parenting Third Culture Kids – A Life Overseas |

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 7^th 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.”

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

The “F” Word

by Julie Martinez

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Originally published June 21, 2013

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

Searching for a Sense of Home

by Beth Barthelemy

“The word home summons up a place—more specifically a house within that place—which you have rich and complex feelings about, a place where you feel, or did feel once, uniquely at home, which is to say a place where you feel you belong and which in some sense belongs to you, a place where you feel that all is somehow ultimately well even if things aren’t going all that well at any given moment.” –Frederick Buechner, Longing for Home

I sat around our school table, looking into the mostly eager faces of my daughters, though one face was less eager than the rest this morning. A single candlestick flickered in the middle of the table. My hands rested around my coffee mug as I sat back from our morning’s Bible reading, once again having veered off topic.

“South Africa is our home. We barely even remember living in America. This is where I have mostly grown up and where the cats are,” simply stated the black-and-white-thinking, animal-loving child.

“I just don’t know where my home is,” stated the more pensive daughter. “I mean, I love America, that’s where I was born. I think that’s my home.”

The third-born just snuggled on my lap, listening carefully as she always does but saying nothing this time. The youngest was singing in a loud voice on the carpet beside us.

Inwardly, I sighed. I did not feel up to having this conversation this morning, to steering their hearts toward the truth that I myself was desperately seeking. I knew well the significance of this conversation for my children, who live an ocean away from where they were born. My heart was fragile, had been fragile for some time after a devastating family tragedy a few months earlier. I resonated deeply with my daughters’ rationalizations about home. Our life and ministry was here in the deep south of the African continent, yet my hurting family and missing loved one was across an ocean, back in the place where I had grown up. Even in the move five years before, I felt the sore splitting of my heart; it had not healed over time, no. In fact, that splitting was deeper and sorer than ever.

I took a deep breath. I shared that I too struggle with this question of home, and that isn’t home where we are all together? We reflected on the little farmhouse where we had briefly stayed years ago, and how that indeed felt like home, if only for that single month. “And,” I added, “I think there is a part of us that will never feel completely at home anywhere in this world. We will always feel a bit split between the people and things we love here, and the people and things we love in America, because neither of these is our true, forever home.”

The girls sat silently nodding, knowing enough to understand the true, forever home to which I was referring. That seemed to satisfy them well enough, for just then they were off to another subject. I still stared out the window, however, trying once more to imagine a home where I would never again feel this splitting, this longing. A home where the shadows of this world would never darken.

Buechner has similar conflicted feelings about home, though unique to his own life just as my feelings are unique to mine. As he does in many of his works, he connects his own story with many of ours; he has weathered his fair share of storms and is well acquainted with the dark shadows which follow for the rest of our earthly lives.

“I believe that home is Christ’s kingdom,” Buechner writes in The Longing for Home, “which exists both within us and among us as we wind our prodigal ways through the world in search of it.”

Both within us and among us. This is the beauty of the gospel breaking into this broken world; it is transforming our individual sinful hearts and the larger world in which we live. We see our need for home met in the coming of Christ’s kingdom, in that “here but not yet” reality. Yes, Jesus, you are here in my heart and life, and I long for that day when I will be fully at home with you. And, yes, Jesus, you are alive and at work in this dark world, and I am looking for the ways your kingdom is breaking through. I want to see.

As the years fly by in my life — I’m now in my mid-thirties — I am learning that much of my daily work is to see properly. Many days, the shadows of the world threaten to overcome the good and the inherent light. As those of us old enough know, we have little control over the shadows. And if it’s not the shadows, the distractions are endless, the worldly pulls ever strengthening their grip. What I can do, and what I can help my children to do, is to look for the light, choose to see the good, and foster our imaginations for our true home. This is the work of living as children of God in this world, wherever we may find ourselves.

And even as the shadows lengthen, even as we feel the splitting in our hearts, we keep looking for the places the kingdom is breaking in, we keep longing for home. It’s coming.

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

Why Cross-Cultural Workers Need Tent Pegs

Home is a complicated word. A complicated idea. What is it? Where is it? As global nomads, we’re not entirely sure how we feel about home. We’re not sure we have it, and we’re not sure how to get it. We know the correct spiritual answer – that Christ is our home. That He is busy preparing an eternal home for us. And that even now, He makes His home in our hearts, wherever we go. Still, we search for a more earthly home. A physical place to set up camp for a while.

As an adult Third Culture Kid, I’ve spent a lot of time seeking out roots. But lately I’ve been wondering if I should stop my search. I’m far too easily disappointed; permanence of people or place is not something we’re promised in this life. Even so, we need a support system for lives as portable as ours. This summer I started describing those supports as tent pegs.

A tent is a temporary shelter, and the tent pegs that fasten it to the ground also provide only temporary security. Tents and tent pegs are mobile, going with us wherever we go. They allow us to make a home right here, right now. And when the time comes, they allow us to make a home somewhere else too. Every time we pull our tent pegs up out of the ground, pack them in our bags, and move on, we can take the time to hold each tent peg in our hand and remember.

We can remember the things we did in special places with special people, and in ordinary places with ordinary people. We take those memories with us. We can take physical reminders too, small objects that represent the people and places that are dear to us; a typical expat’s house is full of knick-knacks from previous places. We can hang photos of our tent pegs on the walls of our new homes and keep them saved on our smart phones for anytime the saudade hits.

This summer on home assignment, my husband and I tried to be purposeful in giving our family tent pegs and in recognizing them as such. In addition to all the normal ministry commitments, we visited our family’s places. The settlement of Czech immigrants among the rolling hills of Iowa and the cemetery where most of them were buried. The university campus where my husband and I spent four good years and discovered a heart for ministry.

The Christian college most of my husband’s family attended — and where his great-grandfather was university president for 29 years. Our agency’s home office and its sprawling rural Kentucky campus. Dear friends and family spread across the Midwest, and the little country churches that welcome us with open arms. In between travels, we live at my parents’ house, which is a tent of its own. At each place and with each set of people, we laugh, and we talk about hard stuff. We take photos and we sear the times in our memories. We’re collecting tent pegs.

We look at the old pictures and we tell the old stories. Over and over again. Each place we visit, we tell the story of what happened there. Each person we speak with, we tell the story of what we did together. We listen to the music we heard when we were in each place and with each person. We tell our children the same stories over and over again, until they know them by heart like we do. We tell stories from two, three, and even four generations back. We’re sharing our tent pegs.

Of course, at each of these places, things are not exactly the same. My grandparents have both died, and someone else owns their house, the tent peg house I returned to over and over again as a child. The aunt who lived across the street moved to a different house. All my cousins have moved away. Our agency’s home office building is still the same, but most of the people who served there ten years ago (when we joined) have moved on by now, many to overseas location. We stopped visiting some churches and started visiting others. Sometimes the same people are there. But others have moved on or died, while new families have arrived.

Things change in our host countries too. Favorite restaurants shut down. Coffee shops close. Schools change locations. Open space gets developed. Beachfront vacations become too expensive to continue. Visa laws change. People come and go. We can’t always go back to the same places, and we can’t always see the same people. But we can take out our tent pegs and look at them. We can look at the old photos and listen to the old music and tell the old stories, and we can feel just a little more loved. We can feel just a little more settled and secure.

Our trip to our passport country is coming to an end soon. We’ve been packing up our tent pegs this week (along with enough clothes, medicine, and school books to last the next two years). In a few hours I will get on a plane to return to another one of my earthly homes — for as a friend once noted, we are always heading home, on our way from home. But wherever we go and wherever we stay, we can keep collecting tent pegs. We can take our memories of love and friendship with us to each new place. And we can anchor ourselves anew anywhere we venture off to.

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Here are two songs that my family and I discovered this summer during our travels. They speak to our third culture kid hearts, and we like to listen to them on cross-country (and cross-city) drives. Perhaps they will speak to you too.

No Roots by Alice Merton

Fly Away Home by Pinkzebra

Citizens of Heaven: Third Culture Kids and Kingdom Living

by Tanya Crossman

In my previous post, I discussed the importance of citizenship of heaven as biblical theology which brings hope and encouragement to TCKs. The knowledge that their hearts will one day rest in the comfort of a single home brings great peace. There is also great joy in knowing that this single home crosses the earthly boundaries they feel restricted by – that heaven will be a place of inclusion, where difference does not mean separation.

This was one of two findings from my research. The other was more of a surprise to me – that TCKs’ understanding of earthly citizenship provides an important springboard to helping them understand what it means to be a Christian.

Christians are expatriates on earth

Throughout the New Testament there are calls for Christians to live as those whose allegiance is first and foremost to the kingdom of heaven. (Philippians 3:20, 1 Peter 2:11, Hebrews 11:13-16). We are strangers and sojourners in this world. Two Greek words often used in this context (paroikos and parepidēmos) have a meaning similar to the modern use of “expatriate” – those who are living long term in a place they do not completely belong to.

Those of us who live (or have lived) outside our passport countries can easily layer our earthly experiences onto this spiritual reality. We know what it feels like to live in a place we cannot truly call ‘home’. We live according to the laws and customs of the place in which we sojourn, while maintaining a different identity altogether.

The experience of TCKs, however, is an even closer parallel to the Christian’s spiritual reality. TCKs grow up far from the place to which they are legally connected. They know where ‘home’ is, but they grow up building emotional connections somewhere else. Is that not our spiritual situation? We are citizens of heaven, a place in which we have not lived, a place that often feels so far away. We aim to live out Kingdom values, though we are steeped in the values of this world. TCKs’ understandings of citizenship, therefore, have a lot to speak to the spiritual lives of Christians.

TCKs and Citizenship

The TCKs I interviewed did not feel a sense of belonging simply through shared characteristics – like ethnicity, nationality, work, or church. Belonging, they said, required integration. They needed a sense of shared purpose, working toward a common goal.

“It’s always a two-way thing, to feel like you belong. You can’t just be there and feel like you’re contributing but no one really accepts you, or feel like everyone accepts you but you’re not actually building anything while you’re there.” – Min

This idea of belonging as a two-way street bled through into their understanding of citizenship. While they recognised the legal aspect of citizenship (holding a passport) they also felt strongly that real citizenship meant personal involvement: shared values, understanding of culture/language, acceptance by locals, and contribution to the community. Yet these TCKs also know that no amount of felt belonging can grant one a passport. Legal standing is, to a very large extent, outside the individual’s control.

“You can quite easily be a citizen of a country without knowing any kind of cultural norms or history or the language even. . .citizenship, legally speaking, comes just like that with paperwork, but in terms of actual action it takes time, it takes years to really feel like you have become a citizen of that place. . .If you don’t have the piece of paper to prove it then you’re not a citizen of the place. Regardless to how much that person knows about that place or how much they are familiar with the place.” – Kaito

Citizenship and Soteriology

During interviews every TCK used ideas from their description of earthly citizenship to illustrate what they believed heavenly citizenship was. The conversation invariably turned to what makes someone a citizen of heaven – what does it mean to be included in the people of God? In other words, what does it mean to be saved? Suddenly their two categories of citizenship took on a new light, as they map to theology of justification and sanctification.

I am a citizen because the ruling authority declares it so – justification.
I respond to my citizenship by learning to act according to the culture – sanctification.

I am a citizen because a government accepts me. Citizenship is granted to me by that authority, a decision which is out of my hands. I can apply to become a citizen, but the country must choose to accept me. That declaration makes me a citizen, but there should be more. I should respond to that reality, connecting personally and engaging in the community, by learning language, understanding culture, and contributing to society.

I am a citizen of heaven because God accepts me, declaring me righteous on the basis of Jesus’ completed work, not on the basis of anything I’ve done. That declaration makes me a citizen of heaven, but there should also be a response from me. I need to learn the culture of this Kingdom, learn to live that way, and engage with the community I am now a part of.

Discipling TCKs as citizens of heaven

Earthly citizenship comes with both rights and responsibilities; so does heavenly citizenship. TCKs’ understanding of the former can enlighten their understanding of the latter.

I often hear a works-mentality from Christian TCKs – that they need to be good enough, need to learn more, need to work out what to do to earn their place among God’s people. TCKs’ understanding of earthly citizenship provides an open door to explain justification and assurance of salvation – they can be granted the passport, even if they don’t feel they belong, and don’t always act like they belong.

On the other hand, TCKs’ intuitive sense that there is more to citizenship than a piece of paper translates across to their faith: being justified and accepted by God makes me a citizen of heaven, but now I must choose to identify with this King and His Kingdom.

“We should live like citizens of heaven here on earth… For me it means to have a different mindset, a different set of values… You live here how you live when you are a citizen in heaven. You care for other people, you think that every human is equal, you respect each other.” – Yannick

The call to live as citizens of heaven, to live with that cultural mindset, is a challenge today just as it was when Jesus preached the counter-cultural values of the kingdom of heaven. Citizenship is an image that resonates for immigrants and expatriates and especially TCKs. New Testament writers used this imagery precisely because it connects with so many earthly experiences. We can do the same, and in the process speak both comfort and challenge to TCKs and others who live cross-cultural lives.

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Tanya Crossman spent most of her childhood as a local in Australia and most of her adulthood as an expat in China (with stops in the U.S. and Cambodia). Along the way she unexpectedly turned into an expert on millennial TCKs, wrote a book, and starting travelling the world to speak on her favourite topic: why TCKs are awesome and how to serve them well. After completing an MDiv in Australia, she recently got married (to a TCK) and moved back to Beijing. Now she’s enjoying rediscovering everything she loves about China! She can be found online far too often, usually on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and occasionally at her website.

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.