There is no single story when it comes to the third culture kid; the missionary kid. While we can learn and grow from research and the common themes that have emerged to form a perspective, each child has their own story. Like fingerprints, these stories are unique, formed by family of origin, personality, and life experience. There is no single story around faith either. Instead, the mystery of faith weaves through a life - sometimes accepted, sometimes rejected, but always present.
When I set out to write my memoir, Passages Through Pakistan, I thought it would be about belonging. After all, wasn't that what I had worked through for a number of years? Wasn't that part of my identity? But the more I wrote, the more I realized that the common thread woven through the narrative was not belonging. It was faith. So today I have included two excerpts from the book. My prayer is that if you are a parent or a third culture kid, you will know beyond doubt that your (and your child's) faith journey is infinitely important to God; that he can turn ashes into beauty and mourning into oil of joy.*
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...the mystery of faith weaves through a life - sometimes accepted, sometimes rejected, but always present.
All adults can point to a time when they go from the naïveté and simplicity of childhood and cross over into the complicated world of the adult. Some of these coming of-age moments are dramatic, some are profound. All are life-changing.
It is easy to dismiss these moments. They may seem undramatic, insignificant. But to the individual, the drama they represent is a one-way passage out of childhood. Once we pass through we can never go back.
For many years, I would only tell happy stories about my childhood, stories of midnight feasts and camp outs, of traveling to beautiful places and life-long friends. Years went by before I could admit that some of my childhood memories were deeply painful. If I acknowledged just how difficult they were, I would be betraying my parents and my childhood. More than that, if I mentioned the painful parts, I would have to deal with the pain, and some of it went deep.
The real reason I didn't want to tell these stories was more complicated than I wanted to admit. My parents' faith had led them to Pakistan and sustained them through the years they were there. If I was a healthy child, then teenager, then adult, no one could criticize their life choice. Here was their best defense against those critical of the missionary life. If I admitted the pain, if I was truthful about the hard stories, their defense was stripped.
But was I really worried about them? Or was I more worried about what would happen to my own faith?Read the rest at A Life Overseas - A Third Culture Kid's Story of Faith