We are many, yet one

I am a TCK, born in 1940 of missionary parents in Costa Rica, as are my three children, born in Guatemala to missionary parents. In truth, we TCKs are a “multitude,” born or raised in countries different from our parents' origin. We have studied in other cultures, learned other languages, been misunderstood and confused, experienced culture shock, and cross-cultural, international life. We are “global nomads,” a category including children of diplomats and military, international businesspeople, wandering hippies, and a host of others who share parallel lives. I very recently captured a new insight: Refugees, migrants, and immigrants are also TCKs. Their first generation will battle more with these issues, but it will have a long-term impact on these family systems.

My journey

Some of our community battle wounds and identity crises. Not all had parents with correct priorities. When I examined my own family system, it seemed that my parents, especially my mother, valued ministry over family. Mom and Dad loved us, but their parenting was passive. This passivity slowly wove into my understanding of God—he was “there and available” but really busy: “Billy, hurry up, you have only 15 minutes with God.” It also affected my marriage as I began as a passive husband and parent—until my wife, Yvonne, challenged me, helping me change. I did not demythologize my missionary family until my early 50s, and it became a long-term, painful process of truth discovering, myth dissolving, and family-secret uncovering. My sister and I were sent to separate boarding schools. Why was my experience positive, hers devastating? Why did she apparently die without faith in historic Christianity?

Returning to the USA as a high school senior (in a previous millennium and century), neither my parents nor our agency facilitated my transition orientation. Zip. Nada. I well remember how I recoiled at my first close encounter with a pizza. Who would eat such a huge elephant scab?! Well, I did, but even today I eat pizza with a wry smile and remembrance of my shock. I started college at age 17, terribly immature, but preparing to become a missionary.
For two years, I was a wandering nomad, specializing in ping pong, trying to discover who I was and where I was headed—other than to some vague foreign country. Following university studies, the four years at Dallas Theological Seminary provided a place and space for me to mature, to solidify my own “call-vocation” in cross-cultural service.

I married a mature native Texan, and together we went to Guatemala, a marvelous and challenging season for family and ministry. Our three kids studied in an international trilingual school. Friendships with Latins flourished. But after 17 years of service (teaching at the Seminario Teológico Centroamericano, serving the IFES-related Grupo Evangélico Universitario, and church planting), God moved us out of my dreams. I was slated to teach at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School—a future lifetime vocation. Perhaps in our fourth month there, Yvonne gave me a prophetic word, “Bill, TEDS is great for you, but not the place of God’s protection for our family.” We moved to a small Arkansas town where the family completed our transition.

But I was stunned. Within two years, I had lost Latin America, Spanish, formal teaching, even pastoral gifting. God enrolled me in an advanced “Desert Training.” Yet ironically, that series of “deaths” opened doors to a “resurrection,” serving the WEA MC (World Evangelical Alliance Mission Commission). The desert prepared me to lead, travel, speak, encourage, build consensus, love, mentor, and guide the MC. That covered 20 years, with another decade as its senior mentor, publications coordinator, and co-leader of our missiological reflection teams. God was there.

Then, upon moving to Austin, Texas in 1990, Yvonne entered a two-and-a-half year journey in the “Dark Night of the Soul.” Few evangelicals understood it, nor how ancient Christian faith streams addressed it. A close doctor friend suggested that Yvonne’s “mild depression” could be solved with meds. I shared that with her. Days later: “Bill, God took me into the darkness, and if I short-circuit his work, I may miss what he has for me.” No meds.

I found a Christian counselor for her, and we went together. To my utter astonishment, he spoke to me first. I interjected, “Hey Kyle, I’m the chauffeur. We are here because of Yvonne, not me.” Ignoring my protest, his penetrating, uncomfortable questions nailed me. Then he asked, “Bill, have you ever thanked God that he brought you to the United States?” That was easy to answer, “NO!” His terse response annihilated me, “Bill, until you thank God that he brought you here, you will never be released to the fullness of what the Lord has for you—based in the USA.” His tough assignments between sessions led me to deep freedom, and a release from the long-term passivity that had so marked me. To this day, I am not sure if he helped Yvonne. Perhaps my transformation contributed to her healing.

Over those three WEA decades, the Spirit of God transformed me. I found courage to shift and grow in my ecclesiology from low evangelical to a decade in a charismatic church to Anglican. I transitioned from cessationist to empowered evangelical—the gifts are all for today. The Spirit was a mystery to embrace but not a certainty
to master; my spirituality sunk deeper roots. My theology of mission matured and became robust; I became a reflective practitioner, always on pilgrimage. In my latter years, God surprised me with lavish gifts. I want to live in wonder. I also grappled with suffering and unanswered prayer.

Wider canvas

We are Quijote’s offspring—our fathers and mothers have ridden (as have we) through strange lands, investing their lives in a campaign of struggle, defeat, victory. Yet we had neither voice nor vote in those decisions. They had responded to a divine challenge, that of taking the gospel to other cultures and serving Jesus there, long-term.
Both parents and children paid a high price. But on the positive ledger, we are bicultural, rooting for the underdog, questioning our nation’s foreign policies, many of us still bi-lingual. We have a broader frame of reference. We really feel at home on a long airplane ride—it does not really matter our destination—it’s the journey. We understand each other, keenly, wordlessly.

Some of our adult tribe are still confused as to what culture they belong to; others battled reintegration into their passport country, especially with new educational systems. We are obviously not full citizens of the adoptive missionary country, but sometimes we are ambivalent with our passport. We are a mixture, a combination of values, cultures, languages, personal identity. Even reaching adulthood, we wonder where home is. In my 70s, I took out Costa Rican citizenship in my search for plenary cultural identity. Inevitably, on a long-term flight “somewhere,” people ask where I am from. “Ah, that’s rather complicated, but…”

How do we want to be treated? We want friends to ask serious questions about our lives. We wish our pastors and spiritual leaders could understand our unique experiences, taking our lives as TCKs seriously. We wish more Christian counselors would do the same. We want mission mobilizers and enthusiastic recruiters to be honest and vulnerable about the challenges of long-term cross-cultural service. Do not sugarcoat the cost!

I think mission leadership and agencies are much more sensitive to us TCKs today. Counselors and psychologists are present who understand our unique and peculiar status and cultural identity. I thank God for the rich menu of ministries dedicated to healing our mission force. Throughout my 60 years in vocational mission, I have seen the growth of churches, agencies, counselors, and missionary leaders purposed to seek the missionary family’s highest good. This is especially true of mission agencies with both experience and resources, less so for self-sent workers.

Since 1983, I have been deeply involved in the Latin American missionary movement. I witnessed its birth and growing maturity. Yet we need more contexts with the infrastructure necessary to offer pre-field training, field- based strategic guidance, pastoral support, supervision, and time to be nurtured and strengthened back “home” and on the field.

For 30 years I served the WEA Mission Commission, privileged to ascertain the global awareness of thoughtful and contextualized member care. I carefully studied the unique investment Korean missions made to care for the missionary family, especially their TCKs who returned for university studies in an unbelievably competitive educational world. I also visited Nigerian MK schools, where 12-year-olds were learning to read because their parents, serving in Islamic communities, could not allow their kids to attend Qur'anic schools.

Drawing to a close

Bill, Christine, David, and Stephanie. TCKs. Younger and older Quijotes. Multicultural people; international believers on mission; individuals with a mix of cultural orientation. We have also been lonely, confused, and misunderstood. By God’s grace, we are what we are.

Sometimes people ask me if I regret being a missionary child. It deserves a reasoned answer. I would never have changed my fundamental experience of being the son of a missionary, nor having lived in Latin America, where our children were born. But I’m honest. It hasn’t been easy. I still revisit my experience, family system, and agency ethos to process it. I can thus better guide the current and prospective generations of future missionaries. I grieve, also. Too many of our guild struggle with faith or totally walk away from Christ. Others struggle with the contradictions of family systems and wounds. Most of us are rather OK, to the humorous surprise of some of my missionary psychologists. “Taylor, with all of your stuff, we are rather nonplussed by how healthy you are.”

Quijote’s daughters and sons. On the cusp of 85, I like that phrase, thanking God for this transformative life reality. I recommend it. But it does come with a price. And I am still processing it.