This Christmas my husband and I did the ten hour drive up to Nyack, New York to visit some of our favorite people. We go way back–I’ve known her since I was ten and we all went to school together in Malaysia. After they graduated from high school and my husband moved back to the US, Hubby lived in New York with them and I visited a few years ago and was able to see them again too. She’s American but her family spent a ton of time in Malaysia and Vietnam and he’s Korean. During our visit, we were also able to see her sister who was another one of my friends from growing up, one of our Cambodian classmates, and a few of my little brother’s classmates. Between us there’s many ethnicities, lots of history, and a ton of distance.

All nine of us went to school together 9,213 miles away from where we met up again.

Hubby and I, the friends we went to visit *we’ll call them Steve and Lucy*, and our Cambodian classmate *we’ll call him Phil* all went out to lunch and afterwards we ran into Phil’s parents. We started a conversation and although none of us had ever met them, we introduced ourselves and were reminded just how small the missionary community is. Phil’s parents knew Lucy’s parents from meeting at our school in Malaysia. My dad had visited their family in Cambodia. They had sat next to my husband’s parents at a conference in the United States, a country where none of them even live.

None of us had ever met them and yet they knew all our parents from meetings in three different countries. 

I once went to summer camp in Colorado and met a girl in the bathroom who was local to the area. She asked where I was from and I told her our group came in from New Mexico. Her response, I kid you not, was this: Really? I’ve heard of people from outside Colorado.

Erm…I kind of thought she was joking. But then she wasn’t. How is that even possible?! I can’t even wrap my brain around not ever having left my state, let alone never having met a person from out of state.

It’s been a little over two years since I moved back to the US now. My brother visited over his spring break last week and as we walked around the commissary on base he looked at me bewildered and told me, “Sometimes I can’t believe I actually live in America now.”

What a strange thing to say. We are, in fact, Americans. Duh we live in America. But having spent most of my life outside of the US, I don’t feel like an American. I don’t fit in with Americans. My brother has a Korean roommate in college and because we grew up with so many Koreans at our school in Malaysia, he gets along with him far better than he would with an American roommate. For him, having a Korean roommate is like being at home.

Third culture kids are kids who are raised in a different culture than the one from which they are considered legally native for a significant portion of their developmental years. Technically, I am American, but I was raised in Malaysia and that makes me a TCK. My husband is also American but he spent most of his teenage years in Indonesia so he is also a TCK.

Being a TCK, “where are you from?” is one of my favorite and least favorite questions.

Well…*long pause to think about it…* California. Malaysia, really. Actually, I was born in New Mexico but then I lived in Maryland for awhile and then I spent eight years in Malaysia and then some time in England and then California. 

“Where is home?”

Umm…here? Nowhere? Everywhere? …Heaven…??! 

If they have time to listen, I enjoy explaining. If they don’t have time to listen, I just confused them. Thus is the way of life here. It makes home life interesting, too. We have half conversations in different languages without thinking twice about it.

“Apa di atas?” (My husband’s literal translation of “what is up”)

“Nothing much. But mau makan.” (I want to eat. Not exactly anything new there…)

“Bagus dude.” (Good, dude)

And so it continues. In our house, that is normal. Also normal: back when we lived in California, we had an American friend from Malaysia come visit. We had all lived in the US for awhile and a new In-N-Out was opening up in our town. None of us had ever been to In-N-Out, the quintessential American fast food experience. Also normal: when we visit Target and all our shopping is consolidated into a single store experience, we are still amazed. Also normal: we started watching the new Netflix show, Iron Fist, and there’s a scene where the main character is telling the doctor about how after his plane crashed in the Himalayas he was rescued by monks. The doctor’s expression was absolutely incredulous and I was genuinely confused. I used to ride the bus to the mall with monks. Why in the world is that unusual?

Oh yeah, America.

The main character also practices Tai Chi, a martial art designed for relaxation and self defense, and people in the show are constantly looking at him like he’s crazy. In Asia, if you look our your window at 7am, people will be meandering down the sidewalks doing Tai Chi on their morning walk. At first I thought they were weird but now when people think it’s strange I get confused.

Our normal is not normal here.

I grew up overseas and my heart never truly left. As I look through pictures of my time overseas for this post, there’s an ache of missing home. Asia isn’t home anymore, home is now here in North Carolina with my beautiful baby and the love of my life, and it’s true that for the next many years home will be wherever the Marine Corps sends us. But I don’t think I’ll ever stop wanting to go back.

In fact, we will go back. Once our time in the Marine Corps is finished, my husband will retire his uniform and we will return to Asia as dorm parents, allowing our kids to grow up with the same experiences as we did and allowing us to speak into the lives of the students we once were. Being a third culture kid has given us such a broad perspective of the world and America feels so small compared to all the places we’ve traveled and lived.

I want my kids to grow up eating in the school cafeteria feeling the ocean spray against their faces. I want them to have a white people radar where whenever they go out and they see a white person their radar goes off and they have to see if they know this person (spoiler: we usually did.) I want them to be able to tell the difference between languages and people from China, Japan, and Korea and be able to answer the phone in Korean and Japanese because why speak English when you could not? I want them to be able to experience the miracles that are chicken rice and roti canai.

Now, meeting people who grew up like we did, we instantly connect. It doesn’t matter if we know them well or even at all–sharing experiences like the ones we grew up with makes us want to cling to the familiarity and we’re basically best friends.

The best thing that came out of my time overseas was definitely meeting my husband. You can read about our story here; we met in middle school in Indonesia seven years ago last Sunday (March 19th, I still remember the day!) and fell in love in Malaysia, got engaged when I lived in England, and married in the US. He understands me and he sees my vision for our family in the future. Some of our favorite memories are of simple things like sitting outside our school student center watching tropical storms roll in over the ocean and hanging out at the Tuesday night market together.

It’s hard being back in America.

Don’t get me wrong–I am absolutely blessed to be in what is truly the land of the free. I’ve seen life in other countries and we are blessed beyond measure to be where we are with access to what we have in the house where we live. People speak the same language as me and when someone in a store tells me something will be available tomorrow they actually mean it. “Special price for you lah” isn’t a phrase that exists and the place I buy my vegetables doesn’t have stray kittens and sewage on the floor. I love my country and I am immeasurably proud of my husband and all his sacrifices to defend it–America is the bomb.

But it’s hard not feeling at home in the place that you’re from. Maybe it’s because as a Christian, my true home is in Heaven and I’m longing for a place that isn’t even here on earth. I won’t ever truly be at home until I’m with Jesus.

Maybe when I get back to Asia I’ll feel a little closer, anyway.