roots – A Life Overseas |

Plant Your Trees

by Mary Silkwood

Another box packed, suitcases piled to the side of the hallway anticipating their next trip. Totes placed carefully into storage, joining the efforts of their counterparts in another corner of the world and holding life on pause until we return.

As sojourners in a missionary lifestyle, it can often be difficult to put down roots, at least deep ones. Roots that give assurance that when you meet friends for coffee and a bit of conversation, you don’t have to wonder when your next meeting will be. The kind of assurance that you’ll see your parents at church in the same pew as always next week, because those things never change. They are part of a revolving door in the beauty of the mundane.

I often find myself living life on the edge of my seat, anticipating what direction I will go next. Where will I hang my stockings next Christmas? What kitchen will I bake my child’s next birthday cake in? At times I even wonder what bed I will sleep in tonight. I know that in an instant it can and will change, just as it has countless times before.

What seemed to be the new is now old, and you are starting all over again. At moments you question its worth. To truly settle in yet again, but at what cost? To begin making room for more roots to grow, knowing another transplant looms in the future, all the while wondering what distinguishes us in this season of time?

When you do choose to plant your trees, to give the next chapter your heart, and a chance to put down roots, you soon realize there is a particular value in it all. It will be painful to pack up and leave again, but it’s not worthless. In fact, there is a unique element that this lifestyle produces. The ache of going is worth the wide breadth of friendships, rich memories, and profound reality you gain through the process.

Our roots don’t have the chance to go as deep in one spot as for others. But there are pieces of them spread around the globe. Being transplanted into new places doesn’t permit the same depth as for others, but it certainly allows them to grow wide, wider that I ever could have imagined. And in some mysterious way that may provide a strength and resiliency that a missionary life needs.

In this lifestyle I have had to learn balance. I cannot allow myself to become so comfortable that I forget that I have a revolving door that will always force change. I can’t be in a place where I refuse to be anywhere else, because as a servant of Christ, I must be willing to go anywhere at any time.

Yet at the same time, I can’t be so quick on my feet that I don’t settle down, make a life for my family, and take the time to plant my trees. Trees take time to plant and even longer to grow. Many times I have found myself mistakenly neglecting the things that take longer in life because maybe I won’t have time to see the fruit.

Over the years, I have learned the value in planting my trees — wherever the Lord leads us. I could write a book with all the stories about the Lord’s faithfulness. This story is just one of them, of our special little mango tree.

One Sunday afternoon within the first year that we moved to Thailand, we were watching a family movie. Suddenly our cat crept quickly to the door, and we noticed a poisonous snake slithering into a small bamboo grove in the front yard. (It is good to have a cat in Southeast Asia.) When the snake decided to make the bamboo its home, my husband had to remove the grove for the safety of our young kids and pets.

Now we had a great bare spot with nothing there, and our home was a spectacle with people being able to see right in. It may not seem like a big deal to some, but as a missionary in an Asian country you feel the constant eyes of the local people watching you. That bamboo grove had provided the little bit of privacy we needed at home. We knew we needed to get a new tree to fill the bare space. A trip to the plant market was exciting. We decided to get a mango tree so that we could enjoy the fruit in the seasons to come.

I became nervous and a bit sad thinking of buying a tree. I thought, what if we leave? We will no longer have our tree! That is our tree that we would have planted, and planting it felt like an investment that I didn’t want to lose. My husband, growing up as a missionary kid, knew the importance of making a home no matter how long you plan to stay. “And besides,” he said, “it’s just a tree, have some fun!”

When we planted our little mango tree, not only did it grow, but our hearts began to change and grow. We became rooted again in the places right around us. It was just a few months later that we unexpectedly had to leave Thailand. We suddenly needed to move back to the States for health care for one of our kids. I began to realize how important it was that we planted that tree.

It was fun and exciting to go pick out and plant the tree as a family. To water it and begin to watch it grow. Our little mango tree was ours. It represented our family and our journey to that place at that time. It was more than just a tree to us. It showed how God had brought us there and reminded us of our adventures, both the fun and the difficult. And just like our tree, we were growing and maturing through it all. I decided then that in some way I would continue to “plant trees” each place the Lord would lead us to.

Before leaving Thailand, my husband moved our little tree to his parents’ house on the other side of the city. For a few years my father-in-law would send us pictures of it and tell about its growth. One Christmas, my son bought Grandpa a little airplane ornament, so Grandpa hung it on the tree we planted and took a picture of him and Grandma with it. That was the last email I received from my father-in-law before his passing a few months later.

Two years after we lost him, the Lord led our family back to Thailand and to the home where my in-laws had lived with our little mango tree. Staying in that home was supposed to be temporary, but with now two children with medical needs and COVID restrictions, we stayed there much longer.

We enjoyed many mango seasons eating the fruit that came from our tree. A tree that at one time we thought we might never see again, let alone taste the fruit from season after season. We watched our little tree grow right along with our children. I homeschooled under it while feeding babies. My kids climbed up in it and imagined for hours on end. They put blankets and teapots under it and invited friends to come in. Their stuffies were often found hanging in it, and yes, a few snakes tried to make their home there as well.

It was a refuge in a rainy season storm and a shady place when the hot season baked the earth. Each evening I would watch my children play around and climb up in it as I prepared dinner. For four years we lived there, and in some ways I forgot about the feelings I had before I planted the tree. My revolving door, for a moment, had given way to the beauty of the mundane.

The day came when the Lord had new plans for our family, and the chapter in that place was coming to a close. We called that place home longer than any other place we have ever lived.

A few years have now passed since we moved to Eastern Thailand. On a recent trip back to the north my husband went to our old house and discovered that the new owners had our tree removed. Our home is different, and not ours anymore, and our tree no longer there. The tree we planted is still a reminder of our journey — the journey that brought us there and led us away. Most important, however, is the time we spent planting our trees. And tree or no tree, a large part of our family’s roots can still be found there.

When we planted our lovely little mango tree, we did not just plant it to cover the home, but our hearts as well. It represents a place where growth began to take place in our lives. Now our little mango tree holds even more meaning; it’s not just a tree but a story.

It’s a story of a journey our family took to the other side of the world. It is a story of our adventures, our growth, our struggles, and our faith. It is a story of love and loss. It is a story of relationships we made and relationships we lost. That little tree holds a lot of memories, love, and life. Most importantly, it’s a story of God’s faithfulness ever present in our lives.

I hope my kids look back one day and see a life that was rooted. That their roots run deep, connecting them to people, places, and memories everywhere. That their home was a place of rest and security no matter where it was. That they have learned to plant their trees in each place, no matter how brief or long it may have been. And that they can see God’s glory and goodness in everything.

How about you? How has your family taken the time to plant your trees? It does not have to be an actual tree. It can be a variety of things that give us roots. Over the years, we have planted sunflowers, painted pictures to hang up on temporary housing walls, and raised chickens.

The year we moved to Eastern Thailand, we also went on home assignment. In that year alone we stayed in over fifty different places. Even during this time my son kept a small plant he potted in the window of our van as we traveled all around America. My children faithfully watered it each day.

Over the years our family has had over fifteen major moves. Many times there have been multiple moves within a year. Each place has provided opportunities to learn and grow, and wherever we go we take time to plant our trees.

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Mary spent her childhood in the Midwest. After meeting her MK husband at a missions conference, her life was never the same. Together they have had a life of adventure following the Lord to many places and ministries around the world. Most days you will find her in a small village in Eastern Thailand surrounded by rice paddies with a coffee in hand, homeschooling her six children. There is something always baking in her oven and a yard full of critters and kids running around. She takes delight in studying God’s word and sharing its truth with others.

Learning to Stay (a TCK story)

by Sangita Shresthova

I never thought I’d be the kind of person who put down roots. Having grown up between Nepali and Czech cultures, I have always thrived on change — the desire to leave, to be open to new possibilities, and discover something new. For decades, I was always on the move. Colombo, Ahmedabad, Brussels, Frankfurt, Berlin, Boston, Prague, Kathmandu. I didn’t just adapt to transience; I sought it out. Home was wherever my suitcase landed. Rootlessness felt like freedom.

Then, somehow, I settled.

It didn’t happen overnight; it crept up on me. I fell in love. I had a son. I grew to care about my son’s school, the community around the church children’s choir he joined, the trails our family hiked together, the coffee shop that always got my order right, the streets I biked, the neighbors that waved.

Slowly, quietly, place began to matter. One day, I realized that I had somehow unpacked my suitcase in Altadena, California. Don’t get me wrong, I still sometimes imagined leaving, but for the first time, these desires didn’t rise to the deafening levels that had pushed me to move on before.

And then, on January 7, 2025, everything changed when Altadena (our Altadena) was destroyed by the Eaton Fire. Overnight, sixty percent of our town burned down, and the places I’d come to love disappeared. The coffee shop, the park, the trails, my son’s school and church. Though our home (thankfully) survived, we were not able to return for months, and when we did everything was different. I was overwhelmed and surprised by the depth of my grief. I had lost places before by leaving them, but this was different: the place itself had disappeared.

Through the pain, I felt my old instincts return. I was prepared for this moment, I told myself. My cross-cultural upbringing had taught me to adapt and move on. I know how to start over. I know that rootlessness can be a strength. And so, my first impulse was to do what I had always known how to do: leave and start again somewhere else.

But then, I also remembered what I had learned about the power of connecting (really connecting) to a place and committing to being shaped by geographies as much as cultures. I also thought about my now eleven-year-old son and his emerging Czech, Nepali, Indian, and American cross-cultural identity. I thought about how much his church choir community meant to him.

I realized that I wanted him to know that staying in a place is just as meaningful as having the courage to leave it. I wanted him to understand that resilience can take many shapes and that his cross-cultural upbringing does not mean that rootlessness is his destiny.

So, despite a strong urge to pack those suitcases, my family and I decided to stay (for now) and become part of Altadena’s long journey to rebuild. I committed to being part of the local community, to holding space for what Altadena may become. I make it a point to visit the restaurants and coffee shops that remain. My son composed a song about Altadena to perform at local events and wears his Altadena tee shirt with hope.

I have adapted and embraced change, while staying in place to grieve for what we have lost, knowing it will never be the same. Through it all, I have learned that living across cultures can teach us how to adapt, move on, and let go. But it can also teach us something I am still learning: how to stay.

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A Czech-Nepali mother, writer, former dancer, and current professor at the University of Southern California, Sangita Shresthova currently lives in Altadena, California. She recently published The Cross-Cultural Parenting Handbook, to share what she learned about parenting across cultures through her conversations with more than thirty cross-cultural parents and caregivers.

Co-Grieving Loss with Your Repatriated TCK

We didn’t have words for TCK loss back then. Not when I left Cameroon at nineteen and stepped onto U.S. soil as a stranger to my own country. But just because there weren’t words doesn’t mean the ache of loss didn’t burrow deep. Nineteen and newly repatriated felt like drowning in a sea of people who looked like me and talked like me but didn’t know the red-earth-Africa that shaped me.

I hardly recognized the girl I became in the wake of losing Cameroon, my best friends, and everything that felt familiar. That season was one of the hardest – and one of the unhealthiest – of my life.

Now, after the years have fast forwarded to an empty nest, I find myself looking back, not just at my own story but at theirs. I think of my children, my third culture kids, who built rich and beautiful lives on South African soil, their home. How will they handle letting go? How will they carry the weight of leaving behind the people and places that shaped them?

When I saw Megan Norton’s invitation to write a letter to my recently repatriated TCKs for her upcoming book, Letters Now Sent, I knew exactly what I wanted to say. I know the grief of leaving a place that tattoos an indelible mark on your soul. As their mother and as a TCK myself, I want to co-grieve their losses of saying goodbye to a life they loved in South Africa. And I know where I want them to root themselves now, as they step into adulthood in the U.S.

This letter is a new beginning with new language for parents of TCKs. It is my way of opening the door to a safe and sacred conversation with my young adult children—one established in love, shared understanding, and the kind of hope that reroots through the cracks of even the hardest losses. While their reactions to my letter are deeply personal and honey to my heart, I can tell you that this budding conversation was met with warm reciprocity and open arms.

A letter to Elaina and Sawyer Danforth, 2025 (republished at A Life Overseas with permission)

My two dearest toasted marshmallows,

You are eighteen and nineteen now. University carries a steep learning curve for everyone, but especially for the ones like you who left home, country, and friends to be grafted back to the place of your heritage.

As second-generation TCKs, you belong to a tribe that your father and I know well. Your childhood was formed in the womb of the cradle of humankind, in KwaZulu-Natal, and it ended abruptly on the other side of a plane ride to the United States. But the things that formed you there still sing in every crevice of your mind and shape the way you see the world.

Repatriation is a season when the losses of the familiar sink in hard for TCKs. And these are the years when you become aware of your roots, the ones that have been transplanted to new soils and now feel wildly distinct and out of place. The places of your childhood are the places where your formative and deepest roots grow. And the soil of South Africa no longer surrounds or supports you.

You’ll remember from working on our farm that a transplanted plant often wilts for a while. It is learning to survive in a new and unfamiliar environment. Its roots aren’t sure what to make of its new home. They don’t know whether they can unfurl and take new life or whether the newness will be hostile to growth. Repatriating TCKs are the same.

While my roots in South Africa will never be as deeply formative as yours, I am here to co-grieve your losses with you. I did the same as a nineteen-year-old with my Cameroonian roots. And your father did too, at eighteen with his Congolese and Central African roots.

Some losses are obvious. Our imperfectly perfect little farmhouse and the stability of its cracked walls. The foamy blueness of whales flirting between the horizon and the Indian Ocean. The oneness of our multicultural, multi-lingual farm family. The wind-whipped cheeks from four-wheeling wild past giraffes. The saggy eyes after Minecraft all-nighters with friends. The laughter with your non-blood sisters farmsteading in the mountains. The crispy-edged pancakes hot off the griddle every Saturday morning. The seasonal ebb and flow of subtropical downpours and droughts.

But some losses are hidden. Some, you won’t even know you miss until you come across them years later. And you’ll be caught off guard by a sudden feeling of home. Hidden losses are the sounds, smells, and invisible things that God sprinkled into the backdrop of your childhood. They are the things that you didn’t even know weren’t everywhere on planet earth. Until they weren’t.

Your hidden losses don’t have to make sense to anyone else. They don’t even have to be pleasant. But something about these background sounds and smells had a profound impact on developing the unseen part of who you are today. And we honor those gifts by naming them.

The background sound of your childhood is the cry of hadedas filling pink southern skies and beckoning your sleepy eyes open. You didn’t even know the sound was missing until that first morning in a Midwest dormroom when the synthetic shock of an alarm clock demanded your attention.

It is the faithful singsong Xhosa greeting “Molweni” on your proud farm stoep. It is the mourning doves telling each other off gently and sternly. It is the inexplicable peace of violent rains threatening to crash right through tôle roofs. It is the baying of hounds, whether to threaten skelems or to give chase to dassies, outside your burglar-barred window.

It is the South African flavor in which people have always said your name. It is the twisted, segregated history healing in real time through the harmony of church songs in English, Afrikaans, and Zulu. It is the comfort of our family’s age-old call to meals that reaches back to the recesses of your first independently held spoon, “On va prier.”

The background smell embedded in the roots of your childhood is a eucalyptus flame licking Karoo lamb ribs on the braai. It is soft buttermilk vanilla steam from an Ouma rusk dunked in Five Roses tea. How can something be so moorishly crunchy and goopy at the same time? It is the barely-there salt in the air where the Indian Ocean laps at the sky. And yes, it is even the familiar sewage plant every time we try to hold our breath at that bend in the highway by Uvongo.

Your roots will fumble around in this new place of red, white, and blue for a while, figuring out what is friendly soil and what isn’t. And this is the time. Dit is tyd to close your eyes, take a breath, and rediscover the power of your one unshakable tap root. It is your deepest root. The most formative one. The most familiar one. The most stabilizing one. It is your one root that pushes far past all the others, past every good and rocky soil, reaching like life depends on it, to the source of life. Water. Living Water.

It is in Living Water that you’ve always found life and truth and all that is good. When everything around is unfamiliar, this source is the familiar.

You’ll find community in the taproots of familiar people planted there too. And you’ll come to know new people who are automatically family because their taproot seeks life in the same place where yours does. This is the good stuff, my toasted marshmallows.

While your secondary roots stumble around and try to make sense of star-spangled life, sink all your energy, all your questions, all your everything into your taproot’s source of life. It is the one and only thing that will never change no matter where you go, how far you fall, or how unfamiliar everything else seems.

Taprooted to the Source with you,

Mom (Anna Danforth)

~~~~~~~

Inspired by Ruth Van Reken‘s book Letters Never Sent, Letters Now Sent will be a collection of letters from TCKs, parents of TCKs, and system leaders to share personal stories about their experiences with TCKs, being a TCK themself, and/or raising TCKs. This book is a fusion of both memoir and anthology written in a specific “Dear [name]” format.

Here is the Google Form link to submit a letter with additional details about length and content prompts: https://forms.gle/jQyzq3TtFqfyznvCA. The deadline to submit a letter is March 31, 2025, and the book will be launched in July 2025 at Ruth’s 80th birthday celebration. Families in Global Transition is hosting the 80th Birthday party in Chicago on July 26, 2027, and registration will be live on their website soon. You do not have to be a member of FIGT to register for this event.

When Our Children Feel Rootless

I looked intently in my daughter’s eyes. Her normal sparkle was clouded over with hurt. She had been caught in a three-way friend drama for years, often feeling left out and like she could not compete. After the most recent installment, she seemed resigned.

“I mean, maybe it’s better this way anyway. When we move back to the US, then they’ll have each other,” she casually commented.

My heart broke. Where did this come from? Yes, we have eventual plans to move back to our home country, but no current plans. It isn’t something we talk about much; at least, not with our children — only occasionally. But clearly it has hung in the back of my daughter’s mind.

Witnessing my daughter’s experience of rootlessness is perhaps more painful than my own experience of it. For those of us who have children, you have likely asked the same questions:

Is this fair to do to my children?

What is the price they will have to pay?

How much trauma can we all bear?

Will we know when we need to make a change?

My daughter’s own sense of rootlessness echoed my own persistent feelings.

Some of us are better disposed to live in the present, to set aside questions of the future and memories of the past. Others of us struggle to live in the moment, constantly aware of the shifting sand beneath our feet and the marching on of time.

Some of us love living overseas and have settled in deeply, hoping to pass many years of our lives on fresh soil. Others of us have worked hard to live well in difficult places and never quite felt like we could fully settle.

Compounded with a sense of rootlessness is that of loneliness – who else around me feels what I feel? Am I the only one? Local friends and partners will not relate in the same way, nor will friends and partners from our passport countries. It can be difficult to share honestly, and this often feels like a burden we must shoulder alone.

On some level, while the intensity of the rootless feeling fades, it never truly disappears; at least, it hasn’t for me, not after eight years. While there has been an increased sense of home and community in our international context, I still do not feel like I am rooted in the way I wish I could be.

And yet, we seek to walk in this season with as much gratitude as we can muster, seeing that it is just that: a season. We pray, with the psalmist, “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12). We hold fast to Christ as our true home and recognize that any sense of rootlessness is part of living in broken world.

So I can look my daughter in the eye, into those bright, beautiful eyes, and say, “I know, my girl. It’s on my heart all the time too. Part of it is that we are living in this broken world – we’ll be rootless until Jesus comes to make it all right again. Another part is that we are a kind of stranger here, and always will be. But it’s okay – Jesus is with us, he knows what it is to be a foreigner, and we can hold fast to him. Some day, our hearts will feel completely at home.”

And while this doesn’t fix our feelings, it helps know what to do with them. Below is a prayer I’ve written for my daughter who struggles with rootlessness. May it be a blessing to you and your children:

A Prayer for When I’m Feeling Rootless

My Father, my true home,

My heart is unsettled in this place;
I feel rootless, wandering, floating.

I long to feel as though I belong,
As though this is my forever home.
I long to fit in, to not be different
Than those around me.
I long to not wonder when we will move,
Or imagine what that will be like.

And yet, I know my rootlessness
Comes from living in a broken world.
You will someday make all things new,
And this world will be the home you meant for me.

My soul is made to long
For you, Christ.
My heart is truly at home
In you, Christ.
My rootless wandering finds rest
In you, Christ.
My life is built on the solid rock
Of you, Christ.

And yet, while I am here,
Let me love well, and serve well.
Let me live in this season
With faith and trust that you will
Care for me all of my days.

Amen.

(Prayer drawn from Psalm 90:12; Luke 6:48; Ephesians 3:17; Colossians 2:7)

How We Get Rootedness Wrong

by Beth Watkins

I had this nagging sense I was doing something wrong.

I had decided to be a missionary. And while that in and of itself didn’t seem simple enough, the idea that I would go to one place, learn the language, be a part of a foreign place, integrate with the lives of people in a new place did. I imagined myself, like the single older ladies in the missionary biographies I read about, gray haired, wearing flowy dresses, with kids and neighbors knowing me and the sincerity in my good intentions. I would grow old in a place that was no longer foreign. This was the dream.

And boy, that dream shattered real fast. Two years in I was booted by state security, persona non-grata, told in no uncertain terms I would not be welcomed back.

The rest of the story goes something like this: moved to South Sudan, was there when war broke out, got married, traveled constantly for work and support raising, moved to Egypt, lived with a mystery sickness that kept worsening, acquired green card for the husband, and returned back to living on American soil just over 6 years after I left.

A whirlwind. That wasn’t what I saw coming at all.

And this whole time I had a sense I was doing something wrong.

This wasn’t what was supposed to happen. This isn’t what is supposed to happen in life. God calls us to relationship, rootedness. He cares about community. He calls us to investment in people and places.

In each move I had a sense I was doing it wrong. Starting all over again, all over again, and now all over again. We were suddenly in our new American city, with no time to figure out where we’d like to settle in the city long-term, where we might possibly want to be rooted here.

And with each move, I cried into my pillow and scribbled in my journal. And now that I have a husband around, I sigh loudly and grumble. What about settledness? What about roots? When do we get to stop making brand new groups of friends? When do we get to stop finding our feet and losing them again? When do we get to feel settled? Stop changing churches? Learning new streets and shops? When do I get to have the same life routine for some sustained period of time?

More than anything I want to know it’s coming. I want to know stability is coming. I want to know we’ll get to buy a forever home, I’ll get to plant fruit trees and bushes that I myself will be able to harvest from in 10, 15, 20 years’ time. That I’ll get to stop proving myself anew in a workplace every 2 years. I want to know that, though life ebbs and flows, I won’t need to start all over with no friends in a place again. I want to feel rooted in church, in vocation, in friendships.

There are seasons in life. Some relationships are short and impact us profoundly. Some relationships are long, some life-long, and they teach us hard lessons about patience, grace, and anger over, and over, and over again. But not all relationships can be forever. I don’t think they’re meant to be. Some roots grow deep, strengthen the soil, and ground tall plants to stand up to difficult conditions. Some roots are pulled from the ground, shaken of their dirt, and provide needed nourishment. We don’t get to choose.

I wanted to be in community forever with the street boys in my desert home. I wanted to watch the girls in South Sudan grow up. I wanted to sit and drink tea and laugh with Mama M on the reg. During these years, I also wanted to have coffee with my sisters, wanted to enjoy Christmas with my Mom, didn’t want to miss being there as my nephew was born, wanted a yard with soil I could fortify and plant in year after year.

I wanted it all, all in the same place. And now I just want to stop. I want to stop and not do it anymore and just stay and that’s it.

And maybe rootedness turns into an idol this way.

Maybe I long for something I’m never meant to have. Maybe I’m supposed to get just a taste, so that I can know it in full and in true when the Kingdom of heaven does come in full on earth as it is promised.

Settling in a place forever is not the ideal. It can’t be. I look to the prophets, to the wanderings of Jesus. The disciples travelling. No matter where we look in the Bible there is a theme of uprootedness. Every biblical character in the Old Testament and the New Testament was at some point a refugee, displaced person, was forced out, had to leave, or flee.

Not that I put myself in the category of extraordinary characters in the Bible, but I find comfort there. So many people for so many reasons had to leave their homes, their people, the places they choose and the places picked for them. Many never got to go back; some did and were rejected.

My experience is very less than exceptional, considering especially that though there were challenging circumstances, I had a choice. I had means and freedom and I was able to go. And I’ve been able to return to my home country with my immigrant husband and have been welcomed back warmly and with the help and support of many. My hurts are quite mild compared to many. My complaints more frivolous than not. My losses modest. I know that. But I also know many people get to pick a place and stay, and my restless heart has felt jealousy.

And when I wonder if I will ever find a place to put in roots and then get to stay, it is freeing, comforting somehow to remember this isn’t the biblical example or ideal.

God doesn’t will forced migrations, wars that people must flee from, or people being forced out of housing they can afford in the form of gentrification or otherwise. And when it is a choice, when we move for work, for safety, for family, or because we feel called, the moving itself is not wrong. Of course it is not wrong. We do our best to do the next right thing. It’s all we can do.

And so, when the corners of my heart, well-versed in self-condemnation, tell me I’ve screwed it all up by moving around so much, I have to banish those voices if possible, ignore them at the very least. So, too, with the hidden corner that whispers to me that I deserve to be in one place, to never be uprooted again, to have the life I dream in my head.

I will take the shaky soil of the place I am now, and call it home. I will hold it neither too loosely, nor too tightly, knowing God has given us space in this world as more than just permanent guests. He takes foreigners and makes them citizens, strangers and makes them family, and we would do well to reconcile the wrongs in this world by doing the same, rooting ourselves in love for our neighbors instead of our own comfort or ideals.

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Beth Watkins spent the last 6 years working in North and Sub-Saharan Africa with street children, refugees, and other vulnerable populations. She is currently settling back in the US with her immigrant husband and writes about living toward the kingdom of God and flailing awkwardly into neighbor-love at iambethwatkins.com, where her free e-book “For the Moments I Feel Faint: Reflections on Fear & Showing Up” is also available. She’s also on Facebook and Twitter.