Elizabeth’s

How to be a Temporary Trailing Spouse (or, How One Husband Lives with his Wife in an Understanding Way)

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– By Elizabeth

While I played with Faith in the church nursery recently, a mom asked me why I decided to homeschool. I paused for a second. It’s been a long time since I’ve pondered my journey to homeschool motherhood, a choice that’s just as uncommon among ex-pats in Phnom Penh as it was among church-goers in Kansas City. (Most parents in this city send their kids to international schools.)

As many of you know, Jonathan was homeschooled, and I wasn’t. When we started our family, I just figured we would homeschool because Jonathan would want that. After a few years as a mom, however, I wasn’t quite so sure anymore. I was afraid I’d do it poorly. I was afraid I wouldn’t enjoy being with my kids ALL DAY. I was afraid that life would consist of only one thing: schoolwork.

Our school room in Cambodia

You could say I was a trailing homeschool spouse. I’ve previously used the term Trailing Spouse to describe my initial hesitancy toward missions. Jonathan’s desire to come to Cambodia was originally much stronger than mine, but I eventually caught up. It’s easy to see that my trailing pattern had been established before, when his desire to homeschool was much stronger than mine.

I’m a data gatherer. When I trailed behind Jonathan in homeschool-parent-willingness, I joined a homeschool co-op in order to gather data. I gathered data from real women who were educating their children at home through varying styles of homeschooling but who were all satisfied with their choices. I pleasantly discovered that homeschool didn’t take over their lives. I realized that there were a lot of available options, but most importantly, that we could still be a happy family. My new knowledge gave me the courage to try it. Now I love homeschooling. I love it so much I forget there was ever a time that I didn’t want to do it. My desires did catch up with Jonathan’s.

In these trailing situations, Jonathan has truly been a husband who lives with his wife in an understanding way (from I Peter 3:7). It’s not one of the more commonly quoted Bible verses on marriage (Ephesians 5, anyone??), but it’s my personal favorite. It perfectly describes my husband’s behavior. He understands that I’m a data gatherer, and he lets me gather data. He understands that I will follow him, but he also understands that from time to time I might trail temporarily. He understands that I often have fears, and he waits for them to dissipate. He makes it easy to be his wife – he’s got 12 years of experience in living with me in an understanding way.

Third Culture Thoughts Part 2 (On My Childhood)

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— By Elizabeth

I’m a third culture kid myself.  I didn’t realize the uniqueness of my upbringing until we started preparing for Cambodia, but life as a military kid gave me a TCK experience. Until I was 5, I lived in West Germany – yes, it was so long ago that Germany was divided into East and West. We ate pomme fritz (fries) with miniature plastic forks. I wore a German dress called a dirndl. My dad would call out “auf wiedersehen” as he left for work.

The next five years were mainly civilian while my dad taught Army ROTC at an American university. But the next few years were highly mobile, including 4 school moves in 4 years and life “on post.” The school moves were hard — at each school I was the “new kid” for several months, and other kids picked on me. Until the next school year began, anyway, because by then we were all friends. Sometimes half-way through that next year I would have to move again, starting the whole painful process anew.

I was 12 when we left military life and began “re-entry” into civilian life. Civilian life is different. Even the vocabulary is different. Instead of living in quarters, I now lived in a house. Instead of shopping at the PX and the commissary, we shopped at Wal-Mart and Hy-Vee. I didn’t swim at the Officers’ Club pool during the summers anymore. I kept calling policemen “MP’s” (military police). I wondered where all the black people were. (I came from a multi-racial military installation, but the Kansas City suburb where we settled was primarily Caucasian.) And I was the new kid yet again, ripe and ready for being made fun of.

The question “where are you from?” is hard for TCK’s to answer. I had always had difficulty answering that question. Where was I from? I wasn’t sure.  For many years, I didn’t really feel like Lee’s Summit, MO (where my parents moved after the Army) was home. I hadn’t lived there long enough to feel at home. It certainly wasn’t any of the other places I had lived either.  Sometimes I answered that I was from Kansas City. Sometimes I listed all the places I’d lived. Other times I said that my parents were from a small town in central Iowa.

 Growing up, this quote from Bernard Cooke was always hanging on the walls of my many homes.

Fast forward to last year. Now I’m a parent of future missionary kids, so I read Pollock and Reken’s Third Culture Kids book. All of a sudden I identified with these TCK’s. Even though it didn’t span my entire childhood or take me to a third world country, I realized that my transient young life, coupled with an entirely different American military sub-culture, gave me insight into what being a TCK will be like for my kids. Reading about TCK’s helped me understand more about myself, and assured me that I would be able to empathize with my children in their difficult experiences.

TCK’s often feel homeless. They are moving, or their friends are moving.  Constantly.  They don’t have roots in one place, but have connections all over. They feel at home everywhere, and they feel at home nowhere. This was a big concern for me as a mom. Home is important to me. I want my kids to feel at home somewhere.

To me, though, home is where family is. It’s where memories have been made, and where they will continue to be made. I think you can have more than one home. And really, don’t we all have another home in Heaven?

My parents’ home town in Iowa still feels like home to me – the place and the people stayed constant throughout all my moves. My parents have lived in their current house for 12 years now (their longest stay), and it feels like home. Today, I live in Phnom Penh, Cambodia with my husband and 4 children, and it feels like home. In the words of musician Alex Ebert, “Home is wherever I’m with you.”

In the end, the best part about being a TCK for me is the nebulous definition of home as everywhere and yet nowhere.  How wonderful that my Heavenly Father could use a few uncomfortable years of my childhood to help me fully embrace wherever He puts me in His wide world.

Third Culture Thoughts Part 1 (On My Kids)

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— By Elizabeth 

A Third Culture Kid (TCK) is a person who has spent a significant part of his or her developmental years outside the parents’ culture. The TCK frequently builds relationships to all of the cultures, while not having full ownership in any. Although elements from each culture may be assimilated into the TCK’s life experience, the sense of belonging is in relationship to others of similar background. (Definition from the book Third Culture Kids by David C. Pollock and Ruth Van Reken)

Third Culture Kids don’t live in their passport country, or the country of their parents’ culture. They live in a host country. They don’t belong to their parents’ culture (the first culture), nor do they truly belong to their host culture (the second culture). They are in a culture all their own, a third culture. Their life is both global and mobile. My kids are TCK’s now. In early May I recorded some of my concerns for them:

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It’s still a common occurrence for our kids to talk about missing people and places “back home,” but they are becoming happier here as well. They get sad A LOT about missing home, Grandma mostly, but also saying that our new home will NEVER be as good as our old home.

I recently learned more about missionary kids (MK’s) from another missionary who is himself an adult MK and currently works with teenage MK’s.  He said that the culture that most affects an MK’s stability and happiness is the culture of the family’s home, not the host culture. He also told me that 8 out of 10 times, an MK’s attitude toward language learning and the host culture comes from the mom, simply because of the extra time kids spend with their mom. He said those pieces of information are either encouraging to parents, or discouraging to parents, depending on their situation. I found it to be encouraging because our home is a happy place — Jonathan and I work hard to make our family fun, open, and loving — and because I am no longer the “trailing spouse,” as of 2 years ago this month.

Sometimes, however, I wonder what I am doing wrong and why my good attitude isn’t rubbing off on my kids like it should. I like it here, why don’t they?? That other missionary said they would, right!!??  But then I realized that I have been in the process of transferring my heart from America to Cambodia for the last 2 years. Although our family talked a lot about Cambodia and why we were going, their little hearts simply lived where they had always lived until they stepped on that plane in mid-January.   I sent my heart ahead of my body, so I’m a bit ahead of them in my adjustment.  Their bodies travelled first, leaving their hearts in America with friends and family. They need time, and I will give that time to them.

I tell them a lot that nothing will ever replace home, or Red Bridge, or Grandma, or Susan, or cheese bagels, or our awesome yard. Just because we were happy in America, it doesn’t mean we can’t be happy here. We won’t ever try to take away from the good of our life in America, but I want them to have hope that life can be good here as well.

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In our training we were told to say goodbye well, and that it’s ok to grieve the loss of people and places when we make an international move. We’ve tried to be very understanding when our kids get sad and talk about home. We let them talk, we look at old pictures, we let them Skype family.  We hug them when they’re sad. At the same time we are making new memories here. We take them to the park, we take them swimming, we play badminton on our roof. We make jokes and laugh uncontrollably around the dinner table. Our kids’ lives have changed drastically, but one thing has not changed: they know they are immensely loved.

Our family in America

Our family in Cambodia

Climb Every Mountain (Or, How I got to the Top of Mt. Meru & Back Down Again)

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by Elizabeth

Recently our family traveled to Angkor Wat, an ancient Hindu temple in Cambodia. The center of the main temple represents the mythical Mt Meru (the Hindu center of the universe), and to get to the top you must climb treacherously steep stairs (read: nearly vertical).  This design illustrates the difficulty of aspiring to the home of the gods, and in essence, it requires the climber to crawl up those stairs, prostrate before the gods.

Since it was my first time to Angkor Wat, I figured I wanted to climb to the top of that central tower. I decided to do that without thinking how high or steep it would be.  This is my view from the bottom.

For safety purposes, the original stone steps have been covered with wooden steps, but they are still quite steep. Tourists also have the benefit of a hand rail. Unafraid, I stand at the bottom and start climbing. A few steps up, I realize just how high I am going to get, and just how fast that’s going to happen. I tell myself not to look down. I tell myself not to look up. I tell myself just to look at the steps in front of me. I whisper one of Elisabeth Elliot’s favorite quotations to myself: “Do the next thing.” So I do the next thing: I take the next step.

When I get to the top I’m a little shaky because I know I will eventually have to climb back down. But I follow the tourist signs around the tower, and in only a few minutes I find myself back at the stairs. I tell myself to do the next thing: focus on each step and don’t forget to hold on to the rail.  This is me on my way down.

I had to climb the “mountain” one step at a time. I couldn’t look at the big picture of what I was really attempting. It was too scary. Each step was still scary, but it wasn’t as terrifying as looking at the entire wall I had to climb.

My life with God has been like that.

I’ve never had a Master Plan for my life. At each step of the way I just asked Him what to do next, and I felt He answered.

I asked Him whom I should marry. He led me to marry Jonathan.

Together we asked Him what to do at our first church home in Rolla, MO. He led us to work with youth.

We asked Him when to start a family. And He said “now.”

We asked Him what to do and where to go after I graduated from university. He led Jonathan to go to nursing school in Kansas City.

We asked Him to supply a job in Kansas City, and He led us to work as youth ministers at Red Bridge.

We asked Him to supply a nursing job for Jonathan, and He led him to Truman Medical Center’s Emergency Department.

We asked Him whether we should apply with Team Expansion, and He said “yes.”And even though I was scared out of my mind, we followed Him. Each step of the application process was scary. But I only had to finish one step at a time.

 

Now that I’m in Cambodia, it doesn’t seem so scary. But if you had told me when I was saying “I do” to Jonathan Trotter, that in 12 years we would take 4 young children across the Pacific to a 4th world country as missionaries . . .

Thankfully, God has been gracious to me. He knew I couldn’t follow Him if I knew the Master Plan. He knew my fear would paralyze me. So He gave me an incremental plan, and now I can look back and say, “Oh, so that’s why You led us to do ____________!” Each piece of our life puzzle prepared us for where we are now. That’s the amazing grace of God, that He can script our life story if we will only “do the next thing.”

Ministry Lessons . . . from a French Catholic Priest and a Khmer Worship Service

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A scene from the Alsace region

Earlier this week we invited one of Jonathan’s language school friends to our house for dinner. He is a newly ordained French Catholic priest who has been assigned to Cambodia for life. He hails from the Alsace region of France. When Jonathan asked him about the most beautiful place he’s ever been, he answered that it was his own region. His home in Alsace, the place of his roots.

He told us he believes that if you cannot love the place you come from, you cannot love the place you go to. So I dropped out of the dinner conversation for a few minutes to contain my emotion. What a beautiful thing to say. He loves his home, but he has sacrificed living there because of love for his God, and his heart is open to love this place and its people as well.

I am not sure whether it is the French-English language difference, or simply because he comes from a different faith tradition than me, but his words were filled with grace and meaning for me. Tears welled up in my eyes. Yes, I love my home. Yes, I love the people who live there. Yes, I love my God, and yes, I love this place. I fully intend to love the people of this place. I want my heart to be open to love.

Then this Sunday I experienced my first non-English church service. Jonathan had attended non-English services before — in Cambodia and also in Russia and Germany — but I had not. I had not expected it to impact me quite so much (not because I thought I was immune to such things, but because I had not taken the time to think about it, silly me, mother of 4 young children, too busy getting ready for church to stop and think).

John 1:1-5

I could reliably understand only a few words: “thank God,” “Jesus,” “love,” and “hallelujah.” I could not read the Cambodian song books; I did not recognize the melodies. But I worshipped all the same. It was at this service that I finally understood, at my very core, that Jesus does not speak only English. His offer of salvation is for all nations. Oh, of course I “knew” that before, but there, in that small gathering of Cambodian believers, I truly realized that God speaks all languages with the same perfect skill. He understands each Christian across the globe, no matter their language. He does not understand me better than He understands a Khmer Christian — even if I do not understand that same Khmer Christian.

What I said to my kids later was, “Isn’t it neat that everyone can talk to Jesus? Isn’t it neat that Jesus can understand everybody?” I hope they can grow up strongly convicted of what I am just now learning.

I haven’t blogged for a while. I tend to wait until something significant happens, something that really affects me. I had two of those events this week and wanted to share them with you. As always, thank you for praying for our family and for the people whose language we are trying to learn. We want to communicate the Gospel to them in their own words. We want to communicate the Gospel to them with much love. And this week God sent me those two little reminders, much-needed missionary lessons.