect!

     

    3. Do you ever wish that we lived a different life?

    It’s important to help your TCKs process the life that they are living. It is unique and it wasn’t of their choosing. It’s healthy for them to think through this question and for you to hear their answer as it may reveal some deeper struggles that need to be worked through.

     

    4. What is something that you’re looking forward to?

    This gives your TCK the opportunity to share their excitement about an upcoming event. Perhaps you didn’t know about this event or didn’t realize how important it is to your child. Now that you know, you can share in their excitement!

     

    5. What is something that you’re not looking forward to?

    This question often provides the opportunity to dig deeper and discover why a certain event, place, task, etc. is unenjoyable or uncomfortable for your child. Avoid a positive comeback such as, “But that will be so fun!” and instead explore the question further by saying something like, “Wow, I didn’t realize that place made you nervous. What is it about it that is uncomfortable to you?”

     

    6. Do you feel like we spend enough time together?

    TCKs can often feel like they are second to their parent’s work or ministry. This question allows them the opportunity to say so if that is the case. If their answer is “no,” be vigilant about finding ways to spend more time with this child.

     

    7. Where do you feel most at home?

    The question “Where is home?” is a common, confusing question for TCKs. Working through this idea at a young age prevents it from becoming a surprising realization when they are older and feel that no places feels completely like “home.”

     

    8. Is there anyone or anything that you miss right now?

    It is important to give TCKs the permission to reminisce and grieve their losses. Bringing these up for them can help them to do this in a healthy way.

     

    9. Do you feel like people understand you?

    Being a TCK has many challenges and one of them is a constant feeling of being misunderstood. While you may not have a solution to their perceived uniqueness, it can be insightful for you to hear your child’s answer.

     

    10. What’s your favorite thing about yourself?

    Again, identity issues are common for TCKs so asking them to think through things that they like about themselves is a good way to promote self confidence. This is also a good time to tell them a few of your favorite things about them!

     

    Do you have any questions to add to the list? I’d love to hear them in the comments below!

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    Lauren Wells is a Third Culture Kid (TCK) and Missionary Kid (MK) who grew up in Tanzania, East Africa where she developed an affinity for mandazis (African doughnuts) and Chai tea. Her experience as a TCK fuels her passion for working with globally mobile families. Lauren is the Children’s Program Director for Worldview Institute for International Christian Communication in Portland, Oregon. In her role at WorldView, she developed and now runs a program for children that equips them with the skills they need to learn new languages and embrace new cultures when they move overseas with their family. She blogs regularly at tcktraining.com.

    6 Permissions Most Missionaries’ Kids Need

    As I travel to speak and consult with missionary families around the world, the word “permission” regularly comes up. In a subculture saturated with expectations and obligations, it seems to have a restorative power.

    Missionaries’ Kids, too, live under burdensome expectations and would benefit as much as their parents from clearly articulated permissions. I believe the following are crucial to raising a generation of MKs unhobbled by the unreasonable demands of a world that may not fully understand what it is to be young and vulnerable, living cross-culturally in the fishbowl of ministry.

     

    1. Permission To Be Kids

    It’s no secret that missionaries’ children, much like pastors’ kids, feel held to higher standards than their peers. With friends and strangers watching their every move, there is unrelenting pressure to behave well. Be good. Be polite. Be friendly. Have a positive attitude and never—ever—complain.

    The broad expectation that they be better behaved, smarter, and more mature than other children their age—or at least that they convincingly project these traits—can become a debilitating pressure.

    And if there’s one thing MKs do well, it’s try to live up to unrealistic expectations.

    When I was visiting with a missionary family a few weeks ago, I asked an 11-year old boy why his family had moved to Romania. He told me that he was there to “introduce people to Jesus.” Perhaps the most meaningful words I heard on that three-week trip were his mother’s when she said, “No, honey, mom and dad are here to introduce people to Jesus. Your job is to be a kid.”

    What a simply-worded, freedom-giving statement! Her son, a relatively new MK, heard from his mother’s mouth that it’s okay for him to just.be.young. So he can talk back or stomp his foot or hate zucchini or complain or lie and expect consequences—but without the disproportionate shame too often levied on MKs who are just being kids in the world of ministry.

     

    2. Permission To Fail

    Children will fail. They’ll do stupid things, they’ll forget instructions, and they’ll disobey rules. It goes without saying that MK or non-MK, they need to know that mistakes and bad behavior are not unforgivable flaws.

    In the ministry world, though, failure can take on more ominous overtones.

    • “We need to set an example for the unbelievers watching us.”
    • “God wants us to be a light in the darkness.”
    • “You represent God in your middle school.”

    The exhortations seem benign, but they add a deeper condemnation to inevitable stumbles.

    Demanding unreasonable exceptionality of MKs because their family represents God sets them up for the worst kind of failure: one in which their imperfection hurts their family’s work and tarnishes God’s image.

    So it isn’t just a bad grade. It isn’t just getting cut from the soccer team. It isn’t just posting something inappropriate on Facebook. It isn’t just stealing change off the teacher’s desk or telling a lie about a friend.

    It brings shame on themselves, on their families, and on God.

    If we’re not careful with our words, we heap a spiritual burden on six-year-olds whose lives are already complicated by cross-cultural living, frequent transitions, and successive losses. The liberating balm of “permission to fail” for young people who are often overly self-blaming cannot be overstated.

     

    3. Permission To Grieve

    The heaviest burden many MKs bear is the number of goodbyes they have to say in their early years. The mission field is a transient place where someone is always leaving. The repeated departures create an expectation of loss that colors both their entry into new relationships and the nature of the friendships they form.

    The world’s unspoken expectation of courage and resilience in the face of so much loss puts pressure on grieving MKs to get over it fast, to find comfort in an unflagging faith, and to forge ahead without handicap. Little emphasis is put on the grieving process, and little space is given to allow it to evolve.

    Adding to the issue is the unwillingness of many adults in ministry to model healthy grieving for the younger generation. If MKs don’t see the grown-ups around them honestly demonstrating the journey from loss to healing, they won’t know that they’re allowed to walk it too.

    Until missionary parents and the missionary community as a whole give permission to missionaries’ children to express and work through their grief—as ugly as it may get—we will continue to see hearts hardened toward God (on whom many blame their losses) and adult MKs still crippled by their losses in later seasons of their lives.

     

    4. Permission To Dissent

    MKs know they’re a package deal. God called their parents. He funded their ministry. They made it overseas and are doing good work. How dare they question a Calling? How dare they resist another move or resent another change of schools?

    Of all the MKs I’ve worked with in more than twenty years, those who have felt no permission to voice a disagreement or question their parents’ choices are the ones whose resentment has been most bitter.

    How easy it is for adults with a clear vision and driving passion to carve a path toward the Calling they perceive.

    And how destructive it can be when the children in their care don’t feel the same impulse, but measure the Call in toxic increments of change.

    Before announcing a new direction or an imminent uprooting, parents of MKs might consider gently introducing the topic—then entering into ongoing conversation and collective seeking. With compassion and attention. With hearts trained on their children while their spirits are tuned to God.

    With permission to dissent—to express opinions that are contrary to their parents’—children will feel freedom to voice honest feelings, allowing the family to proceed perhaps more slowly, but with each member engaged in discerning what God is asking of them. The MKs will feel seen and known, and communication and empathy between family members will deepen.

     

    5. Permission To Doubt

    Not all MKs are saved. Not all MKs believe that God is real. Not all MKs view their parents’ faith in a positive light.

    I didn’t encounter Jesus—truly encounter Jesus—until I’d been a missionary for a couple of years. Yet presumptions about the faith of MKs abound both in their sending churches and among their family members.

    Of course she’s saved. Of course he’s on fire for God! They’re MKs!

    So the young person whose life is steeped in Christianity feels guilty for doubting. Guilty for the shreds of unbelief that daren’t be expressed lest they bring shame (that word again) on the family and their work.

    I’ve seen MKs trying to process their lack of faith being tisk’ed into silence. Or voicing their doubts and being preached into submission. Or hinting at uncertainty and being reproached into repentance.

    Faith is not an inherited conviction. God is not a transferable commodity. Yet the pressure on MKs to not only believe, but be exemplary in their faith is rampant. What unfair pressure on souls whose perception of God has been complicated by a ministry-saturated worldview.

    Permission to doubt is more than mere processing-space. It’s the gift of honest grappling toward eternal outcomes.

    Parents need to extend it. Ministry communities need to extend it. Churches need to extend it. Adults and peers need to celebrate it as part of God’s working in the MK’s life.

    Permission to doubt is crucial to an authentic faith.

     

    6. Permission To Redefine Significance

    The message comes from within and without the missionary community: “The best, most significant, and God-pleasing life you can live is one devoted to his service.”

    But it’s a lie.

    The best, most significant, and God-pleasing life is one in which relationship with him is central. Not work for him or sacrifice to him. Relationship with him.

    In the missionary world, we too narrowly define significance as working for God. Well-intentioned believers reemphasize the message: “Your parents are doing the most important work.” Churches further accentuate it by highlighting missionary families and rewarding their effort with attention, prestige, and donations.

    So the MK who wants to become a dancer feels like a sell-out. She’s seen the need, after all, and all she wants to do is dance? Shameful. All he wants to be is an electrician? Sad. All she sees herself doing is teaching? So unworthy of the MK-upbringing that shaped her—unless she teaches overseas.

    I’ve known guilt-ridden adult MKs who can’t reconcile the career they love with the definition of significance that distorts their perspective—successful businessmen providing for the dozens of families they employ who feel they’ve missed the boat. Artists revealing God’s creativity and beauty to a cynical world who feel disloyal to the Call that galvanized their parents. Stay-at-home dads modeling God’s heart to their children who fear their lives are not significant enough.

    Significance is not what we do. It’s who we are because of our relationship with Christ.

    It’s the light we shine by our mere presence wherever we toil—not the task we do there. It’s the expression of God’s spirit in us that requires no words. It’s a dancer’s sublimation of the horrors of this world. The craftsman’s honesty and the excellence of his work. The teacher’s heart as she nourishes young souls.

    There is deep significance in choosing to exercise the talents God has given us and in radiating him in the process. Too often, permission to find one’s intimate significance, then pursue and excel at it is poorly stated or withheld by well-intentioned missionary parents.

     

    The Gift of Permission

    Because so many of the expectations delineated above are unspoken, their antidote will have to be clearly articulated and frequently repeated. My encouragement to missionary parents desiring to remove the pressure from their still-developing children is fourfold. From their earliest age onward:

    • Foster open communication with your kids.
    • Use simple, unambiguous words to free them from unreasonable expectations.
    • Embody grace and mercy.
    • Model in your adulthood what you preach into their childhood.

    Dare to open conversations that may take years to finish. It’s a healthy place to start for both the missionary and the MK.

    Parenting in Real Life: Ministry Version

    by Mandi Hart

    As long as I can remember,  I have been captivated by the thought that we reproduce who we are in others. We will reproduce not only what we say, but who we are. It is something that is ‘caught’ and not ‘taught’. Apple trees will reproduce apples and orange trees will produce oranges. I first heard that concept many years ago when I was learning about discipling others and the teacher was telling us that we need to live out of who we are in Christ.

    Joseph Chilton Pearce says that what we are teaches the child more than what we say, so we must be what we want our children to become. We really do reproduce who we are in our children even when we don’t want to admit it. Our children know without being taught whether you are sincere or not. They see through our masks in ways that adults often can’t.

    One of the challenges I have encountered since becoming a missionary is that we pray for the work on the field, we plan various activities on how to reach those who do not know Jesus, and our conversations centre around the gospel most of the day. And then we come home. Our children need us, and my husband and I discovered that we had poured ourselves out to their detriment during the day.

    Our children go to a ‘secular’ school. We prayed as a family and all agreed the Lord was leading them to be around children their own age from all spheres of life. As a matter of fact, this helps us. It is a great reminder that we are the primary source for teaching our children about the Lord. The Old Testament reminds of that as well. It’s so easy to let the churches or schools teach our children about God and His ways.

    One evening, my husband and I looked at each other and shook our heads in sadness. We realised that we were too tired from all our conversations during the day to speak to our teens about the Lord. Then, one day, we had a valuable discussion about it and understood how purposeful we really needed to be with them.

    We have to parent intentionally. The result was that we changed a few things in our schedules so that we could be more available to our children. We stopped having afternoon meetings at our home and removed many of the work items from our lounge and dining room. Our home had started feeling like a missions base and not a safe place.

    Within a short period of time, we started to notice a few changes in our children’s hearts. We had more energy to have those spiritual discussions them too. All of us started to enjoy doing Bible studies again, and we spent more time discipling them.

    Whilst we don’t always have it right, we’ve learned some things through this experience:

    1. Keep your home a haven — a safe place from the world (for you and your children).

    2. Set some boundaries around your work so that your children feel like they can enjoy being at home.

    3. Make sure that you have enough energy left to spend time with them. You need to intentionally invest spiritually into your children.

    4. Admit your mistakes and be real.

    5. Allow the Holy Spirit to lead you as you parent and love them.

    Being a missionary doesn’t mean that my mission field is only ‘out there’; it starts at home with my children. They are the ones I want to minister to first. After all, I will reproduce who I am in them rather that what I say or do.

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    Mandi Hart lives in Cape Town, South Africa but carries the nations in her heart. She and her husband, Neil, are the leaders of All Nations Cape Town and have been involved in church planting, discipleship, and missionary training for over a decade. Mandi holds a certification in counseling and a degree in communications and has ministered to mothers and families in a number of ways over the years, including leading a moms group of over 75 moms of babies and toddlers. She has run parenting workshops in Africa & the Middle East and thinks that every stage of parenting is the best stage (she currently has two teenagers). Mandi loves spontaneous adventures, traveling, and sharing a delicious meal with friends and has just released her book Parenting With Courage.