Thoughts on Moving

Many people in America never move out of their state, let alone the country. Yet before I turned seventreen, I had lived on two different continents, in four different countries, and had attended over seven different schools. I have been asked numerous times how hard it is to move that often during one's childhood. Most times I find myself at a loss for words. How do I start to explain a part of my life that is as normal as breathing or eating. Moving every two to three years, sometimes short periods of time, was something I had been doing since I was born. It was not until I made the big move to the states, halfway through my eleventh grade year, that the realization hit me. The life I had lived compared to children of civilians was quite different. The sharp reality hit me out of the blue like a freight truck. I had moved so many times prior to the move "home". I havd moved to different cultures, languages, currency, rules, schools... I was living the life of a nomad and the the life of a camealian. But returning "home" to my parent's culture had turned my life upside down. I didn't even know what was happening to me until a couple years after we had made the big move. My parents and I were baffled to find out about TCKs. In the twenty plus years my dad spent overseas during his military career, no member of my family had come across this term in the military. Now granted TCKs, or the term really, came about in the fiftys, I believe. But even so, the missionary circle knows quite a lot about TCKs. When I heard about it for the first time, I was overwhelmed. I had finaly found the answer to the question I didn't know I was asking. I knew who I was, where I belonged. To a culture of people, who came from many different cultures, countries, and continents. But together we all held the same sense of belonging.