Barbara: Hi everyone- welcome to 40 minutes of faith. My name is Barbara Cox and I host this weekly podcast to explore God's word and our relationship with God.
Today's guest is Becky Powell. She's from Richmond, Virginia, and has lived in at least 11 places, currently in the black forest region of Germany. We met Becky and her husband of 20 years when we were both attending a military chapel in the Kaiserslautern Germany area. Becky was raised Baptist, ordained Presbyterian, and earned a doctorate degree on the religious practice and faith development in international churches.
She's been an army religious educator attending Anglican, Episcopal congregations, and supporting all military members in their families of all religions for the past 12 years. After she retires, Becky would like to return her focus to third culture kids and today we're going to be talking about third culture kids. So that's why she's here for the second time as a guest on our podcast. Welcome, Becky. What's new in Germany since you and I talked the last time?
Becky: thank you, Barbara. It's good to be with you again. COVID is still on in Germany. We've had major lockdown again. So we're learning how to be present but being alone and it's particularly difficult time for people who are expatriates or other multinational families.
I did spend some time meeting with a counselor in tele-health and one of the things that she taught me was to reframe my story. And instead of spending my days going, I hate this, to put my life in a new lens and perspective.
And so I've gone back and looked at biblical themes and the Hebrew scriptures were very helpful for me being reminded of Deuteronomy chapter 26, verse five, “a wandering Armenian was my father.”
Barbara: Exactly. That was the first Bible verse that you selected for today. And for anyone who wanting to check it out, Deuteronomy is at the very beginning of the Bible. It's part of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. The living Bible has a slightly longer phrase: “You shall then say before the Lord your God. My ancestors were migrant Aramaeans who went to Egypt for refuge. They were few in number, but in Egypt they became a mighty nation.”
Becky, could you explain what a third culture kid is and how it relates to this Bible verse?
Becky: Third culture kids is shorthand that some sociologists did 60 years ago, researching and looking at the experience of English workers in India.
And they said, the Indian nation that's culture number one. But these people who came from great Britain brought their customs, clotted cream and their scones, and that's culture two. But they realized that particularly the children of the population neither fully exhibited the cultural markers of the host nation, India, nor fully exhibited the cultural markers of the home nation, the passport nation, the United Kingdom- they're third culture kids. It's a third thing.
So an individual who spent a significant part of their development years at a culture other than the parent’s culture- could be 18 years, could be 18 months. It's something that's meaningful and important in the perspective of that child growing up, they don't have a full ownership of anything.
Barbara: I have an interesting statistic. I attended a screening of a movie about third culture kids, many of whom are military brats, but not all, of course. And there was a presentation after the movie and there's books and websites as well. And they said that a lot of third culture kids and military brats, but not universally, end up actually marrying someone who's from the same place and who lived in the same place their whole life. And I thought that was pretty amazing.
I actually had a lump in my throat for most of the movie and the presentation afterwards, because it was so amazing to hear this validation of my lived experience, even though I don't need research to support my growing up experience. It was really amazing to see. So I would encourage folks to take a look at some of these books and websites that we have in addition to today's conversation if you don't know anything about it, or if this is you. There's so many other people who feel a little bit homeless, without a homeland- you may have lived in a bunch of different places, but you do have the home in your soul, and we're going to be tying this whole conversation to faith as well.
Becky: it can be very isolating. When I was beginning my research, I lived in a very monocultural town, serving a community where everyone said I'm from here and it wasn't until I'd been there several years, that one of my close confidants finally confided in me that she was a missionary child.
She hadn't lived there until adulthood - she had lived all over. And it took her a lot of years to trust me well enough with their story, because she wanted so desperately to belong and to be like the people around her. And one of the things we go back to is we are reframing our narrative to say, it's okay to not have spent every day of our lives in a particular place.
Barbara: there's some resilience and some strengths. So what are some of the blessings and strengths of growing up as a third culture kid? In addition, of course, to the challenges, because we want to be honest about that. It's not all butterflies and sunshine as much as we would like it to be.
Becky: The resilience is not automatic. We were not made for solitude. We were not made to go through our days without seeing and being with and relating to others. We were made to understand and to be understood. And when we have those relationships that I call in my research social scaffolding, which I took out of developmental psychology.
When we have that around us, then we will thrive. Positive psychology, Martin Seligman, and others are talking now about flourishing and thriving. Meaning, you're going to go through a time where you're placed in a place that's not your own, but you can still do a beautiful thing and be significant in the world.
Barbara: would you explain social scaffolding?
Becky: if you could go to Paris, you would see that Notre Dame cathedral is covered in scaffolding. It is holding it up. It is keeping it from falling over. If it didn't have the scaffolding on the cathedral, it would have completely disintegrated. Me, you and each person who has lived in the international community, we go through traumas of farewells, whether are other people leaving.
If we have people and places, and perhaps even symbols that we can touch and feel, then we can go through these traumas successfully and come out thriving. Just as a seed is put in the ground, you know, pinecone might go in the ground and you covered with dirt and you water it and it gets fertilizer and it gets sun.
And maybe you've got a tree farmer, like the tree farmers that live around my house and they nurture it and they make sure they protect it and it grows up to be a beautiful tree. Sometimes the trees around me are shored up by scaffolding wood around it to hold it up while it is establishing.
And for particularly children in this international third culture community, they need that. We need that. I need that. So it's the people around us that hold us up just like would, or bars will hold up a structure or a tree.
Barbara: Do you have a couple of specific examples about a benefit of growing up as a third culture child?
Becky: I am from Richmond, Virginia, but I haven't lived there at all since 1995. That's a long time. I still have an identity there. But I've been transformed and seen the world in a different way in my child and all the children who were raised in military missionary, diplomat, corporate wives have the opportunity to look and see the places and people.
They have a higher empathy, their linguistic skills. They have unique way of analyzing that's outside the normal monocultural way.
Barbara: I grew up thinking that many places, in my case in Europe, were perfectly normal and the United States was perfectly normal. So Europe, to me, wasn't some exotic, strange place. So coming back to the United States was some reverse culture shock because I didn't grow up in the United States, but I had, I thought, to the extent that an eight year old can have a global perspective. I love the United States. It's absolutely my passport country, no doubt about it, but we're one part of the globe. We're not the whole globe.
Becky: people who are the third culture can watch the world news and experience trauma that a monocultural person might not because when they see an earthquake happening in Japan, they think that's my friend who's living there- is my friend Okay? When they see revolutionary Wars happening in various countries or Ebola breaking out. They wonder how is my friend who was living there? On the other hand, the strength is someone of the international community could probably couch surf anywhere they go in the world because either they will know someone in that region where they traveled to, or they will have a friend who has a friend. And so you have the connection where if you were intentional and reaching out then you can have that scaffolding in place, no matter where you drop down into.
Barbara: I have an action question for you that's related to a Bible verse that I selected because due to my relocating a lot, this is especially meaningful for me.
It's in Matthew 25. Matthew is towards the end of your Bible. One of the four gospels at the beginning of the new Testament and from the new revised standard version, verse 35 says, “for I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”
And I don't know if all third culture kids or military brats necessarily feel like they're a stranger often, but I am curious about how people and specifically faith communities, how can we actively welcome people who are relocating, whether they're third culture kids or not, but especially since that's what we're talking about today, because there's a significant subset of the population that feels like a stranger when they get somewhere.
Becky: If a third culture kid experiences from birth the sensation of being a stranger, and whether they're in a host nation or their passport nation, they will always feel as a stranger, unless they're with others who have gone through these experiences.
So they're better able to be the welcomer. Because they know what it is to be the foreigner- the best ushers and congregations I've ever seen have all been adult third culture kids, every single one of them. But it is a frightening thing coming in. If a third culture kid enters a congregation as an adult or as a child, they want the connection, but they're going to be tentative in how they ask for it.
They will perhaps seek an intense relationship very quickly, or just look at their calendar and say, well, I'm leaving here in six months anyway, I'll just be a participant observer in this congregation. Walter Brueggemann is a theologian and he linked social relationships with the expressions of the relationships that individuals have with God.
He talks about times of homecoming when people can return to the societies where they do not need to be defended or doubted. And another researcher was wonderful and looked at Korean churches in America, and two different researchers have done this and they found that non-English speakers entering the United States frequently feel more different from the culture because they don't share faith with that culture, than their ethnicity or their linguistics or their passport. So the churches in the international community are incredibly important and normal churches need to recognize that they always have to be intentional about reaching out.
They shouldn't buy into the theology of the hallmark channel that says, obviously you will be with your biological legal family for holidays. We are called to be apart, be separate from the culture and to be together as an intentional family of choice.
Barbara: I'm so glad that you mentioned people who have come to the United States from other cultures who become third culture families when they get to the United States, but they maybe didn't grow up as a third culture situation because then we've got folks around us who are in need of a warmer welcome. Everyone's in need of a welcome, but when you're kind of looking around going okay, what's going on, I need to learn pretty much everything from scratch, except what I already know from where I'm from, that this is a very strong encouragement and an invitation to really reach out. Because if we're talking about sharing God's love, that sure is one way to do it.
Becky: God is not bound by geography. You know, we all want places and people in geographic connection, and God does give us those spaces. I look outside and I see the snow-covered trees of the black forest today. God is here with me in this place and God honors those desires to be in a place.
But it's important to know that God does not get left behind when we leave our family members or those places we held dear elsewhere. And I think it's very empowering when I work with third culture kids or adult third culture kids to say, if your grandmother has given you grief, cause you're not in Omaha for Christmas.
And she says, you should come home for Christmas. Particularly if she's a person of faith, you say, Jesus was not born in his grandmother's town. Jesus spent his earliest years in Egypt as a refugee. Jesus returned “home” to Nazareth, which is his parents’ home location and linguistic group and culture after he had learned to walk and talk, because we extrapolate from the gospels.
So it is more normal biblically to not be bound to a location than it is to identify solely with this is my zip code. This is my place. This is my one and only language and way of eating. I think you just call Jesus a third culture kid. He is.
I love that you go back to the earliest examples of written scripture and what Christendom and Judaism and Islam share is that these are coming out of an experience, an Epic saga between God and humanity in which, while places are important, people are not stuck in the place. They do not remain in the place. I mean, Genesis chapter two and three Adam and Eve, they are not staying in Eden. God cares for them in their going and the saga is one of going. It's very difficult to say that it's okay to not be fully at home until you're at home in heaven. But that's what you take on when you make the professional faith as a Christian, is that you believe in this God who will give you this ultimate experience of belonging elsewhere.
Barbara: When we got to Massachusetts, I met people for the first time who had- well, I'm sure I met people before, but I just don't remember. But folks who were so strongly rooted in the community where they lived and they had lots of relatives within a short drive who lived nearby and they might go on vacation to some farther away places, but this was their hometown. And now in upstate New York, the same thing. But our experience is that moving around is normal.
And I'm wondering if you have some examples of experiences that third culture kids might have when they returned to the country where they are quote from, and it's not all good? Hopefully they have some wonderful experiences. After we talk about some of these examples, how can people actively support folks who are coming back?
Becky: The state department had one of its family liaison officers years ago, write a fantastic book. It's very short and it's in the public domain and I sent you the link for that. “According to my passport, I'm coming home.” And it was written for adolescents who are going with their parents to their passport nation.
And the parents are eager to return to this place they call home, but the teenagers might never have lived there. And the teenager might have an idolatry of this will be the place. I can't wait to get there, eat this type of food and go to these types of shops and see these types of people.
But there's incredible disappointment that invariably happened once when you return to your home place to your passport location. It's not perfect. People aren't necessarily great. Even if you're moving back to the house in which you used to live.
So there's that sense of isolation can still occur and sometimes is worse because of a disappointment. And it takes more intentional connections, reaching out from the community and reaching out from the person who's entered the community. But if you want to welcome a new person's your community, the worst thing you can say is where are you from?
Barbara: I was born in here then my brother was born in this other state. Then we moved over here when I was two. Then I graduated from high school in this other state. I graduated from college in this other state.
Becky: And that's how this lady I knew for many years had covered up her third culture. When she moved to that place, they said, where are you from? And she just picked a place and she claimed that place, whatever it was, as where she was from. And it is even more isolating because you are then hiding a piece of who you are, but third culture kids and adults of the third culture, whether they're raised in or entered it find ways of expressing that- once we were with relatives in a park in England, and someone came up to the family and asked us, where are you from? And we all paused and we looked at each other.
Barbara: the whole story, the long story, or just the easy, quick, short version?
Becky: somebody answered the question and said, I am from, and we left it at that. We just looked at each other and we embraced each other and said, we are family. And that's why you are a piece of my daughter's family and my family. Cause we're family of choice.
So we have to reframe our individual isolated lives and look for the blessings that might be there for us in the people we get to select to be in our lives. And the third culture kid, I think the critical thing is as with every child is their experience is formed by their parents' choices.
Barbara: what would be something better to say?
Becky: Hey, nice to meet you. Tell me about yourself.
Barbara: That's an open invitation.
Becky: the other opening gambit to conversation. It's good to have you today. I love the coat you're wearing, or I enjoyed hearing your voice singing or whatever you can do, or hi, my name is, and I'm glad you're here.
Barbara: I don't also mean to make fun of people because I really think it's our cultural norm to say, hi, how are you? The expected answer is fine. How are you? I'm fine too. And then the, where are you from? I'm from, you know, wherever. And then we kind of move on. So I don't mean to say that people are uncaring, but just maybe inadvertently how we phrase questions can be more welcoming.
Becky: And for some cultures you say Hi, how are you? They really think I actually do care and they do give me a full-on answer.
Barbara: We had to learn the opposite and partly because everybody knows each other, but they want to know how was your mother's surgery, if that's applicable, not for either of us right now, or your cousin just got married or whatever.
They like a really long, let's catch each other up on what's happened since the last time we talked and it actually is sincere and it's an expectation to have that whole chit-chat and then some of us are like, okay, this is not why we're here, which is ridiculous to even say that well, for me, maybe that is really why we're here. Why do we have to get down to business so quickly?
Becky: one of the researchers on third culture and military brat research once was having a crisis. She loved her husband. He loved his job. She'd raised her children, she was empty nesting and they were remaining in the location. She enjoyed her house, her community, but her closets were dirty. Her attic was cluttered and she didn't know what to do about it because in her whole life, she had never reorganized a closet.
Barbara: You don't stay long enough to have to do that. You're just gone.
Becky: Yep. You're packing up. Reorganize my Christmas things by putting away with expectation of relocating this year. And I sorted out what I'm going to keep and get rid of.
And so that's a thing, but we need to recognize that the scripture is written in Hebrew and in Greek, new Testament were quite clear. The pillar of fire and smoke and movement that the going is not a wandering aimlessly. It is a wandering Arameans and of being led and directed.
Barbara: So there could be a purpose to moving, not just kind of running away and sometimes staying put feels comforting and sometimes staying put, could possibly lead to stagnation.
And sometimes it's also a long process of discerning God's will because I'd like to submit my wishlist and get a stamp of approval and that's totally unrealistic and not necessarily the best faith move either, but to just listen to different opportunities and to try to discern. What God's will for my life right now?
Becky: Yeah. A lot of military families do the retirement button and by age 60, it is a crisis when they have to select a place in a house where they think I'm going to live here for the rest of my life, as terrified because the pressure is on to pick a place that's going to be perfect.
And on the other hand, some of them will just never let go and just be in a place or we'll select next careers. I had lost track of the number of military adults who were raised as missionary kids or corporate kids or diplomat kids who rebelled and didn't want anything to do with their parents’ way of life. And so they became military and a lot of missionary, adults were military brats or other third culture kids. It's children not realizing they just changed sectors of the third pillar.
Barbara: Yeah. You kind of get used to it and it doesn't bother you so much. And then other people say, well, that must be so hard. And yeah, there's definitely some hard aspects of it. And that's also a further conversation, even among adults and friendships and things like that. But I do want to make sure that we get to all of these resources that we promised. Cause we've got three websites and two additional books on top of what was mentioned.
And one, Becky, mentioned you specifically is Www.tckidnow.com
Lots of information about third culture kids. And I also wanted to point out that everybody knows this, but it's really true. You can't judge a book by its cover because I knew two guys in college and one of them had a family of origin from another country, but had lived entirely in the United States, sounded like an American, but looked like obviously from the family of origin, from another place. And then one of our friends was just white as can be blonde hair, blue eyes. And that particular person had grown up in the same country where this other person's family was originally from, and the white kid spoke the language better than the kid who had grown up in the United States.
Even though you hear your parents talking, you soak up some of it, but what you learned as a little kid, isn't the same as conversations that you have if you're going to school in this culture and growing older. So they were like opposite. They kind of joked around about that.
They were the opposite on the inside and the outside. And you can't tell when you look, but you make assumptions and those assumptions aren't always true, either.
Becky: No. And some of my colleagues have done research, one on hidden immigrants, people who look like everyone else around them, but really think and have a worldview that's from a very different place- you and I have some shared friends who live in Japan right now, and those children are being raised with an understanding- you will be always marked by the life of being in Japan, and they might look very Northern European, but they might think and feel and express themselves in a very Japanese way. .
Barbara: another website that's very meaningful to me, and I want to also be clear when we're talking about military brats. We're not insulting these young people. It's an acronym that came out of the United Kingdom. So Brats does not mean you're acting bratty. It might sound like it's pejorative, but it's not intended to be. So the first website is www.bratswithoutborders.org And there have actually been international reunion set up because what happens if you graduate from a high school in a country other than the United States, and then you move back to the United States?
So the online community is really strong and then connected with that is www.bratsOurjourneyhome.com And that will include the information from the movie that I had mentioned and just lists and lists of other books. So if the military kid angle is something that you're interested in, I would highly recommend those two websites.
Becky: I would, too. They're fantastic. Donna Musil is a dear friend and colleague, and she's also an auntie for my daughter. And she's a part of my fictive family. And she's done some amazing work and she's found a lot of adult military brats who have hated their lives growing up in a highly mobile situation, but now look back and say, wow, this was positive in my life. I would also recommend Craig Sorti’s books “the art of crossing cultures” and “the art of coming home.” He is a culture and communication researcher and has done a lot of really wonderful works on the life of being an adult or child coming and going across these national boundaries or the cultural boundaries. I can tell you that Manhattan (NY) and rural Texas is as big of a cultural divide as, or maybe bigger, than Manhattan and London or Manhattan and Abu Dhabi.
So you don't have to do a linguistic or passport shift. I use the language of passport nation as a quick way of saying where you're from.
Barbara: what color is on the outside of your passport? And we also have the whole concept of many of these resources are basically secular in nature.
But since this is a faith-based podcast, we also want to include that aspect of the conversation. And many of these resources will talk about children of missionaries. So then there's that whole faith aspect built into their experience. And then military chapels are also often very active communities of getting to know people who may be on a similar page as you in a faith based manner.
And then you had also recommended “third culture kids” by David Pollock and Ruth van Reken. So we'll have that listed as well.
Becky: Dave and Ruth were both significant in my life and in my research and they were missionary kids. And so their work, while written in a secular sense, their faith and their experience as a Christian is infused in their understandings.
Barbara: And then in addition to the military kids that we've talked about and children of missionaries, there are just business folks, attorneys, people associated with the state department and the embassies.
So this isn't really a pigeonhole. We're not trying to put people into a box, but just to explain the concept. One of my friends lived in Japan for years with an American attorney, having a job over there and the kids growing up. So that's another example of the food, the clothing, the whole culture, are children allowed to go places by themselves in different ways in different countries? And then readjusting to that when you returned back to your “home of origin”.
Becky: Pastor's kids who never leave their home country and might never do such radical changes as Manhattan to Texas, they also bear these markers because they live with the expectation of perhaps leaving.
There are a lot of other career fields or parental choices. I've run across a lot of people whose moms and dads just had the wanderlust. And it was inexplicably otherwise. So they were raised moving every couple of years, but there's no military, missionary, diplomatic, corporate behind their mobility. It is just their parents relocated a lot.
Barbara: I'm really glad you said let's be sensitive to folks who move around the United States because there are huge cultural differences from many States to many other States. So we've really focused on the international aspect of this. Becky, any final thoughts for us today?
Becky: you gotta be open to understanding that your faith is as significant as your culture.
Barbara: and trusting God in that whole process of getting to know people over and over again and having some wonderful adventures and having some heartbreaks- that's part of it too. So thank you for your time today, Becky.
Becky: I enjoy chatting with you anytime.
Resources:
Deuteronomy 26:5
Matthew 25:35
According to My Passport, I'm Coming Home - Kay Branaman Eakin
https://1997-2001.state.gov/flo/paper14.pdf
Third Culture Kids - David Pollock and Ruth van Reken
The Art of Coming Home - Craig Sorti
Https://www.bratswithoutborders.org
Http://www.bratsourjourneyhome.com/life.htm