The What-Ifs of a TCK Life

I try to be honest when I write on this blog, and today I have to be honest with you, my readers, about some of my human flaws. I don't know if this will be a happy, neutral, or sad post, but it's something that has been on my heart lately.

I have to admit that I have spent a lot of time wondering what my life could have looked like. I wonder things like who would I be, what would my life be like, and where would I be now if I had never moved overseas to Indonesia and instead spent all my years in the States. Actually, I think a lot of us think about what life "would have been like" if we had not done this or gone there. It's a natural human reaction to think about "what ifs" and dream of a different life. But it's also a human reaction that shows our ungratefulness and regret. It's a broken system, an unrealistic world that will never be because all that time is past. I never really feel fulfilled when I think about the what ifs of life, instead it usually leaves me feeling emptier and kind of sad, yet for some reason I still like to entertain that aspect of life regardless.

Some of my what ifs are somewhat realistic, and some... not so much. Some are dreams of less heartache of missing people because - in my theoretical dream life of what ifs - I only know the people in my town or state, and the rest are at least in the same country that I am in. And for me, just the same country is sometimes enough for me to feel closer. Some are dreams of having gotten to be in a big high school and be a "normal" teenager growing up in a normal high school where it's not a small bubble where everyone knows your business and getting to go to prom. Some are dreams of getting to go through driver's ed (even though it's awful, I hear) and getting my license when I turned 16. Some are dreams of getting to grow up with my best friend next door and be friends with someone I have known my whole life. Instead, I get to meet new people every 10 years, and no one is a "life-long" best friend. Some are dreams of getting to play on the 4th and 5th graders' playground at Monroe Elementary, because I had to move away before I got to move up. Some are dreams of getting to have my grandparents and aunts and uncles at my graduation, because at least they wouldn't have to spend a lot of money and travel half way across the world to get there. I often get stuck in trying to imagine what it would feel like to know where "home" is, and not just trying to figure out some abstract perspective of it, or trying to accept that I don't have a home, or trying to come up with a five part answer to the question "so, where are you from?"

Sometimes I am thankful that my family remained fairly "western" when we lived in Indonesia. Sometimes, though, I feel like an in between TCK who isn't quite American but isn't quite influenced by the Indonesian culture either. I have a lot of American TCK friends who are more Indonesian than I am, even if they were not in Indonesia longer than I was. Even they make me feel like I don't belong. They know more of the language, they love the food more, they lived closer to the locals and had relationships with them that I couldn't really have. I learned a lot of the language, but not as much as they did. Their parents grew up in Indonesia and have generations of influence, but my parents were in Indonesia as long as I was. They know more Indonesian songs, and make fun of dangdut in a way that I can't fully understand. I feel like I don't know where I belong on the "TCK chart."

I just don't know how to feel sometimes when I don't fit in with Americans like I'm "supposed to" and when I don't fit in with TCKs who grew up with me in Indonesia either. It is easy to complain when I compare my life to someone else's life. It is easy to complain and compare when I'm in the middle of a lifestyle that is already a middle of two worlds. But does that give me any excuse to justify my complaints and justify dreaming of a different life? No, it absolutely does not. I am still being ungrateful when I wish for a different life, and I am still being sinful when I don't thank God for every blessing and hardship he has given me. He has given me life and for that alone I should be grateful. God did not give me my life so that I could complain and wish for something different. God gave me my life, and all the unique things about it, so that I could have my own place in this world to be a part of other peoples' lives and make my own mark on the world.

Maybe these are all okay things to miss. Maybe not being a TCK would bore me to death and I would have spent my whole life wishing for something more, craving something other than a non-TCK life. Perhaps I am a little bit disillusioned at what a non-TCK's life is like. Maybe if I had gotten these things in my life, it would have been a good thing - but maybe it would have been really, really bad for me. I have heard before that when God says no to something in your life, he is protecting you from something worse than what is going to happen to you. It's not important for me to figure out. In fact, the answer to what would have happened is not anything I need to figure out. What difference will it make in my life?

 God has given me an incredible life - through the good times and the bad times - and I should be thanking Him for each day of breath that He has granted me. I should be thankful for the culture that I got to experience first-hand, the food I got to eat, the relationships I made, and the person all my experiences have made me today. Each direction my life has gone has been tailored perfectly for what I have needed because my God knows me better than anyone, and He is my life-long best friend that I have always had. He is my Home, and all of those dreams of a what if world are meaningless when I look at what God has done in my life and as I can only imagine what else He is going to do.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.

He makes me lie down in green pastures, 

he leads me beside quiet waters,

he restores my soul.

He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

Even though I walk

 through the valley of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil,

for you are with me;

your rod and your staff,

they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me 

in the presence of my enemies.

You anoint my head with oil;

my cup overflows.

Surely goodness and love will follow me

all the days of my life,

and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

{Psalm 23}

Redefinition

Did you know that you can look up the word "definition" in a dictionary and receive an answer? It seems a bit redundant to me, but I guess I can see there being a need for it just for definition sake. But did you also know that if you look up the definition of "definition" that one of the answers you will get is, "a statement expressing the essential nature of something." That's all it is - I know, I was not surprised either. Although, I don't really know what I expected to get otherwise. My point is, I looked up "definition" because I wanted to know what actually qualified something as a definition. It seems words, laws, trends, and all things society have been adjusted accordingly to how someone wants the said thing to be defined. Is definition something I can create for myself then? If you really want me to go on a word spree about that, just send me back to Mr. Schaffer's 11th and 12th grade AP English classes (because I would love to talk to him about that!).

No, where I am going to go with that, is towards what things have meant for me - what they have been defined as for me - over the course of my life. Since I moved back to the United States a little over a year ago, I have had quite a few moments of culture shock and transition chaos and pain. [And not to mention, I made it 11 months in the States before I left it again - not even a whole year (ugh)!] I have written about some of it, and I have talked to friends about a lot, and kept a good bit of it to myself. But one thing that really got to me near the end of this last semester of freshman year of university was realizing what things mean to me now.

I spent a lot of time during my 11th and 12th grade years of high school preparing for and thinking about what my first year of college would look like, and what the summer before it would look like. I could see it: the summer would mean my sister's wedding, the MK transition seminar at Cedarville for 2 weeks, spend time in Janesville with my sister and new brother-in-law, figure out how to get to Kentucky for school, and pack all my stuff up to move into a dorm room, and then the school year would just be something I would have to figure out like every other "normal" high school graduate does - there was nothing too different about that, right?

But not once did I think about what the summer after freshman year would look like. I can honestly say I did not prepare for that one bit. It hit me near the middle of the spring semester when people began talking about their summer plans and going home for the summer and getting their summer job back and spending time with friends and family. I held my breath during those conversations a lot because I was afraid to be asked what my summer plans were because, frankly, I didn't have any plans. I didn't even have friends to plan summer things to do with because all my friends are spread out across the globe - literally! I had 4 different locations to go if I wanted to visit any of my immediate family members, or I could just stay in Kentucky for the summer. I really did not know.

I had joked with my friend Amanda about coming to Canada with her at some point, and as summer neared, it became a reality and we started planning our summer together. As I began packing up and figuring out my passport stuff, it all began to really hit me: this was all mostly new to me. Suddenly the end of the school year and graduation did not necessarily mean extreme heartbreak and long-expected goodbyes to people who were going across the globe. Suddenly packing for summer meant find somewhere called "home" to store my entire dorm room of stuff and pack what I need for 3 months, and it no longer meant grab this red suitcase and pack less than 50 pounds of whatever you need for the summer as we drive around the United States visiting people. Suddenly going out of the country by myself "just for fun" was an option and my summer plans were focused mostly on just me and not really influenced by 4 other family members' plans for the summer. I wasn't playing tag-along anymore. I wasn't playing the red suitcase game anymore.

Being in university, being an adult, and (for a part of the year) living on my own means a lot of redefinition. If I had not made any summer plans for myself, I would be in a bit of chaos. I like the independence that comes with moving out and going to university, I like the opportunities that I am given to spend half of a summer in Canada, and I have really learned to appreciate kind and generous people who will let me store over half of my belongings in their basement and people who will house and feed me for two months.

It is sort of intimidating and scary to realize how much I am on my own right now, but I know that this may not last forever and I should really take advantage of the time and freedom and independence that I have now. With each new step of in my life, I am redefining what the end of each school year means for me. I am redefining what summer means and packing means, and I am constantly redefining what "home" means. I get to chose what the essential nature of these things mean for me, while it may mean something completely different for someone else. I am thankful that things will not always be as they were, while also a little bit sad that some things will never be the same. Life comes with change, and if we can't accept that and embrace it, how are we going to every fully live life for what it can offer us?