Status Updates From Between Worlds: Essays on C...

These frequent moves produced a need to either wander or rearrange furniture. Sometimes both. It’s a restlessness that cannot be tamed.

Acknowledge place and its significance… In God we are given a full allowance and understanding of this need.

Give voice to a longing… We will have times of intense longing and wistfulness for what no longer exists… Our longings can be expressed through writing, through connecting to other TCKs, through the visual arts, through theatre, through faith, and through friendships, but they must be expressed.

Accept that we are a combination of worlds.

We are not chameleons and we are not impostors.

We wished that we lived closer.

In the shared experience of being other, we find belonging and rest…

A man becomes attached to his place, he becomes one with it. It becomes a part of his person, of his inner self, so that anything that happens to his place also affects his person.

As we learn to tell our stories we understand not only the complexity of our experience, but the complexity of the human experience, the human heart.

Perhaps our unspoken fear is that if we learn to sing songs of joy in this new place, this new land, then we will forget the old, we will lose our identity, all that we know, all that is familiar… Yet this is the beauty of a God of movement, a God of place. He is not limited by geography.

Our journey often begins through the faith and calling of our parents, rooted in the past but grown and sustained through our own decisions of faith.

Missionary kids are called. But they are called to God Himself. After that, it’s anyone’s guess.

Since birth I lived in a culture in between.

We are confined and defined by place… so when those places are taken away, we suffer from a “disruption” of place… And if not worked through, the “deprivation” of place gives way to profound grief and struggles with identity.

I grieved the realization that I may never live overseas again, an ache in my bones.

Grieving well means understanding and living with the paradox of grief being universal and grief being personal and unique.

I was one plane ride away from losing family, identity, and skills that had proved themselves so necessary and reliable during my formative years.

I have saudade. I have that longing for something that “does not and cannot exist.”

There is no too young to travel.

Being able to travel is one of life’s greatest gifts… The airport is a place where I don’t have to try. It’s where I can fully be comfortable between worlds.

At times I have faced tremendous insecurity around ‘belonging.’

Passports… remain our tickets to the world we love.

When pieces are lost, we struggle to find them again.