TCK Voices: Appreciate Where You Are

Today we have Anna with us! Welcome, Anna!

Can you tell us a bit about yourself and the different cultures you are part of?

I was born in Colorado and lived there until I was six, when my family moved to Cyprus to be missionaries for the organization Youth for Christ. I lived in Cyprus for 11 years.

The Cypriot culture and the international community I was a part of were super warm and friendly. I loved living there as a little kid. As I got a bit older, though, I started to resent how small the island was and how few opportunities I had. 

But by the last few years of high school, I began to love it again. I found a good group of friends and started exploring my city more. I realized how lucky I was to have grown up in a foreign country. 

Now I live in the Netherlands. I just moved here at the start of the school year to study illustration.

Is there a memory from your time in one of your non-passport countries that you would like to share? 

I had a new class starting at my university in the Netherlands, and no one had told me where the class was. 

There are three different university buildings spread out across the city. So, half an hour before my class started, I picked one and showed up at the reception desk to see if they knew where my class was. 

After half an hour, with three of them searching and calling people, they finally found it. Of course, my class wasn’t in that building. After cycling 15 minutes back from the direction I had come, and getting lost in the new building, I finally found my class and arrived 30 minutes late. 

Luckily, the class still hadn’t started, so I sat down in the back. The professor started the class, but it was all in Dutch. I don’t speak Dutch and had already made sure I was put in an English class, so I just sat there really confused and said nothing. But then the teacher started pointing at different people in the class, and they said a bunch of things in Dutch. 

Then he pointed at me, and I just looked at him and finally said, “I’m sorry, I have no idea what’s going on. I thought this class was in English.”

It turns out the class I was supposed to be in was canceled, and the school forgot to tell me.

What is the hardest thing about being a TCK?

I think for me, the hardest part about being a TCK is feeling like I don’t have a home. I have never felt very connected to a place. As a little kid, that didn’t bother me, and as I got older, I started to see my home as my family rather than the place I was in. 

Now that I have moved away from my family, that’s become a problem because I have nothing that feels like home. I am having to learn how to live somewhere where I don’t have anyone to attach my life to and how to make my new “home.”

Who was someone that you met in one of your non-passport countries that made a difference in your life, and how?

My friend Hayley made one of the biggest differences in my life. She moved to Cyprus when I was in the final years of high school. 

She made such a difference because she was the first adult to not treat me like a kid. She would talk to me like a real person, give me good advice, and invite me to things that gave me more independence than I had ever had. 

She would always go on fun new adventures, like a hike in the mountains, a picnic at an archaeological site, or field hockey at an old basketball court. During all these activities, or while driving to them, we would have really good conversations as equals that helped me grow as a person and in my faith.

What characteristic of God have you learned most about in your life as a TCK?

I have seen God’s provision a lot in my life. When I was young, I was oblivious to it, but now I notice all the things He does for me. I don’t know where I would be today without Him.

Especially in going to university, there are so many things I can see God’s hand in. First from getting into university, to finding housing, to interacting with my classmates and finding Christian friends, to even just seeing how my classes have worked out. 

A lot of the things I have seen God’s provision in don’t seem that big to other people, but they are a really big deal to me. Nobody else understands how much one thing or problem may be affecting you. 

I think it is good to look back at your life to see the times God was working and you didn’t notice. Doing that has strengthened my faith, and I just think it’s really cool seeing all the little things He’s done for me that I hadn’t noticed.

What is one thing you would like to tell your fellow TCKs?

I think it’s important to appreciate where you are and what you have right now. When you move around so much, it is easy to miss what you had or to think about what you might have in the next place and completely ignore what you have in the present.

I regret not fully appreciating Cyprus until the last few years I lived there. I would have found its good things so much more quickly if I hadn’t been wishing I were living in a bigger country. And now that I live in a bigger country and in a much bigger city, I miss the warm, small-town feel of Cyprus. 

No place will ever be perfect, so start embracing where you are in the world and in life, rather than comparing it to where you have been and where you hope you will be. As a TCK, you get to have a unique and interesting life, and it would be a shame not to realize that until it’s too late.

Thank you so much for sharing with us, Anna!