I stand out in a room, and I’m used to that at this point, but I also am quickly identified as an immigrant by my accent when talking to people. Last weekend while I was away on camp, I had a conversation with an adult TCK who had come to talk about Voice of the Martyrs to a group of youth leaders and ignite a passion to pray for the global church. As we talked on Sunday morning, I mentioned my part time work with TCKs.
“I’m a TCK!” he lit up.
“I know, you mentioned your cross-cultural moves last night!” I beamed.
“I raised TCKs!” he continued.
With genuine joy he brought his daughter over to meet me who also lit up and went to grab her friend sitting at another table, “She’s a TCK too!”
Friday night as I was chatting with a new visitor to youth group keen to come along again, he mentioned he was born in Scotland and moved to New Zealand when he was six.
“Have you ever heard the term Third Culture Kid?” I asked.
What a joy filling my soul as I told him I work with loads of kids who navigate the complicated cross-cultural experiences that he’d never had a name for.
This morning at church, the worship band had two TCKs playing on stage with their immigrant parents as well as two other immigrants and another adult TCK.
What excites me about the work I do with TCKs is giving voice for differences in a way to bring inclusion and create connection rather than highlight division. The two young adult TCKs chatting with me at camp had a monocultural friend join our conversation, and I got to share with her some beautiful ways in which we all have unique stories and are able to have compassion for the things that take more adjustment when we’re either integrating into a new culture or welcoming someone who has different defaults of thinking or acting in social situations.
CS Lewis has this quote on friendship that says, “Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, ‘What! You too! I thought I was the only one!’” TCKs connect on loads of identity things even when they’ve never shared a city because they get something about transition between places and adapting in relationships. My role is to bridge them into those new spaces and help them find the human connections in wherever they’re placed.
One of these precious souls confessed the season of her life where she isolated and refused to make new connections because she knew the people wouldn’t last after the inevitable next move. I nodded along and affirmed that’s a very common TCK response. The truth is, making friends is hard even in monocultural settings, and it’s difficult to be vulnerable and forge new friendships no matter your background. That’s a human thing.
All of us as humans have a chance to be vulnerable and reach out to someone to share an interest or on the other end listen to someone else share what interests them. Mel led our youth group games on Friday night with an activity where you walked to one side of the room or the other based on preferences like cats/dogs or savoury/sweet foods and told the room, “Look around at your side, even if you don’t know them yet, you know you have at least one thing in common with them.” I loved that perspective of how easy it might be to find a starting point to connect with someone.
Sure you won’t be best friends with everyone, but there will be a number of people who do respond with that genuine, “What! You too! I thought I was the only one!”
