Elizabeth’s

When your husband calls you “a shell of a woman” {A Life Overseas}

/ trotters41 / 2 Comments

Elizabeth is over at A Life Overseas today.

shell1-700x439

For months this spring I felt like a shell of a woman. I was empty and didn’t have anything to give. Oh, I was still doing all the “right” things. I was still getting up most mornings attempting to connect with God, and I was still relatively consistent with my commitment to exercise.  But I felt dead inside and couldn’t figure out why.

My husband noticed. Where before him once stood life and life abundant, he now saw a shell of a woman. He even suggested another round of counseling. I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know what to do about it or even what it was. I was unhappy in life and unmotivated in work. Was it depression? Burnout? What???

I felt especially dead at church. That was a strange feeling, because corporate worship has always quenched my thirst and nourished my soul and made my spirit come alive. But I just buried that newly incongruous feeling and ignored it. I tuned it out and refused to listen to it. I ran to the nearest screen and numbed out on TV and Facebook and solitaire games instead.

Finish reading here.

Dear Homeschool Mother of Littles: Don’t Give Up

/ trotters41 / 6 Comments

by Elizabeth

trike

Dear Homeschool Mother in the Little Years: please don’t give up. Don’t quit, not yet. Just keep going.

One of these days you’re going to look around and find that everything you’ve been working towards, everything you’ve been yearning for, it’s happening. Right here, right now. Today.

One of these days you’re going to turn around and find your children reading on their own. For fun. And yes — even the kid who struggled to learn how to read.

One of these days you’re going to turn around and find your children teaching themselves things for the pure joy and curiosity of it all. And then they’re going to turn around and tell you about all the things they’ve been learning and reading.

One of these days you’re going to turn around and hear the sound of those instruments you’ve been making them practice. And one of these days, you’re going to turn around and find that the excitement and wonder you carry for the natural and supernatural worlds, your children carry it, too.

One of these days you’re going to turn around and find your children able to play board games and card games that you actually find interesting. {Yes, even your favorite word games.} And then you’re going to turn around again and watch them invent new games to play with each other.

One of these days you’re going to turn around and find your children making up imaginary worlds that have imaginary languages and imaginary cultures. And then, when they invite you to visit, you’ll go to those places, too.

One of these days you’re going to turn around and find that your children are actually helpful in cleaning up after dinner and taking out the trash and cleaning their rooms. And you’re going to depend on them to help run your household.

One of these days you’re going to turn around and hear them cracking jokes. Like, actual funny jokes. And you’re going to hear new one-liners dropped at the dinner table nearly every day. {And then you’re going to thank God for giving your children the sense of humor that may or may not have skipped over you.}

One of these days you’re going to turn around and find yourself having deep theological discussions with your children, discussions that hold their interest. And you’re going to be able to talk about the Sunday sermons, because they were actually listening.

I tell you these things because this past month as we closed out the school year and started our summer vacation, I’ve been reflecting on the state of my home school. Sometimes reflection can be a dangerous pursuit: it can lead to despair over an apparent lack of progress.

But this month something very different materialized for me: satisfaction and delight. Because all those things I mentioned? They’re happening for us. All of a sudden. Even after I’d given up on some of them EVER happening.

So dear Homeschool Mother in the Little Years, don’t give up. Don’t quit. Not yet. Nurture your little family. Plant those seeds and water them, then place them in the sun to warm. One of these days you’re going to look around and find that those seeds have sprouted and are bearing fruit — maybe even all at once.

Experienced home school mothers used to tell me this too, and I didn’t believe them. I didn’t think that promise was for me. And you might not think it’s for you, either. But take it from someone who can despair with the best of them: this promise IS for you, and your efforts are NOT in vain. So don’t give up.

One of these days it’s going to be worth it. You’re going to turn around and find that everything you’ve been working towards and everything you’ve been longing for is finally coming to fruition. It’ll all be right here, right now, today.

Just keep going.

The Screeching Voice of Lack and the Bounty of Jesus

/ trotters41 / 7 Comments

by Elizabeth

orange-tree-1149584_960_720

I’ve been stumbling around for weeks now, gathering my identity from the things other people might say about me. I’ve been scooping it up from my deepest fears of failure, harvesting it from my ripening field of inadequacies. But you know the thing is, I know better than this. I know better than to do this; yet I did it anyway. I listened to the voice of darkness, that screeching voice of lack inside my own head, and I flagrantly disregarded the bounty of Jesus and the abundance of His love.

I didn’t know where to begin again. I knew I’d misplaced my identity, but I was scared to approach God with my missteps of belief and doubt. How could I lose that precious gift of identity in Christ, after searching so long and so hard to find it before?? But one day last week I finally worked up the courage to ask God what He thinks of me. Sincerely expecting a reply, I ventured a quiet and tentative, “God, who do you say I am?” And Jesus, mysterious Son of Man that He is, simply and immediately asked back, “Who do you say I AM?”

“Who do YOU say I AM???”

Not an answer did the Promised One provide; merely, like so many instances in the Gospels, another question. Who do I say Jesus is?? Because maybe that’s where I went wrong, forgetting who Jesus is. Because maybe I don’t have to ask so many questions about myself, if I know the answer to the question about Jesus. And maybe I don’t have to get lost in my own dark, dangerous head, if I can get lost in the majesty and glory of the Creator, of the Redeemer, of the Comforter, of the Trinity.

Don’t get me wrong: it’s a legitimate question to ask “Who does God say I am?” But now I know it’s just as legitimate to be asked by Him — as Jesus asked Peter and the other disciples — “Who do you say I AM?” Because maybe, just maybe, that’s the question that can transfer my focus from Self onto Savior. And maybe, just maybe, the moment I answer that question is the moment the clouds will start to lift.

Turns out, the way up out of the pit isn’t to believe in myself better, it’s to believe in Someone Better. For as Peter answered, I believe Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God, and HIS identity alone is what holds sway over the clinging darkness.

Linking up with Velvet Ashes

A Few of My Favorite Things {June 2016}

/ trotters41 / Leave a comment

Well, another month has come and gone. Here are the very best things from this month, both online and in real life. ~Elizabeth

som2

Stretching. I know this sounds kind of dumb, but I finally figured out some ways to stretch that actually help my perpetually tight back, neck, and shoulder muscles. And since looser muscles mean less pain, this is a big win.

Sky-watching. This might sound kind of dumb too, but I started sky watching again this month. Since beauty can be scarce on the streets of Phnom Penh, I have to purposefully look up to find it. But once I started looking for it, I saw peace and beauty everywhere. I even shared my renewed sense of wonder with my kids as we watched sunsets and studied space together. Encouragement for this kind of attentiveness came from the chapter on “Ordinary Time” in Kimberlee Conway Ireton’s book The Circle of Seasons: Meeting God in the Church Year. (But more on that in another blog post.)

Skyping another home school mom. I had reached out to this mom, a home school graduate herself, for, not exactly coaching, but yeah, kind of coaching. I had already spent a lot of time thinking, praying, and journaling about my approach to homeschooling, but I still wanted to process out loud with someone. The conversation felt just like talking to Sarah Mackenzie of the Read Aloud Revival Podcast, complete with jovial tone of voice. My friend knew exactly where we were going, and away we went!

A new recipe for enjoying chick peas. As I’ve previously noted, my (4th!) blender doesn’t do a good job of blending hummus, and sometimes the large amount of olive oil in hummus bothers my stomach anyway. This new recipe, however, has much less oil, is nice and salty and crunchy, and satisfies my desire for chick peas. I even (successfully!) modified it for the crock pot, as I don’t have a working oven. (A word to the wise: if you want crispy chick peas, you really do need to dry them off with paper towels, as Ashley instructs.)

Two packages from America in the same day! From my parents and from our forwarding agent (who’s basically an extra set of grandparents to our children). Most of the time packages are filled with gifts for the kids (which I LOVE), but these packages had books and magazines for me too, which was super exciting.

 

BOOKS

Luke: The Gospel of Amazement by Michael Card. Yes, still working through this one, and nearly finished with it. It’s been a great Bible study option for me. The entire Biblical text is reprinted in sections, with Card then offering his observations. Last year I worked through the four gospels chronologically (with a Bible study at my mom’s church). I really enjoyed that, but honestly sometimes I had more questions than answers in my journal, so it’s been nice to work through the stories of Jesus with someone else as a guide. I plan to continue his entire series when I finish the Luke installment. Next up is Mark: The Gospel of Passion.

The Contemplative Writer: Loving God through Christian Spirituality, Meditation, Daily Prayer, and Writing by Ed Cyzewski. I’ve read other books by Ed, and they were all helpful (especially Pray, Write, Grow: Cultivating Prayer and Writing Together and Creating Space: The Case for Everyday Creativity, which are both very practical), but this one is probably my favorite so far. It was peaceful and full of breath and life, and I probably need to re-read it already!

Two-Part Invention by Madeleine L’Engle. Confession: I finally picked up this book and finished it. I had really been enjoying the book earlier this spring, but I stopped reading it as soon as I sensed a sad ending descending. But then I cried a therapeutic little cry and felt much better.

I also started Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels by Kenneth E. Bailey and The Story of Western Science: From the Writings of Aristotle to the Big Bang Theory by Susan Wise Bauer, both of which I received in those blessed packages and both of which I’ve been looking forward to reading for a long time. They’re both thought-provoking, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed their beginnings. I’ll let you know how they progress. . .

 

BLOG POSTS

Grounded in Transit by Esther Harder on A Life Overseas. Esther sent me this essay as a guest submission, and I was immediately captivated. Cannot tell you just how much I love this article.

False Homecomings by Angelina Stanford at CiRCE Institute. On the longing for home. WOW.

Fire and Planting by Erin Duplechin on her own site. (Erin has also guest posted for A Life Overseas before.) Hope for anyone in the midst of a refining fire: “Tomorrow we will plant seeds.”

What Fruitfulness Feels Like by Lindsey Brigham at CiRCE Institute. Comfort for the soul stretched to snapping.

Marginal Faith: You Probably Should be Doing Less by S.D. Smith at Story Warren. Discussions on margin can be a dime a dozen or seem stale and old, but Smith offers a fresh “Trojan Horse” twist on it.

Fight for the Beautiful by Glenn McCarty on Story Warren. Apparently beauty was a theme for me this month.

10 things you’re going to get right this year by Jamie C. Martin, whose blog Steady Mom even includes my word for the year. Now here’s where I get all honest and ugly: we are half-way done with 2016, and my word for the year (“Steady”) has been a complete fail so far. I have been even less emotionally steady than last year, when my intention was to be more so. I’ve definitely experienced and been committed to the activities on this list, but my emotions have been more up and down than ever (and more frequently on the down), and that’s been discouraging.

How to be a Real Missionary by Anisha Hopkinson at A Life Overseas. This one’s for all people, not just the missionary types. There are wise words here — though I have to say that every month, Anisha wows me with her wise words. I’m so thankful she joined the writing team at A Life Overseas.

10 Reasons a Missionary Needs an Identity Rooted in Christ by Amy Young, also at A Life Overseas. Amy’s post isn’t just for missionaries either; it‘s for all people. And a side note here — last month I had the immense privilege of watching our various writers share critically important, yet related, ideas in Christian spirituality and missions. As editor of the site, I do not determine any particular themes people should write on, yet multiple people were writing on similar themes. For me as an editor, that was evidence of God at work, weaving our writing together into something beautiful — and useful.

 

MUSIC

Out of Hiding by Steffany Gretzinger and Amanda Cook. A girl sang this at church one Sunday, and it gripped me for days. Days.

Be Thou My Vision, as performed by Audrey Assad. A beloved hymn, yes, but that voice. THAT VOICE.

More hymns from Audrey Assad, if you like that kind of thing, or her kind of voice:

Abide with Me
Holy Holy Holy
It is Well

Even Unto Death, Audrey Assad’s response to the beheading of Christians by ISIS. For a bit of background, Audrey’s father was a Syrian refugee, and here is the back story to this song, which I first heard at the onething 2015 conference, along with I Shall Not Want.

New chorus to Just as I Am from Travis Cottrell:

I come broken to be mended
I come wounded to be healed
I come desperate to be rescued
I come empty to be filled
I come guilty to be pardoned
By the blood of Christ the Lamb
And I’m welcomed with open arms
Praise God, just as I am

Arise My Soul Arise, a Charles Wesley hymn rewritten and performed by Twila Paris. Can anyone improve on Charles Wesley? I say yes, yes Twila can. This is an old song I’ve loved since adolescence that just happened to play on my iPod shuffle this month. This particular video is dated (I couldn’t find a better one); even Twila’s instrumentation is a little dated. But it’s a walk down memory lane for me and a definite improvement upon Wesley’s melody (it’s also better than all the more modern renditions of the hymns — believe me, I searched, and Twila’s is best). But if nothing else, read Wesley’s lyrics; they can’t be beat.

Arise, my soul, arise; shake off thy guilty fears;
The bleeding sacrifice in my behalf appears:
Before the throne my surety stands,
Before the throne my surety stands,
My name is written on His hands.

Five bleeding wounds He bears; received on Calvary;
They pour effectual prayers; they strongly plead for me:
“Forgive him, O forgive,” they cry,
“Forgive him, O forgive,” they cry,
“Don’t let that ransomed sinner die!”

My God is reconciled; His pardoning voice I hear;
He owns me for His child; I can no longer fear:
With confidence I now draw nigh,
With confidence I now draw nigh,
And “Father, Abba, Father,” cry.

 

PODCASTS AND VIDEOS

Finding Dory. We took our kids to the theater to watch this in 3D (my first 3D movie by the way). And what can I say? Disney/Pixar delivers again; I was crying in the first five minutes, and laughing throughout (several lines are especially funny for international travelers with children). This movie has all the home and belonging feels and even has a Prodigal Mother and Father — all we have to do is “follow the shells.”

Magic and Fear in Children’s Books, a conversation with N.D. Wilson at Sarah Mackenzie’s Read Aloud Revival. An in-depth theological and philosophical discussion about good and evil in imaginary worlds. For those in the home school conversation, I’m aware that Wilson’s father is rather controversial; but wherever you land on him (and I’m not commenting on my position!), Sarah’s conversation with his son is excellent.

Finding God in the Ruins: How God Redeems Pain, a conversation with Matt Bays at Jacque Watkins’s Mud Stories podcast. Just a note, this particular podcast is for a mature audience and discusses childhood sexual abuse; I wouldn’t listen to this one with children around.

CiRCE Institute‘s Free Audio Library. I loved these two lectures from the first page: “A Contemplation of Creation” by Andrew Kern and “Imago Dei and Redemptive Power of Fantasy” by Angelina Stanford.

Girl in the World: Pragmatism, Utility, and Beauty from Sara Groves. Can’t remember how I found this video, but it touches on all the themes I’ve been reading lately, so I wanted to share. I love the way Sara describes the spiritual landscapes of our lives, and have shared some of her songs and reflections before.

 

QUOTES

From Big Daddy Weave’s song “I Belong to God,” which I heard at a graduation service:

“I’ll say to the darkness ‘You don’t own me anymore.’”

Frederick Buechner:

“There is no event so commonplace but that God is present within it, always hiddenly, always leaving you room to recognize him or not to recognize him.”

Wendell Berry:

There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places.

This isn’t a direct quote, but this is from Leroy Cloud’s discussion of the resurrection of Lazarus. Leroy mentioned Jesus’ instructions to the disciples to “Roll the stone away” and later, to “Take off the grave clothes.” In other words, Jesus performs the miracle of restoring life where it has been taken or lost or stolen. We are never the ones to make the miracle happen; we merely roll the stone away and remove the grave clothes in order to show what Jesus has already done.  What a beautiful word picture.

Another indirect quote, this one from Sue Hanna. In Matthew 17, Jesus called the people “unbelieving and perverse.” Sue broke those concepts down: “unbelieving” means disconnected from God, and “perverse” means too connected to the world. Sue proposed that the solution to this problem lies in Mark’s chapter 9 recounting of the same story, in which the disciples ask Jesus why they couldn’t cast out a particular demon from a particular boy. Jesus answers with, “This kind only comes out by prayer and fasting. Prayer reconnects us to God, and fasting (from all types of things, not just food) disconnects us from the world. So profound.

Now back to direct quotes. This one’s from Martin Cothran in “G.K. Chesterton and the Metaphysics of Amazement,” an article in the 2016 edition of CiRCE magazine (which yes, arrived in those packages):

“The modernists among us have tried to escape from this nihilism through the invocation of a new religion: that of scientism. Here, as in any other religion, they can find a creed (materialism, the belief that only the physical is real), a code or methodology (the scientific method), and a cultic motivation (a scientific utopia in which all questions about the world have been answered). One day, we are told, if we continue on the road of scientific progress, even life itself will give up its secrets and we will conquer death.

But modern scientism is just a way station on the road to nihilism, as Nietzche and the existentialists who followed him pointed out, since even an eternal life, lived with no transcendent purpose, can be a sort of damnation – a hell on earth. This is perhaps why Albert Camus, at the beginning of his Myth of Sisyphus, said that the chief philosophical question of our time was why should not commit suicide.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if one day people discovered a way to allow people to live forever, but, faced with the prospect of living a life of perpetual purposelessness, they all committed suicide?”

A personal note – This section of the article reminded me of several things. The first was the movie In Time, which describes a world in which wealthy people truly could live forever, but for one man life became so purposeless (and consequently so burdensome) that he did commit suicide. The second was Jen Fulwiler, author of Something Other Than God, who talks about how her materialist atheist beliefs eventually became so hopeless that she contemplated suicide, not because she was unhappy, but because if all our thoughts and emotions are simply electrical signals in the brain, she wanted to hurry up and get the inevitable (death) over with. Interestingly enough, the June 2016 edition of Astronomy magazine contained a column which explained how light and color really only exist as perceptions inside our brains, sadly lending support to the materialist beliefs that beauty doesn’t actually exist except inside our heads. (I disagree; see the next quote.) Also, interestingly enough, the March/April 2016 edition of Popular Science had an extensive section on longevity and defeating death through things like gene therapy and drugs, indicating that these queries and contemplations about meaninglessness and the fountain of youth are not so very far off.

Sarah Mackenzie in “The Flower We Have Not Found: Beauty as a Gateway to God,” another 2016 CiRCE Magazine article:

“Of the three transcendentals, truth, goodness, and beauty, only one requires that we use our senses to apprehend it. Truth is perceived and goodness is known, but beauty? We see it. We smell it. We hear it, taste it, and touch it. It invades our physical being and transforms us in an immediate and tangible way.

Beauty is how we physical beings in the real world rise to the ideal. It is how we are lifted from our dailiness and brought into the presence of God. It jars us. It requires us to contend with the magnificence of God when we just want to go through the motions of our lives.

If we are attempting to cultivate wisdom and virtues in our students, and if beauty is a gateway to God, then we can’t afford to shuttle it off our radar. Our students live their days through their senses, and we can either draw them closer to, or further from, Chris, depending on the sensory input we provide.”

Another personal note – I had already begun my exploration of Ordinary Time when I read Sarah’s words, so naturally they caught my attention, as I had been experiencing them myself. Additionally, these thoughts remind me of Misty Edwards’s thoughts on how corporate worship is a physical experience, not merely a spiritual one (scroll to the end of that link to read her quotes).

That brings me to one last quote, one I also intend to flesh out more fully in a future blog post, but whose quote is just too applicable to Sarah’s discussion of beauty in the physical world not to share here. It’s from Heidi Whitaker, a friend of mine here in Cambodia and the wife of an Anglican priest. I asked her about the word “sacramental,” and this is how she answered:

“The Anglican Book of Common Prayer uses this definition of sacrament: a sacrament is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace given to us. There’s also the pithy phrase ‘Matter matters.’ It relates to the way God comes to us through matter (water, the bread and wine, etc) and to His value of matter (our physical bodies themselves and all of creation are precious to him – not evil or something to be escaped as in Gnosticism).”

7 Thoughts for Graduating TCKs {A Life Overseas}

/ trotters41 / Leave a comment

by Elizabeth

Dear Graduating Senior,

This spring I hugged you. I cried with you. I said goodbye to you. And then I looked into the faces of your parents as they said goodbye too. How can I express the depth of my love for you and your parents? I don’t know. All I know is that if we were sitting down to coffee again, these are the things I’d want to tell you.

They’re the things I’ve mostly stumbled across on my journey as an Adult Third Culture Kid, though they’re by no means comprehensive or applicable to all people. Much like every other human on the planet, I’ve had to sort through my childhood as an adult, and these are the things that have helped me along the way. I hope they help you too.

photo-1437388914080-908608af1956resized

1. IT’S OK (AND NORMAL) TO HAVE DELAYED ISSUES

When you were young, home was where mom and dad were (or perhaps where grandma and grandpa were), and most likely, you were almost always with one of those people or in one of those places. But TCK angst is something that tends to catch up to people later in life. That’s the way it was for me, anyway.

Issues of home, belonging, and identity are all higher level, more complex topics. And now that you’re launching out on your own, your old idea of “home” probably won’t be as accessible. The Third Culture world of your childhood will be out of reach, and these issues might come crashing down on you. All of this is OK.

Maybe you felt settled in life before, but feel unsettled now. Maybe you thought life was good or even great before, but feel lost now. Maybe you were part of a happy, healthy family as a child and now find yourself dealing with some thorny emotional issues as a young adult. Don’t worry; it doesn’t mean anything is wrong with you.

Or perhaps you’ve already experienced a lot of transition and upheaval in your life, and you’ve already had to grapple with issues of belonging, identity, and home. That’s ok too. You’ll probably still find that TCK issues pop up in your life over the next several years, often when you’re not expecting them. This is normal. It’s part of the process of growing up. I just don’t want you to be surprised by it.

2. SYSTEMS ARE A HELPFUL LENS

Growing up as a military kid, I didn’t have a vocabulary for what was happening in my life. For example, why was civilian life so different and so hard for us?? Answer: because we had suddenly exited a military system (or culture) and entered a non-military one. I didn’t know that back then, but I know it now, and the idea of viewing the TCK experience through the lens of a system has been very helpful to me.

This is one way to explain the idea: your parents made a conscious choice to enter a system (whichever system it was), but much of your TCK experience was then dictated by that system. Even graduating from high school and having to leave your childhood home — as painful as that can be — is dictated by the system you’re living in. You can even be part of more than one system. There’s your third culture system with other TCKs. Then there’s your parents’ organization’s system. And there are probably more.

Being able to see my life as part of a system (or systems) with a lot of moving parts has allowed me to look at some of the TCK issues I’ve faced as an adult without faulting my parents. Yes, the many moves were traumatic for me (and in ways I didn’t realize, feel, or fully understand until I was an adult), but I don’t see that trauma as being inflicted on me by my parents. Yes, they chose the military, but it wasn’t their fault when the military moved us mid-school year. It wasn’t their fault when kids at my new school didn’t accept me right away. Rather, it was a result of the system I was in.

The ability to have conversations without shame or blame is vital to moving forward. And the more we can understand the systems we’re in, the easier it is to talk about our experiences and make connections instead of disconnections. So remember that you’re living in (and have lived in) a system. Remember that accepting your TCK experience doesn’t mean you have to become estranged from your family. Admitting that you struggle to find belonging or to define home or self doesn’t mean you’re labeling your parents as “bad.” These things are results of your systems.

3. ALL PEOPLE ARE SINNERS, SO REMEMBER TO GIVE GRACE

While it’s true that you don’t need to blame your parents for the challenges of TCK life, it’s also true that they are human beings. They’re sinners, just like you and just like me. And they may have made some mistakes in life as well as in parenting. Forgive them.

There’s no way around the fact that human parents do hurt their human children: all humans hurt other humans. So while you don’t have to carry around some burden of thinking your parents “ruined your life” with their nomadic choices, you probably also need to forgive them for things. All children — mobile and non-mobile alike — are faced with this question.

I love my parents deeply, and they deeply love me, yet we still found it necessary to have these kinds of conversations. We avoided it for a long time, perhaps for fear of conflict or discomfort, but the healing never came until we did. So talk to your parents. Have conversations with them. Process through the painful stuff. Wade into the murky waters, and find healing and wholeness together. Your parents are invested in your continued health and healing, so let them be a part of it.

Your situation may be more complicated than what I’ve just discussed. Someone may have hurt you deeply, even abused you. In that case, you need more than simple conversations with your parents or other trusted adults. You also need to get some outside help. You need to find trustworthy, compassionate counseling. Both Lisa McKay and Kay Bruner have good insight on how to find a counselor in general and while living overseas. I pray you find someone to guide you through the healing process.

4. GET COMFORTABLE WITH PARADOX

As you pack up your boxes and your suitcases, there’s one more thing I want you to pack. That thing is your ability to accept and even embrace paradox. Most likely, your life has been neither one hundred percent good, nor one hundred percent bad. The truth is, TCK or not, no one’s life is one hundred percent one thing. So resist the temptation to spin the story of your childhood in only one direction, either all good or all bad. Don’t pit the good and bad against each other in a futile effort to discover which one outweighs the other.

You don’t have to minimize the bad in order to accept the good. And you don’t have to minimize the good in order to accept the bad. Simply hold them both in your hands and in your heart, and accept them together, side by side, as the things that have shaped you into the person you are and as the things that are continuing to shape the person you are becoming.

We can’t strain the bad out of the good or the good out of the bad; we can’t separate them like cream from milk. They’re a package deal, a paradox, the “and” of this life. So let’s agree together not to outlaw the good or outlaw the bad. Let’s accept all the parts of ourselves, even the parts that make us (or other people) uncomfortable.

5. GRIEVE YOUR LOSSES

About those negative experiences . . . I know this has been talked about before, but it’s so important I’m going to say it again: you’ve got to grieve your losses. List out your losses, and then mourn them. Grieve the hard things that happened to you.

Maybe it was leaving your passport country to move to your host country, or moving between host countries, or within the same host country. Maybe it was losing a close friend or teacher to transition or even death. It’s probably graduating and leaving your host country this summer. Regardless of the cause, there have been so many goodbyes in your life, and you need to acknowledge how hard they’ve been for you.

Grief follows us wherever we go; we can’t outrun it. So spend the time now, on the front end, to grieve your TCK losses. You need to learn this skill because you’ll have to use it again later. We live in a fallen world, and bad things will keep happening to you, whether you’re living cross-culturally or not. That means the need to process grief is ever-present, regardless of who you are or where you live.

Learning to grieve well now will help you for the rest of your life. And you might have to grieve some of your losses more than once. You may feel old losses cycling back around again, and you’ll have to stop and re-grieve them. That’s ok. Be gentle with yourself and grieve them again.

6. GET SOME OUTSIDE HELP: TCK COUNSELORS AND MENTORS

I personally used to think something was wrong with me. Why did I have all these problems fitting in? Why did I feel so rejected all the time? I thought the problem was me. Then — and this only happened a couple of years ago with a counselor who specializes in TCKs — I began to see that the trouble I had fitting in was a consequence of something that happened to me.

It wasn’t me that was the problem; it was all those moves and having to fit in someplace new over and over and over again. But learning how to fit in takes time, and there’s always a period of uncertainty before friends are made and acceptance is granted. I cannot even explain how much that realization helped me. I felt less like a broken object and more like a person who’d had experiences that shaped me but who wasn’t inherently and eternally screwed up. I had previously faced a lot of insecurity and social anxiety in my life, but when I started seeing their roots in my nomadic childhood and addressing them that way, the fear and insecurity stopped trailing me so doggone much.

Likewise, you may need a counselor who is familiar with the TCK world. In fact, in her book Belonging Everywhere and Nowhere: Insights into Counseling the Globally Mobile, author and counselor Lois Bushong tells us that a counselor who is not familiar with TCK issues may not know how to treat an adult TCK struggling with depression. In actuality, he or she is probably dealing with unresolved TCK grief, a completely normal response to a globally mobile childhood. (Incidentally Lois is also responsible for my understanding of systems.) So if you are in any way “stuck” in your emotional, mental, or spiritual life, consider finding a counselor who understands TCK life. 

Counseling has been massively helpful in my life, both for TCK-related issues and non-TCK-related issues, and I highly recommend counseling to all people who are breathing. But sometimes you just need someone to talk to, someone who will listen to you and empathize with you and even pray for you. Just talking to an older, wiser adult TCK whom you trust can be very helpful in sorting through your thoughts and feelings. In fact, I’ve done that a lot with Marilyn Gardner, fellow writer and editor on this blog. So if you do nothing else, find a fellow TCK friend to talk to.

7. YOU SHOULD PROBABLY EXPECT SOME FLARE-UPS

I can give you all the advice in the world — advice you might even follow — but you might still turn around one day and be taken by surprise at the intensity of your feelings of loss and isolation and lack of home and belonging. When this happens to me, whether it’s triggered by the yearly May & June goodbyes or by feeling the sting of some rejection, my husband usually asks me, “Is your TCK acting up again?”

Yes, I tell him. The answer is almost always yes. Yes that my TCK is acting up again. Yes that events from my childhood creep into my adulthood. Yes that from time to time issues I thought were settled and resolved feel suddenly unsettled and unresolved.

But simply naming it can take the edge off the pain. Then I can go back to the truths I’ve learned about myself and about God. And you can do that too. When you find your TCK acting up again, name it. Grieve what you need to grieve, and then remind yourself of the truths you’ve learned over the years. Be kind to yourself when this happens, and remember to give yourself some time to recover.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Even though there was pain, I don’t regret my TCK experience. For me every experience (in the end) brought me closer to Christ. Though at times it might have seemed a wandering path, every wound was a road leading straight back to God. The relationship I have with God primarily because of painful TCK “issues” is something I wouldn’t give up for anything.

So take heart. If you let them, the questions of home, belonging, and identity that your TCK childhood has asked you to answer can take you deeper into the heart of God than ever before. If you’ll take the time to look for Him, you’ll find Jesus on the other side of every question you have. Only Jesus can help you live an unhindered life. His is the face of love, and He is the answer to every question you’ll ever ask. So go with Him: there is redemption on this road.

Originally appeared at A Life Overseas.