In Search of Permanence

During my time at Liberty University, I’ve been lucky enough to make a good friend whose family has become a bit of a surrogate for my own.  I spend most of my breaks at her house since Poland is simply too far to go for Thanksgiving break.  During one of my stays last semester, I found myself looking around the room that had been hers for almost her entire life.  There were pictures on the wall that ranged across her childhood, most of them showing the same group of girls as they all grew up together.  Her desk and dresser boasted several years of basketball trophies and team pictures.  There was a pin-the-tail game hanging on her closet door from a childhood birthday, and some art and VBS mementos that she had collected over time.  In other words, that room provided a fairly accurate history of her entire life. 

As I sat there looking at her room, I was suddenly struck by how much it differed from mine and my brother’s.  Our walls tend to boast posters instead of pictures, and the few photos we do consider putting up were usually taken in whatever place we’re currently living.  There’s rarely anything from before that.  We don’t tend to have shelves of old trophies or still have old artwork hanging on our closet doors.  What we do have is desks covered with souvenirs and drawers full of the physical manifestations of whatever hobbies we happen to be interested in at the time.  In all likelihood our old hobbies probably didn’t make it through the massive sorting process that set up our last move.  We just don’t have room to keep it all.  We move far too much.  By the time I arrived at college I had already moved five times in my life.  Going from Poland to Liberty University in Virginia made it six. 

It isn’t unusual for TCKs to move often.  I saw a statistic somewhere that the average TCK will move four to eight times before they reach the age of eighteen.  The average time a student stayed at our international school in Poland was about two years.  I was part of that statistic, having graduated after those two.  My brother made it three years before our parents moved to another city.  That’s just how our lives go.  Some TCKs love moving.  I have one friend whose family moved so much that she feels more at home in a house full of boxes than in one that’s been fully unpacked.  Others of us hate it with a passion.  I know some kids who swore they’d never speak to their parents again if their family had to move one more time.  Heaven help any parent that tries to move a TCK who is bound and determined to stay put. 

But regardless of how we feel about it, change is something that TCKs eventually just get used to.  In fact, sometimes it seems that change is the only permanence in our lives.  That in turn tends to affect how we see life.  We learn, some of us very early, that nothing lasts forever.  Everything, no matter how good, will eventually come to an end.  Places and people we love will eventually have to be left behind.  It’s inevitable.  Or so we think.  Often that idea leads us to build walls that make us seem distant from those around us.  It isn’t that we don’t want to make friends.  It’s that we’re afraid to pour our hearts into a beautiful friendship that we know we’ll have to leave behind in a few years.  We’ve been there and done that.  We know how much good-byes can hurt.  I heard one TCK say that he’d rather never say hello if it meant he never had to say good-bye.  Older TCKs in particular tend to wrestle often with this idea.  Is it really better to have loved and lost?  Or is it easer just to never love at all? 

This seeming cynicism can be hard for us to escape.  Most people get to a new place and ask “Why am I here?”  TCKs, on the other hand, tend to ask “For how long?”  How long do I get to be in this new place before I have to leave it?  Will it be long enough to make it worth putting down roots that will have to be ripped up later?  Or is it easier to just stay in the safety of my little plastic pot until I’m picked up again and placed elsewhere?  How many times can my heart be torn apart and glued back together before repair finally becomes impossible? 

Missionary and martyr Jim Elliot once said, “Wherever you are, be all there.”  To most people that makes perfect sense.  For TCKs, however, it can be a hard thing to do.  To be “all there” is to pour everything we have into places and ministries that we may someday have to leave behind.  It means being open with those around us, being willing to risk the possibility of an eventual broken heart on the gamble that we just might find a beautiful friendship.  Which will probably be incredibly painful to leave behind. 

There is a saying that the pain of a good-bye lets you know it was worth it.  And honestly it’s true.  Pain tells you that you have poured everything into a relationship and that you were rewarded with a friend so close that you can’t stand to leave them.  But to a TCK for whom leaving is a part of life, that repeated pain just doesn’t sound like a pleasant option.  So despite the fact that humans are social creatures who desperately need relationships and despite the fact that those friendships really may be incredibly beautiful, many TCKs, particularly older ones, are sorely tempted to instead retreat into ourselves and sit this one out.  Instead of living in the moment, we may spend all of our time trying to reclaim the past. 

Most of the college kids around me are busy looking forward.  What classes are they taking next year?  What job are they going to get once they graduate?  TCKs, however, tend to look back.  We look back on the places that we loved and try to find a way back to them.  But the truth is that even if we do get back, we often find that beloved place to be different from what we remember.  Time changes everything.  Including us. 

I myself came face-to-face with that realization this summer when I helped my family pack up our old apartment.  The next time I go home for the summer or for Christmas it will be to an apartment I’ve never seen in a city I’ve barely even visited.  My group of closest friends has now been scattered across the world.  Many of the people that I had come to think of as family are either moving on or moving out.  As I sat in my old room for the last time, I finally realized that there truly is no going back.  No matter how much I loved that place, no matter how much it felt like home, no matter how much of my heart remains there, it will never quite be the same again.  Those days are gone.  And with them has gone the sense of home that I treasured so deeply.  It felt as if a door that I had been struggling to keep open had finally been slammed in my face.  There could be no more going back.  The only option left was forward. 

In my case, forward happened to be returning to college.  I have been truly blessed with the chance to attend a wonderful school full of amazing people.  But as incredible as it might be, it just isn’t home.  As a firm believer in Christ, I know that God never leads me to a place without a reason.  There is always a ministry for me to undertake and a lesson for me to learn.  I know that in my head.  But sometimes my heart forgets it.  Some days it feels like God has led me into the desert for no reason.  Some days all I want is just to go home. 

But how can I explain that to the people around me?  How do I make them understand the overwhelming homesickness that I feel even though most days I don’t even know where home is anymore?  How can I explain to them how deeply it makes my heart ache when someone asks if I’m glad to be “home” and I’m expected to paste on a smile and nod along?  How do I explain that most days I feel like a foreigner in my own country? 

I should clarify here that I am by no means lamenting the childhood I was given.  Quite the opposite.  I loved my childhood.  I have been to so many amazing places and met so many incredible people.  Just the other day I was explaining to one of my friends that my family has visited so many castles in my life that my brother and I actually began to view Saturday trips to see yet another one as severe violations of our day off.  I can’t even count the number of times we asked my dad, “You seriously want us to get up at nine in the morning on a Saturday to go see another castle?  Are you crazy?”  Most of my college friends have never even seen a castle.  But to my brother and I, that was just a part of life. 

As much as I might have complained on those mornings when I had to roll myself out of bed and stumble down to the car to see yet another medieval fortress, there was always a part of me that knew I was beyond blessed to have that opportunity.  I will forever treasure those memories and experiences, and I can honestly say that I wouldn’t trade them for anything in the world.  But sometimes there are days when I’m looking around at the room of a friend who has spent their entire life in the same town, and for just a moment I find myself wondering what it might have been like to have spent my entire life in one place.  To have grown up with the same group of friends.  To have never had to leave.  And despite how much I loved my own childhood, there are some days when that life of permanence makes a small part of me jealous.  Because for all my incredible experiences, that person has one thing that I don’t.  They have always known exactly where home is. 

If there is one thing TCKs crave above all else, it is belonging.  We long for the knowledge that we have found a place that we truly fit, a place where we are both wanted and understood.  But a close second is our desire for permanence.  We want to be able to throw caution to the wind and pour our heart and soul into friendships that we know won’t have to end.  We want to be able to find a place where we can put down as many roots as we want without having to worry about if and when they’ll have to be ripped up again.  We want to find a place that feels like home and to know that we will never have to leave it unless we want to. 

And yet as desperate was we are for permanence, I’m beginning to discover that many older TCKs, particularly those going into college, share a deep fear of being trapped.  For most of us it’s a fear of being trapped in the United States.  We don’t really know why.  We just know that the idea of being stuck in this country for the rest of our lives is utterly terrifying.  If we dig a little deeper, however, I think that fear is actually much bigger than just having to live the rest of our lives in the United States.  No, I think what we’re really afraid of is becoming trapped in a place that we don’t feel we belong.  We’re afraid of being stuck forever in a culture that isn’t our own with people who will never really understand us.  We’re afraid of having to spend the rest of our lives in one place while our hearts are in another.  We’re afraid that we’re doomed to be forever torn in two. 

As a way of staving off that dreaded fate, many of us become something like global nomads.  We end up constantly wandering (physically, mentally, and/or emotionally), constantly searching for that special place that will finally make us feel like we belong.  But the truth is that no matter how hard we look, we will never find that place on this earth.  We may find a place that comes close, but so long as we live in this world we will never find a truly permanent home that we completely belong in.  The reason for this is simple: we weren’t made for this fallen and broken world.  We were made to live in a perfect world bathed in the glory of our creator.  Because of that we will never truly belong here. 

            On the days when I’m desperately craving a sense of home, that thought can be pretty discouraging.  But I can take heart in the knowledge that there is a day coming when those of us who have given our lives to Christ will finally stand before His throne and step into the world we were created for.  On that day we will finally find the belonging that our hearts so desperately crave.  I can only imagine how wonderful it will be to know that not only are we finally home, but that we will never ever have to leave it.  There will be no more good-byes, no more searching for the place we belong.  When that day finally arrives, we will at last be home to stay. 

 

-Ash