Heritage

Critical to the development of an MK's identity is an awareness and acknowledgement of our spiritual heritage. One remarkable member of our tribe is the late Ruth Bell Graham, evengelist Billy Graham's wife. Ruth was a missionary kid to China and attended boarding school in North Korea. She re-entered the U.S. to attend Wheaton College where she met Billy Graham. They married and had five children. Ruth credited her sacrifical sharing of her husband ( with the world!)to her heart for the lost which was kindled at a very early age in China. Ruth's faith sustained her during her long separations from her husband. The poem below shows the depth of her character and her awareness of her identity in Christ as she departs China for the U.S. to attend college:

Test me, Lord, and give me strength
to meet each test
unflinching, unafraid;
not striving nervously to do my best,
not self-assured, or careless as in jest,
but with Your aid.

Purge me, Lord, and give me grace
to bear the heat
of cleansing flame;
not bitter at my lowly lot, but meet
to bear my share of suffering and keep sweet,
in Jesus' Name.

Ruth Bell Graham
Aboard the S.S. President McKinley, leaving China for college in America. 1937

Perpetuating Marginality

More from Mary Edwards Wertsch:

"....military brats spend a great deal more of their childhoods on the outside looking in than on the inside looking out.....Standing on the sidelines observing other people's in-groups becomes a way of life- and the outsider way of life that was forced by circumstance during childhood is then perpetuated into adulthood by military brats who know no other way to be....While it is hard to perpetually live the outsider role, it is harder still to abandon it. The outsider role is the central paradox of a military brat's life. A sense of belonging is our single greatest need and our single greatest quest- yet many military brats perpetuate their own marginality by making choices that are guaranteed to keep them on the outside."

Psychological Diaspora

Mary Edwards Wertsch, a TCK/military brat who authored the landmark study," Military Brats: Legacies of Childhood Inside the Fortress", writes about belonging and loss in this excerpt from her essay, entitled, "Outside Looking In":

"The first legacy of military childhood transience is what might be called the psychological diaspora. As adults most of us manage to slow or stop the moving- and yet still we find ourselves caught up in a strange migration. It is a migration of the soul, all the more mysterious to us because it has no clear origin and no certain goal.
There is only one antidote to the angst of the diaspora. Belonging. It is not easy for a military brat to learn what that even means, much less to find it. Yet belonging is the single greatest quest of our lives, a quest that lives in many of us as a powerful unnamed yearning.
My feeling is that it is crucial for military brats to put the right name to this yearning, face our unrequited need to belong, and address it as best we can.... Another corollary seems to be that for military brats, a prerequisite to belonging is grieving over not belonging and repeated loss. That stands to reason: it is necessary to break down the old immunity before one can become attached to something new. And belonging, more than anything else, is about attachment."

" I Have To Do It On My Own..."

"I had a profound spiritual life the year before I went to Taitung. I learned to pray to God and felt close to Him. However because everything in my set changed upon arriving Taiwan, and I had very little emotional support. I felt like even God Himself did not care anymore. I felt like He didn't hear my prayers. Later on, I found out God had been faithful to me, but it was my feelings towards my parents, my sister and my environment that caused me to lose my trust in God. Because of my feelings, here are the lies I believed:

'When I experience grief, loss and culture shock, God is not with me and He does not help me. He doesn't care how I feel and He won't be there to see me through. Moreover, significant people in my life will not be there for me as well. I have to do it on my own.' "

Spiritual Heritage Of TCKs
Cindy Loong

"Why do you say, O Jacob, and complain, O Israel,
'My way is hidden from the Lord; my cause is disregarded by
my God?' Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary,and His understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint."

Isaiah 40:27-31

" When a family embarks on a missionary career, they have chosen to be more stretched culturally, personally, and spiritually. This is not because God considers them better than others, but because God has chosen to reveal His grace through their lives. The pain of the relational, cultural and even spiritual gaps of the missionary life is part and parcel of the missionary calling. It is what missionary families sign up for."

Growing Up Global- What a TCK's Life Is Like
Compiled and Edited By Cindy Loong