Tag: struggle

When Callings Collide

As I woke up on Mother’s Day to breakfast in bed, hand-written notes from each of my children, and freshly picked flowers, I was deeply thankful not only for the blessing of my three sons but also for the much-needed reminder that I’m not a complete failure as a mother.

Two days prior I was weeping on my bed over a difficult parenting situation and reeling from feelings of failure that I couldn’t pull myself together to keep going with the day, to keep parenting, to even put supper on the table. I couldn’t keep fighting the fight.

And not only did I feel like a failure as a mom, but also as a wife and a missionary and a writer. In our current busy season, I couldn’t remember the last time my husband and I had connected, I still hadn’t visited the person I’ve been planning to visit who needs emotional support, I still hadn’t filled out the report my organization asked for last month, and I still hadn’t drafted an article for this blog.

None of the roles I play were performed. None of the hats were donned. None of the plates were spinning.

It was a classic case of callings colliding and the subsequent doubting of whether it’s possible to faithfully carry them all at once.

Most people have more than one calling at the same time, and most people have doubted those callings at one time or another. Some callings are lifelong, some are seasonal. Some are thrust upon us, some are chosen by us. Some are obvious, some are difficult to discern. Some are ours alone, some need to be shared and navigated alongside others. Some are vocations, some avocations.

And many of them exist in tandem. I don’t set aside my calling as a mother in order to pick up my calling as a missionary. They coexist today and will coexist again tomorrow. The same goes for everything I’m called to. I’m called to marriage, to motherhood, to missions, and to writing (among other things), and it’s the regular collision of these callings that is so difficult to balance.

It’s nearly impossible to succeed let alone excel in multiple callings at once. Many days I completely fail at one or another, and sometimes I fail miserably. I can easily identify all the things I haven’t accomplished in my various roles—all the writing goals I haven’t achieved, all the texts and emails I haven’t sent, all the times I haven’t played a game with my kids despite them asking several times, all the date nights I haven’t taken with my husband because it’s one more thing to plan for and it feels like too much.

It can be hard to pick all the plates off the floor, let alone get them spinning.

But that’s true for most of us. I am certainly not the only mother out there struggling to find time and energy to pour into my marriage at the end of a long day on the homefront. I’m not the only missionary in the world needing to process my cross-cultural life through writing and finding next to no time to do it. I’m not the only spouse on the mission field scrambling to justify the label “missionary” when I spend all day at home teaching the kids while my husband spends all day helping and serving the poor.

When callings collide, it can be rather difficult to keep track of all those callings, let alone live them out all at once.

Which is why it’s so complicated, and also why we need God’s grace every day to live out the callings He’s given us.

So what does it mean to be a wife and a mother and a missionary and a writer? What does that look like day in and day out?

I honestly don’t know. Because even when I focus solely on one calling at a time, I don’t do it well every day. I get annoyed with my husband, I snap at my kids, I shut myself in the house to avoid any cross-cultural encounters, I ignore my writing project because eating chocolate and watching Netflix is just plain easier. I fail, and fail, and fail again.

BUT. But God’s grace remains just as constant as our failures do, and His grace speaks truth into the lie that we probably weren’t actually called to this and God must’ve made a mistake.

God’s grace declares, “You were made for this even though you aren’t perfect at it.”

His grace speaks, “You should acknowledge your failure but you must also acknowledge My presence and My strength to hold you up.”

His grace breathes, “I created you and I chose you for this. I still choose you for this. I did not make a mistake.”

His grace sends the child who left you in tears one day to whisper in your ear the next day, “You’re the best. There’s no one like you. That’s the truth.”

When callings collide, so does God’s grace and love and mercy. He is gentle with us when we fail. He is comforting when we grieve. He is kind in his encouragement, tender in his care, patient in his guidance. And perhaps more than anything, He is bold in his continued claim of us.

God never called me to be a perfect wife, a perfect mother, a perfect missionary, or a perfect writer. He called me to be all of these things and to make of them whatever I could, with His help. But when He called me to them, He knew I would occasionally fail at every one of them. Despite that, He still claims me as His own. And He still invites me to fulfill these callings.

I think God is pleased that I accept the callings He’s given me, and also that I wrestle through the difficulty of when those callings collide rather than throw them away because it seems too hard or downright impossible to figure it out any other way.

So I keep taking them up, these callings of mine, and wrestle with balancing them most days. And I pray that God will always send this reminder when I need it most: when callings collide, so does God’s grace and love and mercy.

Photo by Theodor Moise on Pixabay

Contending With Broken Culture


“Shame on God for not giving me a husband.”

This statement was the first domino to fall in a series of situations that created my current state of disillusionment.

I’ve certainly been disillusioned before, so I can recognize it for what it is, but my current plight is bordering on crisis. A slow building of shock and disbelief and frustration over time has resulted in many days when I feel ready to quit. We live in a predominantly Christian area where we partner in the work of discipleship, yet many circumstances have revealed an immature faith that have left me discouraged at best, defeated at worst.

The above comment about shaming God was spoken by a woman who’s prayed for decades for a husband and hasn’t found one yet. The comment provides keen insight into both the general culture and the religious culture here. Marriage is placed on such a high pedestal that it often becomes, quite simply, an idol. Marriage increases a person’s value and honor. To be married is to be better than anyone who is unmarried. (The same goes for having children.) The state or health of the marriage is often of less importance than the fact that someone can claim to be married.

Despite the temptation to dissect the glaring theological holes in the assertion that checking the “married” box is better than checking the “single” box, let me focus on something else. There is more at stake here. Blaming God is one thing, but shaming Him from within an honor/shame culture takes it even further. The act of shaming someone is meant to put him in his place. It’s meant to exclude him from the community and thereby disrupt, if not dissolve, relationships.

Shaming God, therefore, is an attempt to displace Him from a life of faith that doesn’t serve us the way we want it to.

Clearly, there are serious concerns with this. Hence the beginning of my current season of disillusionment. One situation after another left me looking around, wondering how on earth people could believe that certain falsehoods were true. What seemed clear to me was seemingly not clear to many others.

At first I thought it was mostly about individual belief systems and individual choices. And it was, to an extent. David was correct in saying, “Everyone has turned away, all have become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one” (Psalm 53:3).

But I was quickly reminded that people the world over are impacted not only by our sin nature, but also by culture.

Because here’s the truth: culture itself is broken. Not just people within a certain time and place, but cultures in all times and all places. Worldviews, ideologies, philosophies — all broken.

This is not to say they are completely broken. On the contrary, there are incredibly beautiful aspects to every culture. But there is no perfect culture in all the world. There is no worldview that flawlessly aligns with God’s ways.

It might be said, “Every culture has turned away; all have become corrupt; there is not one which does good, not even one.” All worldviews, ideologies, and philosophies are products of human minds, thoughts, and beliefs, after all. If we are broken, so, too, are our cultures.

It is true of the culture I currently live in, as well as the culture I hail from. When I look at my home country right now, I find the same feeling I did when the woman shamed God: disillusionment. So much is so broken.

What are we to do? Like humanity, cultures will not be redeemed until Christ returns to set all things right. And like the sin nature we are all born with, we are also born with certain cultural predilections and predispositions. We are all products of culture. We all have blinders because we all are subject to ideologies that were deeply ingrained in us since birth. Whether from something as large as the culture of a nation or as small as the culture of a nuclear family, we are shaped by culture.

Some of what is deeply ingrained in us is fairly innocuous and simply won’t be changed. For example, I cannot imagine that I will ever think fried termites sound tasty. I can eat them, but I probably won’t ever choose to eat them, let alone crave them. The culture I grew up in taught me that eating bugs is gross. On the flip side, the culture I currently live in rejoices when the rains summon the flying termites out of the ground, which makes it easier to catch them and fry them.

Other, more serious matters were also deeply ingrained in me from my home culture, such as the equality of women and freedom of religion. These are values that I want to keep because they align with God’s values.

Some cultural norms taught to us can and should be changed because they do not line up with the heart of God. Everything we believe and practice needs to be examined alongside God’s Word, and anything that doesn’t align with Scripture needs to be adjusted. We aim to live by a kingdom cultural standard above any other — that is, by the values taught and exemplified by Jesus Christ. If our home culture or host culture has taught us anything in keeping with Scripture, we should hold onto it. If our home culture or host culture has taught us anything contradicting Scripture, we should combat it.

In short, it is our responsibility as Christ followers to examine the cultures we find ourselves in and cling to or discard whatever is necessary in order to live according to a kingdom culture.

This is not easy, especially when it goes against the grain. Kingdom culture often clashes with earthly cultures. For example, to a culture that sometimes idolizes marriage and even shames God for not granting a spouse, the Bible says that singleness should be accepted by some, and also there will be no marriage in heaven (Matthew 19:10-12; 22:29-30). Deeply ingrained cultural values can be extremely difficult to set aside in favor of biblical values.

But of course, it’s also not easy to pursue kingdom culture when our sinful human hearts want to do otherwise. Between broken people and broken cultures, the task ahead of us can seem insurmountable.

But there is hope — first of all because Christ offers and grants us strength to do what seems impossible. There is also hope because the Body of Christ exists to point each other back to God again and again. We can help each other keep our eyes fixed upon Jesus and also help each other pursue His ways as we fumble our way through this life.

Which is why, in the middle of this season of disillusionment, I was encouraged by a Kenyan brother in Christ who also sees the need to combat unbiblical values being embraced around us. He expressed, “We need to have a higher standard. We need to set a better example.” He said this as someone who deeply loves the Lord and as someone who desires to live according to a kingdom culture.

I admire his perspective and salute his commitment to modeling the ways of Jesus specifically when it counters accepted cultural norms.

That is how we defeat disillusionment before it defeats us. We keep Christ the center of all. We repent of our own unbiblical biases and values, and we turn to God’s Word for clarification and direction.

And we hold tightly to the belief that God’s ways — God’s kingdom culture — will be the only culture in the end.

photo by Pexels on Pixabay

Fighting for Awe and Wonder – And Why It Matters

It was her question that I couldn’t shake. The type of question where harsh reality clashes with idealism. And I couldn’t ignore the drive to chase an answer, even if it took months to unpack. Or in this case, twelve months. 

“How do we maintain awe and wonder?” 

She wasn’t asking because I knew the answer. She’s way smarter than I am. She was asking because she sensed that our souls earnestly wanted to discover some answers together—or at least start trying as we meandered the whimsical neighborhoods of Portland. Her poodle sniffed a statue of Ramona Quimby at the Beverly Cleary Park. 

Speaking of awe and wonder while exploring my favorite childhood author’s hometown and secretly snapping selfies outside her childhood home was the backdrop to her inspired question. Standing where Beverly Cleary would have sipped lemonade and chased playmates in Mary Jane shoes felt surreal. Ramona, Beezus, Henry, Ribsy, and even Scooter, and their white-picket-fence lives were friends who flooded my imagination as a child. I devoured their stories—where the biggest challenge is the neighbor’s complaint of your scruffy dog—over and over by the flicker of a kerosene lantern in a village in Africa. 

The spark of our awe and wonder conversation felt magical, and everything in me was alive. The fact that I was having this exchange with a brilliant children’s book illustrator made it all the more invigorating.

Until I found out the hard truths about Beverly Cleary’s dingy childhood. There wasn’t much sipping of lemonade and chasing of friends along idyllic streets like I’d always imagined. It seems like her writing was less of a memoir and more of an escape to places deeply longed for. 

It hurt to shatter the romantic lens. It was also inspiring. Because there was no better place for me to begin to wrestle with the question of how to maintain awe and wonder in a dark world than outside the childhood home of an author who lived this tension. 

How do I maintain awe and wonder in a world that’s bent on crushing it? 

And why does it matter? In a world where the bodies of children are swept away by swirling waters in Texas, the children in warring strips of lands are paying for centuries of conflict, and the minority children in Cameroon have been prohibited from attending school for fear of their lives, why does it matter to the beating of my very soul if I fight for a sense of awe and wonder? These things feel secondary when I can’t even ensure the protection of the least of these. 

Twelve months later, I still don’t have a clean answer, but I’d like to share what I’ve learned so far and open the conversation to learn from you. I’m pretty sure if you’re reading this, you’ve lived a hard journey across global borders, raised children in hard places, served the unseen, lost a lot, been hurt a lot, wrestled with God a lot, and maybe, just maybe, have lost some awe and wonder in the process. So I think this community has something to teach me.

Why does any of this matter? Why did this question resonate with me and all of humanity?

Because the opposite of awe and wonder is everything that tears us apart from each other and from God. They are the things that disconnect us, suck our souls dry, separate us from empathy for our neighbor, and drive us away from praise. In stark contrast to awe is cynicism, indifference, disenchantment, boredom. On the farthest end of the spectrum of the human experience from wonder is jadedness, apathy, detachment, contempt, and dread. 

A dreary worldview leads us to disconnection, comparison, and inaction. It leads us to seeing others as less than fully human and a growing disdain for the many forms of the goodness of God. We lose our ability to love selflessly and take on pride, gossip, narcissistic tendencies, and even war.

I do not want to be accustomed to these things taking up space in my heart. They are diametrically opposed to awe and wonder. I can hardly think of a closer description of hell. Or things that take my mind further from the heart of God.

Against a landscape of evil, hardness, hyper-self-preservation, disconnection, ingratitude, and danger, I must engage awe and wonder because it leads me to 

praise God better,
which leads me to softness,
which leads me to share,
which leads me to connect,
which leads me to appreciate,
which leads me to protect. 

As a teen full of imagination and wonder, someone informed me that my rose-colored glasses were evidence of a head buried in sand and that my wonder insulted the pain of others. More than anything, I didn’t want to participate in disregarding the pain of others. 

So, instead of learning to better balance the pain of the world with my bursting curiosity, I tried to be mature like them. Bury liveliness. Embrace cynicism. Because jaded people seemed super informed, albeit crippled by inaction. 

As someone who has lived and worked overseas for decades, I’m painfully aware that the pursuit and expression of beauty may be interpreted as disloyalty and abandonment of those in hard seasons. 

But the abandonment of wonder left me hollow. So, I’m back at this question again. 

Practically speaking, how do we do this? For starters, we need to name the things that deoxygenate our awe and loot us of joy. Screens. Inauthentic experiences. Passivity. Pride. Hypervigilant self-focus. Reading comments online—where criticism is acutely trained to detect imperfection and is blind to the bravery it took someone to produce art or work.  

But simply avoiding thieves of joy isn’t what makes us connected and full. Our beings were made to actively seek the beautiful things that make us fully aware of God and in tune with each other. Here are a few fertile places I’ve found.  

  1. Good theology matters. Perhaps there was some level of truth that my childlike awe and wonder neglected to acknowledge the hard things of life, a TCK phenomenon I am only now grasping in my line of work with TCK research. Perhaps a better worldview and a deeper theology would have me explore the complex and uncomfortable truths—learning to hold in tension the beautiful and the hard—and that sometimes the hard is beautiful and the beautiful is hard. Perhaps my heart was meant for deeper worship without reservation when I am called to build a more solid theology of God’s goodness, suffering, sin, and to honor the feeling of paradox of things I don’t fully understand now, but will someday. Perhaps the greatest way to honor the good with awe and wonder is to acknowledge the hard and whisper an invitation for the Holy Spirit to be my teacher (John 14:26).
  2. Cultivate tenderness. Tenderness sees the brokenhearted, turns the throat-lump into sea water running down cheeks, delights in the petal formation of a rose, pauses to ponder the markings of a toad, rebels against the overloaded schedule, believes the best in disquieting misunderstandings, and makes creamy chai for the neighbor. If tenderness is a soft landing place missing from our ability to breathe, stop, praise, notice, engage, maybe it’s time to go back to the root of love—the type that bears, believes, hopes, and endures the things trying to break us (1 Cor. 13:7). 
  3. Throw off the things holding me back. With haste. A good, hard look in the mirror paired with the sacred work of the Holy Spirit burns the secrets holding me back from the Father’s innocence, joy, awe, and empathy. Hebrews 12:1 is a much sweeter bid to freedom than a list of shoulds and condemnation. It is the invitation to drink deep of the things that make me alive and release the things that threaten to sink me. It is a call to marinate in Shalom peace, receive it, root in it, fruit it, and share it. 
  4. Train my eyes upon the unnoticed things. God delights in the song of the sparrow, Leviathan’s froth from playing in the sea, and he even cares about the sorrow of the tax collector. It’s pausing to admire delicate forest fungi while hiking among towering redwoods or listening to the layers of music in a song you’ve heard a hundred times. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. The innocent delight in the little things. To be easily awed is an enviable art these days. 

For the past twelve months and twenty-one days, I’ve been sitting on the question I bring to you today: “How do we maintain awe and wonder. And why does it matter?” 

Perhaps the steps of Beverly Cleary’s childhood house was the perfect place to begin wrestling with this question. The gift of her whimsical stories didn’t stem from an idyllic childhood but from a place of longing. Joy and wonder didn’t erase the scarcity but became an intentional step out of the dreariness. 

So what about you? How do you fight for awe and wonder? 

 

Photo by Chris G. Pexels.

Hearing the Good and the Hard of Missionary Kid Lives

I have been working in TCK research for over ten years. That includes six large scale surveys (with 200-2000 responses) and over 600 interviews. The data I’m currently analysing comes from TCK Training’s 2024 survey of 1,643 TCKs around the world. It was a long survey covering a lot of topics and I wish I could spend ten hours a day delving into the details! For now, the initial data on missionary kids has a lot to say about their experiences. (The full First Look data drop is available paywall free.) 

In this post I will share with you four key things we learned about missionary kids (MKs) through the research:

  1. Most missionary kids are glad they grew up abroad.
  2. Good things and hard things are often intertwined.
  3. Missionary kids feel a lot of pressure.
  4. Emotional support and mental health are key.

1) Most missionary kids are glad they grew up abroad. 

Throughout my research I have learned many hopeful things about how TCKs perceive their globally mobile childhoods. The vast majority have positive things to say about their experiences, even though they may in the same breath acknowledge that there were also difficulties. In this latest research we learned:

  • 91% of MKs said growing up abroad was a good experience overall.
  • 76% of MKs said it made their family closer.
  • 72% of MKs said it was “the best way to grow up.”

2) Good things and hard things are often intertwined.

Life is rarely black and white. To truly understand the lives of missionary kids, we must hear the nuance in their stories — that there were hard things along with the good things. Even many MKs who had the most difficult experiences of childhood also saw positives in their upbringing.

  • 98% of MKs said, “I can see both good parts and hard parts in my story.”
  • 96% of MKs said, “There were hard times, but it enriched my life.”
  • 83% of MKs said, “I enjoyed my childhood, but I think some things could have been handled better.”
  • And only 7% of MKs said living abroad “ruined my life.”

3) Missionary kids feel a lot of pressure.

When TCK Training asked TCKs about various childhood experiences connected to their parents’ work, we found that missionary kids were much more likely to feel certain pressures when they were children.

  • 69% of MKs felt “pressure to ‘perform’ while visiting our passport country”; they were twice as likely as other TCKs to feel this pressure.
  • 54% of MKs felt “pressure to be ‘perfect’ as my behavior reflected on my parent’s employer.”
  • 27% of MKs said that as children they felt “anxiety as a result of duties assigned to me (i.e. tour guide, translator)”; they were twice as likely as other TCKs to feel this anxiety.

Through my interviews I have also learned that many missionary kids try to hide their stress from their parents, as they do not want to cause additional burden to their parents. They love their parents and recognise the strain they already carry. 

4) Emotional support and mental health are key.

While those of us working to support missionary kids have long seen impacts on their mental health, when the results came in, the numbers were still heavy. 

  • During childhood, 37% of MKs lived with someone who had a serious mental health crisis.
  • 34% of MKs reported experiencing a serious mental health crisis themselves during childhood.
  • 40% of MKs had been diagnosed with a mental illness during their lifetime.
  • 86% of MKs experienced symptoms of at least one mental health concern during their lifetime.

We’re also seeing that missionary kids are less likely to receive diagnoses than other TCKs. For example, while 47% of MKs experienced symptoms of PTSD, only 12% received a diagnosis (which is still nearly double the rate of PTSD diagnosis in the US population). 

Missionary kids are experiencing the impact of not only their own mental health struggles, but the struggles of their parents. One thing I’ve seen over and over through our research and working with thousands of TCKs and their families around the world is that when parents are doing well, they have the energy and capacity to care for their kids better. So not only do the TCKs need access to quality mental health support, but getting the parents this kind of support is crucial!  

There are a range of issues contributing to a lack of mental healthcare for missionary families. Many families lack access to quality mental health services due to a remote location, financial stress, frequent mobility, language access, or a combination of these factors. 

Stigma around mental health can also play a role in preventing MKs (and their parents) reaching out for the support they need. It is important that we talk openly about mental health and the ways we benefit from getting support.

Prevention Matters

The saying “an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure” (attributed to Benjamin Franklin) is appropriate here. I believe this data demonstrates the importance of preventive care for MKs and missionary families. My hope and desire is that we support families in such a way that we see rates of mental health concerns drop over time, and MKs flourish — on the field and throughout their lives.

One of the many reasons I love my work at TCK Training is that we believe that international life is a good thing and that it can go hand in hand with a healthy family life. We work to create quality preventive care resources, and we share our research freely because we believe quality research is a critical component of exceptional TCK care. We want caregivers, parents, and supporting churches alike to be equipped to care for TCKs well! 

 

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

Photo by Kasturi Laxmi Mohit on Unsplash

Is Someone Holding Out on You?

I’ve discovered a strange kind of hypocrisy in my heart: I’m two-faced when it comes to money.

For one person, I’ll choose a quality gift that should last; for another, I’ll rummage through second-hand wares and call it good enough. For one person, I’ll take them out to eat at their favorite restaurant and insist they get a dessert, too; for another, I’ll take them somewhere cheap and stick to water. For one person, I’ll rejoice when they choose to celebrate a milestone; for another, I’ll cringe and question if such frivolity is worth it. 

Why this discrepancy? And who is this “other person” that I’m so tight-fisted with?

As you may have guessed, the other person is me. I’m stingy with myself. I typically care for myself with far less generosity than I would any other person on the planet.

That first question is much harder to answer though. Where did this discrepancy come from? Sure, I was trained in frugality as a child, but that doesn’t account for the two-faced nature of my financial dealings. Or could it be that as someone who lives on the support of others, I’m hesitant to do anything for myself that might be perceived as indulgent or a mishandling of resources? That’s likely a piece of the puzzle too. 

Money is a sensitive subject for most missionaries. We want to be shrewd with what we’ve been given, but what one supporter would call wise stewardship to care for family health, another might call unnecessary extravagance on a family vacation. Using finances wisely is complex to begin with, and even more so as a missionary.

But still, my hypocrisy isn’t fully accounted for. 

I’ve spent more time during this season of Lent asking the Lord to “Search me and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:23-24). And, apparently, our upcoming 20th wedding anniversary has provided just the mirror He needed to let me see this dichotomy in my heart. 

My generosity has a limit, my love a fence. And where the buck stops is with me. As my husband and I considered taking a trip for our 20th, I couldn’t get myself to commit. In fact, when trying to make a decision, I got uncharacteristically emotional and, when I finally allowed myself to admit it, mad. Mad at God. Mad at being a missionary. Mad at the cost of obedience. Mad that somehow, in some way, God was withholding something. 

I wrestled with these unwanted thoughts and feelings for several days, laying them bare before God, sharing them with friends, journaling them out, reminding myself of His truth to overcome the lies. And all these practices helped. For a few hours. Then I’d find myself back in the same frustrated, emotional turmoil all over again.

But God is patient, and when I finally quit trying to psycho-analyze and fix myself, I went for a walk. There, by the emerald green rice fields while the sun set behind the tree-canopied hills, He simply asked me, “Is it possible that I’m not the one who is holding out on you here?” 

Finally I saw it: my stinginess to myself. I was preventing us from celebrating. I was looking down on a joyful commemoration of love and faithfulness – ours and God’s. I was withholding generosity from myself. I was treating myself as I would treat no one else (except my husband, apparently).

God’s kindness, His grace, His love, His compassion, His justice, His forgiveness is wider, longer, higher, and deeper than I could possibly imagine. The extravagance of His generosity toward me is unending. God is anything but stingy. 

And while I am still a full proponent of careful financial stewardship, I also recognize that sometimes saving instead of celebrating is rooted in fear. It can indicate a lack of trust that my Good Father will give me manna again tomorrow. And the next day. And the next. Like a child who devours her favorite meal and jumps down from the table to play without the slightest concern if her next meal would come again later, I, too, can enjoy God’s good gifts and trust that His supply won’t run out. I don’t have to operate from a scarcity mindset. My Daddy owns the riches of the universe.

If you, too, have a tendency to be generous with others but not yourself, I’ll leave you with a scripture and some questions to contemplate. Bring it before the Lord and listen for your own answer in all of this:

While Jesus was in Bethany in the home of Simon the Leper, a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, which she poured on his head as he was reclining at the table.

When the disciples saw this, they were indignant. “Why this waste?” they asked. “This perfume could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor.”

Aware of this, Jesus said to them, “Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me. When she poured this perfume on my body, she did it to prepare me for burial. Truly I tell you, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.” (Matthew 26:6-13)

What is Jesus’ perspective on extravagant gifts given in love? Does it apply only to gifts for Him or also to others? Can it ever apply to me?

Photo by DNK.PHOTO on Unsplash

 

The Spiritual Discipline of Remembrance

by Lauren Wells

Remember when you were slaves in Egypt and I rescued you with my mighty hand…

Remember what happened long ago, for I am God, and there is no other…

Remember my body and blood that has been shed for you…

I sat with a young woman as she and I spent another hour together recalling the life events on her Grief Tower — the hard parts of her life that had stacked up over the past two decades. Her Grief Tower Timeline was filled with some of the most severe, heartbreaking traumas of anyone I had worked with. And like most missionaries (and missionary kids) I’ve worked with, as she recalled each trauma, she also quickly dismissed its severity with spiritual platitudes. 

But God used it… 

But I can see how it worked out for good… 

But God is good… 

It’s all part of His plan…

She was deeply afraid to admit and articulate the gravity of the things that had happened and the depth of grief and heartbreak she had experienced. It was as if a steel shield covered those wounds and any attempt to uncover and grieve them was deflected by pointing to a nice spiritual bandaid plastered over the top. 

This coping method isn’t unique to her – I see it all the time, especially in the missions world.

I wonder if it is instilled in us that the correct, spiritual answer is one that dismisses the hard and proclaims the good? 

In my teenage years as a missionary kid, I certainly remember the admiration I received for such faith-filled answers.

I wonder if deep down, we feel the need to protect God’s reputation, advocating for his goodness by diminishing hurt?

I certainly don’t want anyone to question God’s goodness because of my hard stories.

Yet as I read the stories of trauma, grief, and heartbreak in the Bible, I don’t see a God who says, “just ignore the hard that happened and focus on the fact that I used it.” 

I see a God who says, 

Remember how hard it was…

Remember how painful that was… 

Remember how desperate you were… 

Don’t forget the depths of despair, the intensity of the heartache, the gravity of the pain.

Because if you forget, you also don’t remember how big I am. 

 

Holy Remembrance of Hard Things

Over and over, God commands his people to remember how hard, dark, sad, and ugly things were. And then, to celebrate the incredible contrast of his love, goodness, and might that rescued them from adversity of all kinds.

The remembrance we’re called to isn’t a “focus on the positive” outlook that skims past the hard and onto the happy ending. 

In order to truly understand the depths from which we have been saved, we have to admit how deep those depths were. 

The praise for how the Lord has rescued us with his mighty hand is so much greater when we give weight to the agony from which we were rescued. 

The weight of the cross isn’t so significant if we downplay the suffering. 

I’m so grateful that the Bible gives us a framework for navigating these paradoxical truths.

Many of the psalms of David guide us through this process: 

Cry Out to God 

Why…?
I felt so…
Where were you when…?
How…?
Did you…?

Ask for What You Need 

Show me where you were
Comfort me
Help me forgive
Remind me of your goodness
Show me how you’ve used that

Cling to His Character 

I know you are… (good, kind, gentle, loving, caring, etc.)
I know you didn’t (leave me, forget me, etc)…
I trust that you…

This framework guides us through processing hardships in a way that doesn’t skip over the big emotions, questions, and outcries. Yet it also doesn’t leave us in that pit but holds equal space for us to remember who God is and how he’s proven himself faithful in the past.

As we unstack the tower of grief that has grown throughout our lives and help others to do the same, let us make room to see how big and good God is by not downplaying how hard and painful life can be. By confronting the depth of our wounds, we create space for the extraordinary grace and goodness of God to be fully experienced. 

If you want to learn more about how to unstack your “Grief Tower” from a Biblical perspective, check out the What Made That Feel So Hard?: Bible Study Guide that pairs with Lauren’s latest book What Made That Feel So Hard?: The Unstacking Method. Both are available on Amazon. 

Photo by ian dooley on Unsplash

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Lauren Wells is the founder and CEO of TCK Training and the Unstacking Company and author of Raising Up a Generation of Healthy Third Culture Kids, The Grief Tower, and Unstacking Your Grief Tower. She is an Adult TCK who spent her teenage years in Tanzania, East Africa. She sits on the board of the TCK Care Accreditation as Vice Chair and is part of the TCK Training research team focusing on preventive care research in the TCK population.

Lessons with a High Price Tag

If you are in the thick of some really hard things as a global worker, you’re in the right place. If I could, I’d invite you to my farmhouse in South Africa. We’d walk barefoot to admire the blooming birds-of-paradise and enchanting jade vine. We’d pick a dragon fruit straight off the vine and let the juice run down our elbows. And of course, you’d meet my chickens. They all have antiquated names like Mabel, Blanche, and Gertrude. Then we’d make coffee and sit awhile so I could hear your story and you could hear mine.

We’d talk about the raw beauty of the places we live. How we’ve changed since we came here. What we’ve gained and what we’ve lost. How we have communed with God and also how there’s been a felt distance. And eventually, we’d roll around to the things that left an indelible mark on our journeys as global workers. These are the lessons we paid a high price to learn. 

We’d find out that we’re not so alone in some of the costly mistakes we’ve made and that we hope others can avoid. Because we know they are common missteps in global work. And we don’t want to keep paying for them.

These lessons were taxing and suffocating at the time, but I cannot be the same after learning them. I’m left with deep gratitude that God didn’t leave me in those places with the insufficient version of who I thought he was and the shallow version of who I thought I was. 

And you would sip your coffee and nod in agreement.

I know you paid dearly for some of these lessons too. I’m sorry. I know they cost you or those around you. I also know that on the other side of these lessons lies a more robust and clear picture of who God really is and what freedom really looks like. 

I’d explain how I wish I could spare pre-fielders and new global workers this messy process, but that it’s through this very process that we begin to notice smudges on the window of our worldview that don’t belong. We begin to see God’s sovereign brilliance more clearly. God becomes bigger, and he makes us stronger.

And then I’d share with you the lessons that came with a high price tag in my own life. And I know you would have your own to share.

  1. God is the driver of change, not me. I am not capable of changing the inner workings of the human heart. Only God does that (Ezekiel 36:26). My sufficiency, ability, and responsibility ends with my love for and service to others, not in their visible transformation. 

Some people don’t want to change. They want charity, but not change (Luke 15:11-32). And they will encourage my generosity with façades of change. When I recognize the motivation, I am reminded to slow down and respect God’s process, even if I’m already heavily invested.  

I paid a high price in real life to learn that the father of the prodigal son did not chase after him, chain him to his home, and force him to stay. The father loved, released, and welcomed his son back home again once his heart was in a new place. 

Early in ministry, I did a lot of chasing. A lot of enmeshing. A lot of enabling. I learned what codependence is and how it cleverly masks as true relationship. I paid dearly to discover that my attempts to force an intrinsic desire for transformation are futile. God changes the heart, not me. This truth freed me. 

I tend to chase the outcome and not the source. God calls me to stay connected to the vine before chasing fruit for other people (John 15:5). Sometimes in our line of work, we run after the newsletter-worthy fruit in others to the detriment of fruit inside ourselves. 

My approach to people and service has adapted as my understanding of God’s sovereignty has grown. I no longer seek someone else’s transformation as fruit of my work. My only work is to remain connected to the Vine. In love, I focus on investing and releasing people to own their process with God. 

  1. God calls us to be as innocent as doves and as wise as serpents (Matthew 10:16). In my ministry, this has played out as a call to balance altruism with discernment. I’m altruistic by nature. A therapist once told me that many global workers are. True love, after all, is to lay down our life for another (John 15:13-14). 

But I’ve learned that altruism is often accompanied by naivety. And I’m not called to foolishness. God opened my eyes to recognize my tendency for altruism with pure abandon and helped me see that I have a duty to exercise muscles of discernment. 

Suspicion doesn’t suit me, and I don’t want it to, but there is wisdom in discernment. I’ve learned to beware of people who require constant rescuing or live in a perpetual state of conflict and drama, for my nature is to think that if I just help them one more time, they’ll finally be able to live a fruitful life.

For those who are altruistic by nature, saying no takes a lot more effort than yes, and I have learned to lean into that when needed. Because the wisdom of God helps me to love others better. 

  1. God is a forgiver (Ephesians 1:7). It feels like I’ve sinned more as a missionary than I ever did as a pre-fielder. Whether that’s actually true or not, there’s a reason it feels like it’s true. 

Stress is magnified in an environment where everything is unfamiliar and we’re learning to navigate a new life. We crave comfort. We crave the familiar. We need something to calm the heck down. We need to survive the moment so we don’t lose it on the people around us. Hard things start piling up faster than we can deal with them. They rage within and eventually claw their way out in the form of unhealthy habits. 

Unhealthy coping mechanisms surface or resurface. This happens more often than you might expect in global work. And it’s devastating. Because you’re just trying to do the right thing and you just want to serve God well. 

Here is also what is true. Cleansing lies in repentance (1 John 1:19). Change lies in seeking help (James 5:16). These two truths have been life to me. Maintaining a pristine reputation is far less important to me now than leaning into God’s forgiveness and seeking help when I need it. Because freedom lies in taking my humanity to him. 

  1. God gives me my daily bread and invites me to pray for it (Matthew 6:11).  If you rely on support like me, our entire livelihoods depend on the financial goodwill of donors. My current status and my future could be a lot more secure if I gave donors what I think they want: a moving story that appeals to their emotions. Even better if I attach an emotionally manipulative photo of a crying, snotty-nosed kid whose pigment is darker than mine. With flies on their eyes. Those tend to bring in lots of money.

But that is not serving. That is not loving. 

Growing up in Africa, I was impacted at an early age by a repulsion for the predatory nature I saw in the unfolding story of non-profit and humanitarian work around the world. The mindset seems to be, “If we can just get a good story, a great picture, we can get more money to help these poor people.”  We lose sight of our daily bread promise and our duty to the image-bearers in front of us when we exploit the people we serve in order to gain a buck. Even if it’s for them. 

This was a hard lesson I learned flipping through magazines at a young age. But God didn’t leave me in a state of anger and repulsion. I am eternally grateful for the honorable example that my parents set. They shared stories of the strength, beauty, ingenuity, and fortitude of the people in my Cameroonian community. I think they did this because they actually saw my Cameroonian neighbors as image-bearers of God. And because they trusted in God to move the hearts of their donors through stories of the strength and dignity of his people. Not through human efforts at emotional manipulation.  

My newsletter readers won’t get the sexy, sensationalized stories from me. Or the pictures that prey on the dignity of the people God has called me to serve, though those stories and images do exist in my work. But exposing someone else’s story in order to make a buck is not the love to which I’m called. It’s proven to be the quickest path to making more money, but it’s not my path. And I hope it isn’t yours. 

God is the creator of the people I serve, and they deserve honor. I am yoked to him in his work for his people, and his way offers life, freedom, dignity, and a love covering. He will take care of me. I don’t have to harm other people to get what’s mine. His daily bread is mine. And by God’s beautiful, miraculous grace, our incredible financial partners of 10+ years get that. 

  1. God has a pattern of redeeming the broken things and of showing us his goodness (Psalm 27:13-14). That may not be everyone’s story all the time, but it’s an overarching theme for many of us. In the hardest seasons when ministry has “gone wrong,” I’ve looked hard for that redemption. I’ve prayed to see his goodness. The puzzle pieces may not come together until years later. Or maybe not at all this side of heaven. 

But more often than not, I’ve been surprised by my surprise when he does indeed fix broken things. It might have been nice to learn the depth and breadth of God’s redemption without having to lose “all these things,” but without the loss, I wouldn’t have truly understood that everything was his to rebuild.

When ministries fold, when plans A, B, and C don’t pan out, when partnerships wane and relationships crumble, I’m told to wait and look for his goodness. It doesn’t mean that every tragedy ends in a miracle. But boy, have I seen some miracles. God repairs dormant relationships, raises up new partners, creates better plans, and builds new ministries. He is so good.

We’d probably cry over the losses and laugh at how appalling some of these stories actually are. We’d curl up and drink two more cups of coffee until it was time to feed my chickens. We’d check on Mabel, Blanch, and Gertrude, and we’d be grateful, though still healing, from the lessons that brought us together. We’d share comfort in remembering the things that felt costly and in which more often than not, God became bigger and he made us stronger.

Photo by Taryn Elliot on Pexels.

Transition Stress and TCKs: What does “normal” look like?

by Lauren Wells

“We haven’t seen our boy act like himself in over a year. We sometimes get glimpses of the fun, playful kid he used to be, but most of the time he’s like a shell of his old self. We don’t know where the kid we knew went.”

Fifteen months earlier, these parents had moved across the globe to a new country and culture. Their oldest son had started attending a local school while the younger siblings who weren’t yet school age stayed home. 

“We knew it would be a big transition for him,” they said. “We worried when he seemed to get more and more withdrawn, but we kept telling ourselves this was the normal transition stress everyone warned us about. But it’s been over a year now and it’s just gotten worse.” 

I wish I could tell you that this is the only time I’ve had a conversation like this with parents, but it’s not. The phrase “we figured it was just transition stress” is one I’ve heard many times in my work with hundreds of parents. 

When my colleagues and I work with families prior to a move or to train schools or organizations about family care, a topic we cover is how to distinguish between  “normal” transition stress and when it has gone beyond that. This preventive approach keeps normal transition stress from growing into a long-term state of emotional unhealth which will eventually turn into a crisis. 

So, what is normal transition stress for children? At what point should adjustments be considered because the transition stress has gone beyond a healthy limit? Knowing how to distinguish between healthy transition bumps and long-term adjustment issues is a critical part of preventive care. 

Red Zone/Green Zone

When my company (TCK Training) talks about transition stress for Third Culture Kids, we use the concept of Red Zone/Green Zone. When we’re in the Red Zone, our brain is flooded with stress hormones. This isn’t concerning for a short period of time, and in small doses it can actually be part of resilience building. While a developing brain shouldn’t be exposed to those stress hormones too consistently or for too long, during a major transition it’s normal for everyone to be in the Red Zone for a while.

What the Red Zone looks like for children/teens:

  • Uncharacteristic behavior challenges 
  • Being overly emotional
  • Appearing down or withdrawn
  • Being extra clingy to a parent 
  • Developmental reverting (accidents after being potty trained, sleep regressions, using baby talk, needing a comfort item they had grown out of, etc.) 
  • Development of new stress-induced habits (hair twisting, biting lips or skin, etc.) 
  • Not enjoying activities that used to bring joy 
  • Lack of ability to learn new concepts (this often shows up as  difficulty meeting academic milestones, such as reading, if those concepts are introduced while the child is in the Red Zone, or lower grades than the child’s typical performance)
  • Long periods of numbing/distracting behaviors (e.g. spending hours on an electronic device, consistently choosing to read for hours instead of spending time with family/other children) 

While these behaviors are all normal during a transition season, some behaviors require immediate support even during the normal Red Zone window of transition: 

  • Any sort of self-harm 
  • Suicidal ideation (or any statements that imply that they wish they weren’t alive)
  • Extreme physical aggression toward others 
  • A pattern of undereating or overeating 
  • Depressive or anxious symptoms that interfere with daily functioning

If your child experiences these symptoms at any point it is important to seek immediate professional mental health support.

The Green Zone

In the midst of Red Zone seasons like major transitions, planting “Green Zone moments” is important. This brings the child’s brain momentarily above water. While they still may be mostly in the Red Zone, consistently bringing in Green Zone activities can speed their progress out of the Red Zone.

Green Zone moments can include: 

  • Body movement (going for a walk, playing a sport, etc.) 
  • Anything rhythmic – rhythm regulates the brain (music, dancing, coloring, etc.) 
  • Talking about why this transition feels so hard (allowing them to share and/or giving them language for why they’re feeling this way) 
  • Laughing 
  • Deep breathing 
  • Experiencing something that feels physically comforting (a favorite food, a cozy blanket, a special treat, etc.) 
  • Quality time with a parent, sibling, or close friend 

How Long is Too Long?

After a major transition it is common for children to be primarily in the Red Zone for three months. During this time it is important to implement Green Zone moments for/with them. After three months, we typically see that children have fewer Red Zone days/moments. They begin to act more like their normal selves, trending toward a more consistent Green Zone state. When this is happening, we begin to see that: 

  • They can identify friends they like to play with 
  • Getting ready for school in the morning isn’t as difficult  
  • They talk about things they’re looking forward to
  • They want to join activities that brought them joy in the past or that tap into their skills or talents 
  • They are beginning to feel more confident about how to succeed in school
  • They seem to have a more positive outlook 
  • They are laughing and smiling more 
  • They are doing “Green Zone moments” without prompting 

Most often at around 6-9 months after a transition, the stress has eased and children are in the Green Zone more regularly.

What If It’s Not Getting Better?

The shift from Red Zone to Green Zone may seem slow and drawn out, and even in the best circumstances it can take time. If after six months a child doesn’t seem to be trending toward the Green Zone, we have moved beyond normal transition stress. At this point, professional support for the parents (and possibly the child as well) may be helpful. 

Shifts need to be made so that we can prevent the child going deeper into the Red Zone. The following questions can help determine factors that could be contributing to prolonged transition stress. You can begin making small shifts to see if they begin to make a difference. In the home, for example, you might schedule consistent one-on-one time with that child. In the environment, you might add an activity outside school hours that they would enjoy. 

In the Home

  • Are they receiving regular, positive attention from their parents? 
  • Do they feel they can talk about their emotions and feel heard and comforted? 
  • Do they feel physically safe? 
  • Are they sleeping well?
  • Does the family smile and laugh together often? 

In their Environment

  • Do they have access to activities that would give them Green Zone moments? 
  • Do they have potential friends in their class/school? 
  • Is their teacher a factor that is putting them in the Red Zone?
  • Are there specific stressors that they or you can pinpoint? 
  • Are there adults other than their parents investing in them?

Understanding the progression from Red Zone to Green Zone that happens during a transition season can help parents to monitor their children’s stress levels during times of change. Not only does this knowledge prevent children staying in the Red Zone for an unhealthy period of time, but it also gives parents strategies for improving family health and tools for making adjustments to get each family member on the right track if it doesn’t seem to be happening naturally.

There is so much hope in knowing what normal looks like and having tools to help your children when their transition stress goes beyond that point. To learn more about going through transitions of any kind, especially as a family, check out TCK Training’s self-directed Transitions Course.

Photo by Michał Parzuchowski on Unsplash

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Lauren Wells is the founder and CEO of TCK Training and the Unstacking Company and author of Raising Up a Generation of Healthy Third Culture Kids, The Grief Tower, and Unstacking Your Grief Tower. She is an Adult TCK who spent her teenage years in Tanzania, East Africa. She sits on the board of the TCK Care Accreditation as Vice Chair and is part of the TCK Training research team focusing on preventive care research in the TCK population.

What Missionary Kids See on the Field Part 2: Support that Lessens the Impact of Witnessed Trauma

In my previous post (What Missionary Kids See on the Field Part 1: The Impact of Witnessed Trauma), I shared data from TCK Training’s latest white paper (Sources of Trauma in International Childhoods) along with wisdom from many A Life Overseas authors. As we sifted through information on what can be a difficult topic, we kept in mind these two key points:

  1. We are not comparing the experiences of missionary kids to a theoretical ‘perfect’ childhood they could have had elsewhere.
  1. Not every potentially traumatic event is experienced as trauma by each individual.

This means that often there is no clear ‘right’ answer; different people (different families, different children) will need different things. Setting blanket rules is unlikely to address every situation. Instead, we are going to talk about principles.

My last post included four suggestions for ways we can support families, and in this post I will expand these ideas with practical tips and more wisdom from the ALO team. 

  1. Protect children where possible.
  2. Fight the normalisation of trauma.
  3. Provide support to both parents and children.
  4. Continue support after they leave the field.

Protect children where possible

Knowing that witnessing potentially traumatic events is linked to increased risk should cause us to think carefully about taking our children to places where this can occur.

Part of determining field suitability should include a careful assessment of the level of trauma, including witnessed trauma, likely to occur in the location. If the risk is high, additional supports should be in place. If traumatic events end up happening frequently, a change of location may be warranted. 

How do we make these momentous decisions? Anna Hampton’s thoughts on Risk and the Cross Cultural Worker are so helpful here: “A theology of suffering asks a different question than a theology of risk asks. When I was a young mom facing daily threats of all kinds but especially kidnapping and murder, I needed to be able to evaluate what God was calling me and my children to that day. We hadn’t suffered the reality of kidnapping, but we were facing the risk of it. So how was I to think, to process my emotions, hear God’s voice, and then make a decision on what I was to do?” 

A lot in life cannot be predicted, including how individuals will react to and cope with potentially traumatic events. Flexibility and a willingness to change plans is important – in life generally, but especially in high risk areas. Sometimes a location changes from low risk to high risk very suddenly. Sometimes a single event changes how individuals within a family feel about their emotional and/or physical safety. 

Being willing to sacrifice our plans in order to protect children is crucial. If we sacrifice children in order to continue the plans we had made, there is something wrong with our priorities.

I love how Kay Bruner writes about this in Ask A Counselor: No Child Soldiers, No Child Sacrifice: “We are not called to deliberately – or carelessly – traumatize our children for God’s sake. When traumatic events occur, we should be the first ones at our child’s side bringing care, concern, and healing…Please don’t take your children into active danger, thinking that this will somehow make you a better kind of Christian.” 

Fight the normalisation of trauma

Just because something happens regularly does not mean it is normal. When potentially traumatic events happen regularly, we must actively fight against them being seen as ‘normal.’

Whatever happens regularly during your childhood becomes your normal. Children can adapt to anything – including, sadly, horrible abuse and devastating traumas. Believing these events are ‘normal’ does not, however, stop them from affecting a child’s psyche. This means that in order to process the impact of the abuse and/or trauma they have suffered, an individual must first recognise that what they went through was not normal. 

Many missionary kids normalise abusive and/or traumatic events they experience during childhood – to the point of not mentioning them to adults in their lives, including their parents. This is something we see over and over again at TCK Training, when Adult TCKs dismiss dramatic events and inappropriate behaviour from others as potential sources of trauma because “that was normal where I grew up” or “that happened to everyone.”

Adults in their lives unwittingly contribute to this every time we downplay things that make children feel uncomfortable or unsafe. In addition, while phrases like “Don’t worry, this is normal here” or “You’ll get used to it after a while” may be intended to comfort, they instead teach children to ignore their feelings because what is common is normal. We think that by putting on a happy face, we can make a scary situation okay, but we’re wrong. 

Anna Glenn writes about the problem of pasting a smile over pain in Toxic Positivity in Missions: “Toxic positivity is a reaction that stems from fear and shame rather than faith. It focuses on self-reliance to ‘power through’ and create or shine our own light rather than calling us to step into the light through surrender to the one true God. Toxic positivity is a shallow substitute for the hope of the gospel and a genuine relationship with Christ.” 

Instead, we all need to be brave enough to sit with difficult emotions and to sit with children and young people experiencing difficult emotions. We need to call out the wrongness in our world, even when it happens frequently around us. We need to acknowledge that witnessing potentially traumatic events is evidence of the brokenness of this world – not something to dismiss, but something to mourn. It is something that impacts us, and even the smallest child, on a soul level – because the world should not be this way. 

“We need to recognize these stressful events as threats to the mental health and stability of international families. When we recognize them as such, we can mobilize to acknowledge and debrief these events.” – Sources of Trauma in International Childhoods

Provide support to both parents and children

We need to think about the entire family unit. Children do not live in isolation, but with parents and caregivers who live in the same environments and therefore are likely witnessing the same or similar potentially traumatic events. They may even have witnessed more events from which they have sheltered their children.

Just because parents are adults does not make them immune to the impact of witnessing traumatic events. On the contrary – the impact of traumatic events flows through them to their children. The whole family needs support when living in environments where traffic accidents and violence are occuring. 

“The stress of bearing witness to trauma is easily brought into the home, impacting family dynamics and parent-child connectedness.”  – Sources of Trauma in International Childhoods

Parents need support to process what they have witnessed so that they can be emotionally available to support their children. Unfortunately, in many cases these occurrences are normalised, and families do not feel they are ‘allowed’ to need or want help to work through witnessing events that happen regularly. Yet regular debriefing (and crisis debriefing when a significant event takes place) should be a key part of how families are cared for to ensure long-term health and thriving for each person. 

When these potentially traumatic events are ignored and families do not receive adequate support, the impacts do not go away over time – they fester. As Abigail Follows writes in The Myth of the Ideal Childhood, “We can think of a trauma as a ‘heart wound’ – a wound that needs tending, otherwise it will get infected – a wound that can heal with the right treatment.”

In addition to targeted support, supportive communities that surround families in these situations are incredibly powerful. As I wrote recently in It takes a village – including for missionary families, “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.” 

When potentially traumatic events occur regularly, when missionaries and their children see these soul-injuring sights in the course of their daily lives, it takes a toll. Anna Glenn writes poignantly on this in The Untold Stories of Returned Missionaries:

“For many missionaries who are serving in underdeveloped nations where hunger, disease, and violence run rampant, the horrors that they have witnessed day in and day out may have grown to be too much. We all know that death and pain are a part of life, but when you see people, people you know and love, dying from easily preventable causes nearly every single week and you see bodies on the side of the road mangled to the point of being unrecognizable, your psyche is forever impacted and sometimes there are just no words.”

Given that these words were written in the content of missionaries who have returned to their passport countries from the field, this leads us to our final point:

Continue support after they leave the field

The impact of witnessed trauma doesn’t end when we leave the environment in which it occurred. Unfortunately, upon leaving the field many missionary families lose the supportive community who understood those experiences. Taking care to support missionary families through the lens of accumulated trauma can make a big difference.

This means acknowledging that what feels safe/unsafe may be different for them – especially for children who grew up in a different environment – and that what triggers unsafe feelings may be different. 

Often this includes exposure to media coverage of other countries, including but not limited to countries where the family lived previously. Lilly Rivera brings up an important point in Reading the News When Crisis Hits: “Reading the news can be a triggering experience if you have gone through traumatic experiences yourself. The injustice, violence, and pain can make you feel paralyzed, angry or really upset.” 

I also appreciate this perspective from adult MK Aneurin Howorth in Devastating Secrets of Living Abroad: “The trauma we carry around as TCKs usually manifests itself through mental illnesses once we are adults. The counselor Lois Bushong says that most TCKs tend to only start going to counseling once they are in their 30’s. I am not yet in my thirties, but already, increasing numbers of my classmates report having mental health issues, almost exclusively struggling from unresolved trauma or grief on the mission field. Being a TCK does not stop when we become adults; both the blessings and the curses will follow us forever.” 

The impact of witnessed trauma does not always manifest immediately; sometimes it is a slow burn, which is why long-term care and support is important. It is also why TCK Training is running research on both the good and hard experiences TCKs had during childhood, as well as their strengths and struggles as adults – we want to know more about the links between these so that we can better support TCKs as they grow. (Learn more about the survey here).

 

Resources referenced:

Risk and the Cross Cultural Worker

Ask A Counselor: No Child Soldiers, No Child Sacrifice

Toxic Positivity in Missions

Sources of Trauma in International Childhoods (TCK Training)

Debriefing Resources (TCK Training)

The Myth of the Ideal Childhood

It takes a village – including for missionary families

The Untold Stories of Returned Missionaries

Reading the News When Crisis Hits

Devastating Secrets of Living Abroad

Impact of Childhood Global Mobility on Adult Wellness (TCK Training Survey)

Photo by Transly Translation Agency on Unsplash

Sounding an Alarm on Social Media Evangelism

Excitement and awe were palpable in the dimmed hotel ballroom as I stared at the presenter’s screen. The young speaker, who appeared to be in his early 20s, was explaining how Facebook was proving to be a strategic way to share the gospel and allow people to learn about scripture safely and privately. Facebook users could view his page that was filled with scripture verses, and if they commented or liked the content, he would send them a link to an online Bible in their language. It was clear to all of us that this was a revolutionary way to broadly share the gospel with people who might not have the courage to ask for a Bible in person. 

Since that day in 2011, Christian ministries and indeed the world have experienced massive shifts in how we communicate, connect, and share information with one another. With smart phones now outnumbering people globally, social media platforms have morphed from a means of connecting with loved ones to a ubiquitous medium of communication and marketing. People separated by thousands of miles can now easily form a community that does not require physical proximity.  

A Double-Edged Sword

With every innovation comes both blessing and curse, and social media has been no exception. What began as a medium of socializing is now a powerful advertising tool. Social media platforms’ ability to market to the audience most likely to purchase a product is at the heart of many marketing strategies. Since social media platforms can quickly learn details of users’ preferences, personalities, and socioeconomic status, they are able to disseminate individualized content that is curated for each user’s ever-changing preferences. With increased usage, users grow dependent on social media to meet their needs for interpersonal connection, news, entertainment, and general events in their community. 

Dependency on these apps has turned into outright addiction for many users, and the problem of social media addiction has turned from concerning to an outright crisis both in the U.S. and around the world. The tentacles of social media addiction reach far beyond how a user spends their time. Mental health experts and former social media insiders are sounding alarms on how social media is purposefully addicting youth and young adults and making them depressed, anxious, and suicidal. 

We know far more today than we did 12 years ago about the mental health hazards of social media use, and we have a greater awareness of social media companies’ incessant use of unethical practices in addicting and exploiting their users. Nevertheless, Christian ministries are promoting social media use for evangelism, and doing so with little regard for the well-documented accompanying hazards.  While some would argue that the “end” (users hearing, believing, and accepting the gospel) justifies the means, it would be irresponsible for Christians to neglect a careful examination what exactly the “means” is. While we cannot deny the fact that social media can and has been a way of exposing people to the gospel, we must start recognizing that no one, neither users nor administrators, are inoculated against the harms of this medium’s addictive and exploitative nature.

Exploitative?

Social media companies can give users content that is personalized and helpful. Based on their searches, posts, and likes, expectant mothers can expect ads for baby gear and nursery furniture. A grad school student might find their feed peppered with study aids and paper-writing tools. But what begins as a simple search for ten minutes is, by design, often extended into viewing other similar or related posts, and that added time viewing more content gives the platform evermore data on the user’s preferences. The apps purposefully remove “stop cues” like an actual end of a page or a blank screen at the end of video reels. There is limitless content that the platform is able to offer up to its users, so people who see no harm in spending hours upon hours on social media may do so without realizing that they are becoming addicted. 

This practice becomes increasingly unethical among users who are unwittingly using a service that is likely to harm them. Social media use is just as ubiquitous in low-income countries as it is in wealthy areas of the world with a broader understanding of internet addiction. Nevertheless, impoverished and low-income regions tend to be where social media evangelism efforts are being deployed. These areas have far fewer resources to educate populations on mental health hazards, so there is consistently a minimal understanding of addictive internet use.  Consequently, low-income countries offer up highly vulnerable and captive audiences to social media companies, who then sell that audience’s attention to anyone willing to pay for it. This is Exploitation 101: offering a service that seems highly beneficial while concealing its hazards in order to exponentially benefit and enrich the service provider. 

Seizing upon the dependable attention of social media audiences, Christian ministries join the fray by purchasing a piece of that attention. For a fee paid directly to the platform, evangelistic ministries can buy ads and broadcast to audiences most likely to view their content and respond. In order to grow their online audience (and thereby attract more users to their page), account pages can pay for likes, views, and follows. These accounts are often being run hundreds or thousands of miles away from the target location in order to protect the identities of Christians who live nearby, as these are often places with a history of hostility towards Christians. 

Users who view evangelistic pages are often presented with content and videos full of grace, hope, and love. For some, it is the first time they have ever read scripture, and it speaks to them in a deep, profound way.  Users who respond to the ministry’s social media content with questions or a desire to learn more are encouraged to call or meet in person with a local Christian who speaks their language and understands their culture. The hope is that people who are genuinely interested in knowing Christ will go beyond just text exchanges on a screen and begin a relationship with people who care for them. 

The question of ethical practice here is not about the message being offered to vulnerable social media users. It is about the medium by which that message is being conveyed and its incendiary methods of creating markets of hungry consumers. Yes, Christian ministries are offering a message of truth and hope to these markets. But is paying the drug lords who run the market an ethical practice? And are Christian ministries taking the time to inform their patrons of the health hazards of the medium they are both using?  

Beyond the Target Audience

The target audiences of social media evangelism are not the only vulnerable parties in these efforts. Those who are tasked with responding to inquiries are also falling prey to social media’s addictive devices, but their unhealthy habits or full-blown addictions are easily cloaked in the language of urgency for the gospel and “lives on the line.” Since this type of work is increasingly becoming a full-time job for globally minded Christians, we must recognize the addictive nature of social media ministry as an occupational hazard. Some responders are staying up into early hours of the morning to correspond with people who have reached out, and others report a hesitancy to create boundaries around ministry time on social media and personal time in general. 

The church should never shy away from entering dark places to carry in the light and love of Jesus, and we have a rich history of doing so. Ministering to people who are trapped in substance addiction, sex trafficking, and systemic abuse is the work of the body of Christ. However, we have historically done this work with diligence and awareness of the systems of oppression that can just as easily ensnare and brutalize us. We need to treat social media outreach in much the same way we would treat ministry in night clubs, casinos, or red light districts. The people on the inside may just be passing through, but they are very possibly there because they do not know how to leave. This may mean that people who put their faith in Christ as a result of finding hope on social media were indeed there because of an addiction to the platform. And this may mean that they need recovery rather than an invitation to work as social media evangelists or responders. 

Installing Guardrails

There was a road in the mountains of Eastern Afghanistan where the guardrail was completely destroyed, giving way to a frighteningly clear view of a bus skeleton far below. While the guardrail had certainly been in place on that treacherous road, it did nothing to deter a bus full of passengers that veered off course. 

The best boundaries are both strong and visible. Seeing them helps you keep a healthy distance, but bumping up against them protects you when you fail to notice. In using a tool as powerful, addictive, and controversial as social media platforms to spread a message of hope, Christian ministries need to ensure that guardrails are well-established to avoid doing harm to vulnerable populations. This could mean refusing to use strategies of engagement that are addictive in nature, such as rewarding users’ viewing of a video with another video. It could also mean transparency about how their respondents’ information is being saved, stored, and shared. This particular issue requires imagining how you would feel if, in an existential search for connection and hope, a person responded to your need while keeping a detailed record of your messages in a database and shared it with donors who funded the campaign. A guardrail could also mean that ministries begin disseminating information about social media addiction right alongside their regular posts. When using targeted ads, it could mean researching and adhering to rigorous standards of ethical advertising. 

Likewise, Christians who are taking part in social media evangelism ministry need clear guardrails with regular accountability on when, where, and how much time they spend on the platform. Since social media platforms make both accidental and purposeful viewing of pornographic content easy, we must also inquire of a person’s current internet habits and personal history with pornography use before inviting them to make social media work their full-time job and ministry.  The Kingdom of God is not dependent on any social media platform. It has been advancing since Jesus blew the doors off and began inviting everyone into his family. As we assess the time, space, and resources God has provided for us today, may we work with both compassion and conscientiousness of the realities of oppression and sin that will be present until the day of Christ’s return. And until that day, may the Holy Spirit guide us in serving people with love, respect, and dignity to the glory of God the Father. 

How to Sustain Yourself Spiritually While Living Overseas

I remember when my team leader first spoke about learning to ‘self-feed’ spiritually as a part of living overseas. I didn’t understand what she meant then, during my initial missionary internship, but I certainly know now.

When we moved to Hungary long-term, I was pregnant with our third child. Hungary, like many non-U.S. countries, did not have child care options in most of the national churches. As a mom of young children, I entered a time when church attendance was scarce for me, and those circumstances would lead to floundering spiritually.

The struggle of being a missionary who couldn’t be fed spiritually by church pressed me to self-feed. By this I mean I developed the ability to be sustained spiritually outside of Sunday church or even mid-week fellowship. To be clear, it is very important to integrate into the church of our host countries. Yet, we also need to learn how to grow deep roots in our faith. 

Here are some ways we can feed ourselves spiritually. With time and practice, we can learn to let our doing define our being.

  1. Find consistent teaching or preaching which is gospel-centered: For me, this teaching came most through the ministry of Tim Keller. I felt such a shepherding presence from his consistent, biblically-sound, gospel-driven messages. I will never forget what it meant to repeatedly listen to the ‘Prodigal God’ sermons I had downloaded onto my iPod as I walked the hill by our Budapest flat. (His entire sermon collection is now available for FREE here.) I wept when he recently passed away as a testament to what his long-distance, yet, so close to the heart of God, ministry meant to me.
  2. Meditate on Scripture: When I became a mom, this discipline led me on a deeper journey to learning to self-feed. When I was pregnant with my daughter, I memorized Romans 8. While memorization is not necessary for meditation on Scripture, it is very helpful to know passages so well that we can recall them in part or as a whole. There is a reason why Psalm 119:11 talks about hiding the Word in our hearts so that we might not sin against God. This internalizing of the Word is a journey we walk for ourselves, not counting on any church or small group to do it for us.
  3. Connect with God through Your surroundings: Walks around our neighborhoods or cities are important anywhere we live. But, it is especially important to make what is foreign, familiar. When bill paying can be stressful, note the trees and the birds which perch on them, as we walk or ride or drive to pay a bill or speak our new language in relationship with native speakers or to do any anxiety-laden experience. As we do this, we learn to trust God anew that He is omnipresent and always with us and this world–His world.
  4. Learn to Prioritize Heart Community: Like a good missionary, I didn’t want to become so much a part of the expat community that I wasn’t forming relationships with nationals. While this is a valid concern, there are times when we just need to make sure we have present, solid community where we can share our heart struggles. Some of our best and most safe friends may be nationals, and that is beautiful. However, these relationships tend to take a longer time to develop. If we are feeling isolated, seeking safe, heartfelt community with other expats is not failing to bond with our host country. It is at times necessary to sustain ourselves for the long-term.
  5. Instead of Residing, Dwell: Psalm 37 became a key passage to center and focus me in my overseas journey. Verse 3b in my favorite translation says: ‘Dwell in the land and feed on faithfulness.‘ Dwelling means we find communion with God through being nourished by His faithfulness. Recognizing the steadfast love of God wherever we are in the world comes through the discipline of recounting God’s work on our behalf. We often do this by intentionally practicing thankfulness.
  6. Speak the Gospel over Ourselves Daily: The gospel-centered teaching I mentioned above is important to anchor us. But if we don’t internalize the message of our unmerited favor through the work of Jesus Christ, we will cut ourselves off from the life we desperately need. It is one of the greatest occupational hazards of missionaries that we would withhold from ourselves the gospel-bearing heart of God which we so dearly want to share with others. As our identity is lost through all that is hard and foreign, we cling more deeply to lives of performance. But there is no true sustenance if we cannot melt into that white hot and holy love of God displayed supremely through the gospel.

And in all of our days and ways, as we sustain ourselves, we must remember we are not being nourished in ourselves. It is only through the presence of ‘Immanuel, God with us’ that we have that unending well of spiritual provision. It is His light which will face any darkness and never, ever, ever be overcome.

 photo credit

 

I’d like a refund for this cup of suffering

by Elizabeth Vahey Smith

“It’s not fair,” I whined in the backseat of the car, my sister next to me.
“It’s not fair,” I moped from the end of the line.
“It’s not fair,” I mourned, overlooked for a role I wanted.
“It’s not fair,” I gasped, taking the fall.
“It’s not fair,” I wailed, watching everything I’d built fall apart.

“But look at what God is doing through this,” they point.
“It’s not fair,” I say again.

I think it’s just awful that wonderful things come out of terrible things. I hate that you have to bury seeds for them to bloom. I hate that pearls come from irritants. I hate that delicious strawberries come from fields fertilized in manure. And I hate all of those things because I hate that post-traumatic wisdom only comes from going through tragedies.

Yeah, I guess if you have to go through hard things, it’s nice that something good can come from it. But why do we have to go through hard things to have the good things that come after?

I can point to the traumas and tragedies that have brought me to a place of being able to weave words into stories that present hard truths in soft ways. I cherish the times people tell me how these words altered the trajectory of their homes in ways that brought them closer to the unconditional love of the Father. But surely there is another way to learn this wisdom and pass it on?

Everything is possible for you, Father.
Take this cup of suffering from me.

And thus begins a sacred journey.

We all know that life’s not fair, but it makes it a bit easier to not have to go it alone. To know that the Lord has gone before us even in this. To know that the journey through unfair trauma and tragedy can take us to glorious destinations. To know that we have a comforter, a counselor, and a light to guide our path. 

I have a journey before me, but I’m standing at the front desk with a complaint, “Excuse me, sir, I specifically asked that this cup would be taken from me. And yet, behold, still there is a cup. I would like this to be rectified.” And Jesus comes alongside me to guide me. “Yet not what I will, but what you will,” He coaches me.

“I’m sorry, what?!” I’m doing double-takes as Jesus leads me forward on the journey. I am a reluctant follower. But I follow, nonetheless, and I see how the path I walk is neither new nor novel but a well-worn road.

My soul has been overwhelmed with sorrow.
I have felt betrayed.
I have stood silent against accusations.
I’ve had friends abandon me.
I’ve experienced pain.
I’ve had tragedy happen.
I’ve survived it.

But it’s interesting, isn’t it? That’s not the end. The story, the journey, it isn’t over yet. Jesus isn’t yet at the right hand of God, and I have no wisdom to offer anyone yet.

It seems that after the death of Christ, we stop focusing on his humanity. We talk extensively about the agony of the cross, which makes sense because all four of the Gospel writers draw us into this tragedy. The curtain is torn. Darkness falls. And the focus shifts from Jesus to the perspective of those left behind. That makes sense for the Gospels. What was Jesus doing at this point? We hear about the work of Jesus conquering Death in the epistles, but his followers didn’t know these things.

Even on Easter morning, the focus doesn’t shift back to Jesus. We continue to follow the story of the women and the disciples. Jesus just appears and disappears until he finally ascends. That’s how the authors wrote their gospels, so it makes sense that we would follow along that way. 

We receive so many emotion words from the women and the disciples. I can imagine Luke interviewing people and hearing from their perspective, “We were so frightened; we thought he was a ghost. Even when we saw he wasn’t a ghost, we still couldn’t believe it. We were amazed and overjoyed” (Luke 24:37-41). How was Jesus feeling during this? The eye-witnesses were too gobsmacked to notice and give account. 

Thus, the sacred journey continues. 

My eyes fixed on Jesus; I see how my journey overlays His.
I’m aching and weary.
The moment of trauma is over, yet my body is still on high alert.
My skin feels electrified. Every brush of my own clothes sears my skin.
I feel like my back’s been flayed.
And I look toward Jesus.
I don’t know how his back is doing, but the wounds of his hands and his side are still gaping.
Honestly, it’s a miracle he’s even alive.

We each come across a couple of our friends, but they don’t recognize us.
Our friends recount our own story to us, but they totally miss the point.
I’m furious and think, “How foolish you are!” (Luke 24:25)
I explain to my friends, and He explains to His, in a way that they don’t miss the point.
And then Jesus walks away.
 
“No, no, no,” I call him back. “These are our friends, our people.”
I’m clinging to what I know.
He keeps walking until his friends urge him to stay, even though they still don’t recognize him.
It’s like he wants me to be willing to walk away from people I’ve grown away from.
I’m not ready for this lesson.

When he comes back, I’m glad.
I watch them eat together.
In the common monotony of everyday life, his friends finally recognize him.
But it’s only two people.

It happens again.
Different people. More cherished friends.
They don’t understand what’s happened either.
“You’ve changed,” they tell me.
“Why are you troubled? Look at me. It’s me!” I implore them.
My words echo His, as Jesus tries to convince his friends he’s not a ghost.
They believe: we’re each still who we are.
Now what?

“Do you have anything to eat?” Jesus asks.
He invites us back into the common monotony of everyday life.
We eat, we talk, we tell the story again.
It’s hard to tell every time.

The hardest part is reconciliation, so I hang back and watch.
Jesus comes to Peter.
Peter recognizes him and dives off the boat to greet him. Classic Peter.
Jesus invites them to eat.
I take notes. Always start with food. It brings people together.
Three times, Jesus asks Peter if he loves Him.
I’m thankful for this interchange.
I don’t have to be content with one apology and be expected to get over it.
I can request reassurances in proportion with the damage rendered.

Finally comes the conclusion.
Finally comes the ascension.
Finally the journey ends. 

Trauma is like any other story. It’s got a setting and rising action before the conflict and climax. And it ends with cleaning up all the leftover messes. Often the leftover messes of a trauma are the relationships: reconnecting, repairing, reconciling, and settling back into normal rhythms. This is a hard part of trauma that is often overlooked. Many times this hard part takes a lot longer than we expect. 

In this time following Resurrection Sunday and leading up to Ascension Sunday, we hold sacred the long journey through trauma and tragedy to the good that God has in store for us: the wisdom that these experiences give us. And as much as I cherish that wisdom and the goodness God has for us through the hard things, I’m going to stay mad about the awfulness of how this broken world functions. I can do both. 

I refuse to get over how awful it is that good things come from hard things. 

I will hold this space for those of you still in the early stages of your journey, for those of you banging your fists on the front desk, demanding a refund for this cup of suffering, insisting that it’s not fair. I’m here to say, “You’re right! It’s not fair! And most importantly! You’re not alone.” 

For those of you further along who are activated and who feel disconnected from their communities, who wonder why it had to happen like this, who wonder why it’s not getting easier in the wake of tragedy, I’m here to say, “You’re right! It’s not fair! And most importantly! You’re not alone.” 

For those of you who have seen the beautiful things that the Lord has wrought out of the awful things you’ve lived through, who are turning back and grieving for themselves that they ever had to endure that, I’m here to say, “You’re right! It’s not fair! And most importantly! You’re not alone.”

And I can point out to you the Way, the Truth, and the Life. He walked with me through the valley of the shadow of death, and He will walk with you.

It seems agonizingly unfair that much of wisdom, strength, and personal growth comes from difficult and painful journeys. Not just the hardship, but the recovery, coming back to people and them not recognizing you, being met with doubt, and having to convince people of the journey you’ve been on. 

In this season, we remember the sacredness of this journey, a trauma-versary that changed the world forever. The Lord has gone before us. But moreover, he goes alongside us, today, at whatever stage of the journey we’re in. 

Trauma doesn’t make us stronger, but continuing onward through the hard things toward healing does. 

And I hate that for us. 

~~~~~~~~~~

Elizabeth Vahey Smith is a TCK mom who spent 5 years in Papua New Guinea as a missionary. Now her family explores the globe full-time as worldschoolers. Elizabeth works remotely as the COO for TCK Training, traveling often for work and always for pleasure. She is the author of The Practice of Processing: Exploring Your Emotions to Chart an Intentional Course. Follow her travels on Instagram @elizabeth.vaheysmith and @neverendingfieldtrip. Learn more about research-based preventive care for TCKs @tcktraining.

Photo by Matt Palmer on Unsplash