This morning I had a wonderful opportunity to talk with Marie Suazo, the host of Talks with a TCK Friends podcast. More details about that in the future. Through her podcast, she has created a beautiful platform to allow TCKs to sit and chat with her as a friend. Over her episodes she explores so many topics with TCKs and her natural, friendly, welcoming demeanour brings forth deep and meaningful conversation.
Our talk made me reflect on growth - that good thing that comes from challenging and thorny circumstances.
I wasn’t expecting a perfect illustration for growth in my day to day life but, the Lord allowed one to happen, and then He allowed me to write about it. I hope this is an encouragement to anyone who has or is experiencing the trial and grief of living in a broken world, the growing and strengthening that comes with that.
After breakfast, I set off with my daughter to run a few errands around Cambridge. We cycle everywhere here. My daughter, who is only 20 months, sits on a seat fastened to the back of my bike. She surveys the world around her as I pedal through traffic. We almost always cycle along the River Cam. I love hearing her voice call out behind me “A river! A bird! A river”
Her delight in Cambridge helps me to see it with new eyes each day, and I am so grateful she loves her hometown.
This morning, unfortunately, the weather was not on our side. We finished our errands quickly and I was racing home to beat the rain when the sky opened and water poured over us. It didn’t stop with water. Gusts of wind billowed around us and then, hail flung itself down. It might not have been that dramatic - but it certainly felt like it.
The wind pushed the sheets of hail into our faces, my daughter started screaming and crying, I couldn’t really see the road anymore so I pulled to the side and got off the bike. I covered my daughter’s face and I waited for the worst of the hail to pass. She kept begging me to hold her, but I wanted to wait until we were home to unstrap her from the seat. I knew that if I let her out of the bike seat in the middle of our journey, I wouldn’t be able to convince her to get back in for the rest of the cycle, and we really needed to get home (I thought about how often the Lord lets us sit in difficult circumstances because He can see beyond the storm, when we cannot).
I pushed through more torrents of rain and hail. My daughter kept crying. I nearly hit a van and was honked and yelled at by the driver, then I started crying. But, eventually, we made it home. As soon as we turned into our neighbourhood, the skies cleared. Blue patches appeared from behind the grey storm clouds, sunshine broke through the cascades of rain. It was very Biblical and if I hadn’t been soaked through I would have stopped to appreciate it a bit more.
We got off the bike, out of our cycle clothes, dried off and I set about making lunch before the reality of what had happened hit me.
When we first moved to Cambridge, in 2017, cycling was one of the most difficult transitions for me. I would get frustrated with myself for being nervous and anxious about cycling. I wouldn’t go anywhere new without Jeremiah. I would wait for him to cycle first and show me the way and then I would repeat that route in my head over and over before going alone. I didn’t understand why cycling was so hard. I had taken my driver’s test in Tennessee with minimal hassle and I wasn’t a nervous driver, even around unfamiliar roads. I had flown solo since I was thirteen and I could navigate new airports with ease. I felt I should be able to cope with anything.
But cycling nearly defeated me.
It wasn’t that I was unfit. I could run 10-12 miles easily, but I couldn’t cycle the 2 miles into town without breaking into hives and panicking. It was more about the fact that everyone else seemed to know exactly how to cycle through traffic, and I didn’t. I mean, I knew how to ride a bike, but I didn't know how to navigate the cars, the lights, the narrow cobbled streets, the crowds. And everyone else did.
The people pedalling past me in Cambridge always knew which turns to take, where the one way streets were, how to balance groceries just so, when to signal, when to be assertive. They all seemed to have the right cycling clothes, the right lights, the right gadgets. I didn’t. I felt like a four year old floundering on a creaky bike. I might as well have been cycling on the motor way with training wheels.
This is what made cycling so daunting to me - I knew it was something everyone else could do well, and I couldn’t. Everyone else knew the rules, and I didn’t. That will probably sound very familiar to anyone who has lived cross culturally. There are hundreds of examples for that feeling including things as mundane as grocery shopping, going to school, interacting in church, making friends, getting the bus and so on. If you grow up in one context, and suddenly you’re thrown into a different context, the reality is, there is a long, treacherous learning curve. It takes time. It takes effort. It takes humility.
And it is so painfully hard.
I didn’t have a lot of humility when we first moved to Cambridge (maybe I still don’t). I wanted it to be easy. I wanted the cycling to match my dreamy vision of graceful jaunts down the river with Anne of Green Gable style skirts and flowers in my basket. I didn’t want to face the reality of pushing a rattling bike along the road with a grocery laden bag because I couldn’t figure out how to cycle alongside traffic.
And yet, now, six years later, I’m writing about cycling in the hail, alongside buses and vans, with my daughter in tow, and managing to do it without hives, without panicking, without giving up and wanting to move. I was even able to send a funny text to my husband about it afterward.
It sounds like a small thing - I know that. I know that compared to the other places I’ve lived Cambridge is safe and calm and should be really easy to live in. But I also know that, from my experience, making Cambridge home has been one of the most challenging decisions. Learning how to cope with the hard bits of living here has been really difficult, even if that "hard" was just learning how to cycle on busy roads.
Now, Jeremiah and I are looking ahead to his graduation. Family are gathering next week for a ceremony. We’ll have cake and toast to his success and we’ll tuck the chapter of grad school safely behind us.
The upcoming graduation has made us both reflect on the past six years. We’ve discussed what has been asked of each of us, what has been sacrificed, how our identities have changed and shifted over the years, and how our relationship, our friendship, our marriage has grown through the challenges. We’ve talked about how grateful we are for our daughter and for our life here in Cambridge. We’ve chosen to stay for the time being, and it feels good to know that we worked diligently to build roots here. We worked hard to make community and to be intentional about living here. We’ve created a home that, for right now, we don’t want to leave. It’s especially beautiful and humbling for me to look back at the provision of the Lord that has led to where I am now - mentally and physically. I’m no longer daunted by cycling, and I think along with that, I’m no longer daunted by living - regardless of place or belonging.
And, after my hail ridden cycle, it struck me how I wanted to celebrate those small victories of growth.
Six years ago I would not have cycled alone to the other side of town, much less with my daughter. Six years ago I wouldn’t have left our flat in inclement weather. Six years ago I wouldn’t have made plans for the future, because the future was a murky void and I tried not to think about it.
Today, I cycled with my daughter, in the wind and the rain and the hail. I am planning not just for a family visit next week, but for our holidays in the next few months, for events with friends in the autumn, for writing groups and art classes in town, for life that will happen in Cambridge this year and beyond.
Those may not seem like big things to celebrate, and maybe they’re not if you’ve never experienced poor mental health or a big transition. For me, they’re huge. And I recognise that I wouldn’t be in this place of celebration without the incredibly difficult seasons. Just like no thesis is written without gruelling hours of typing and retyping, no testimony is written without constant refining.
And more often than not, that refining comes with challenges we aren’t expecting, challenges we are not interested in facing.
Growth doesn’t negate grief. The resilience that we build by going through difficulties doesn’t erase the challenge or the pain or the loss itself. But, at some point, on the other side of it all, the growth does help us to look back and see, it wasn’t for nothing. It wasn’t purposeless. It helps us to say, "I wasn’t alone - the Lord was with me. I wasn’t failing - I was growing. I wasn’t falling behind - I was making room for Hope.”
Maybe this resonates with you as an Adult TCK in the throes of your own processing, your own grief burnout, or your own life change. Maybe it resonates with you as the parents of TCKs watching your children grapple with the privilege of their life, and the losses of it. Maybe it resonates with you as someone who is struggling right now, searching for hope and waiting for the clouds to pass - if you are in your own hail storm, please feel free to reach out or check out the resources linked below. Community goes a long way in helping us heal and grow.
Wherever you are in your walk, I hope and pray you have opportunities today to reflect on the hard parts of your life - and then to reflect further on where the hard became growth and celebrate where the growth became good.
“Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” Romans 5:3-5 ESV
Recommended Books, Podcast and Resources for this topic: