One of the blogs that I (David) enjoy following is a life overseas: the mission conversation, you might have noticed I’ve added their button to our website. Last week they had a post on Third culture kids, commonly known as TCKs.

The post was a letter to parents of TCKs with a few reminders that I’ve heard over the years through the various training programs that we have attended, but one of the issues that always seem to be a challenge for me is what the long term effect will be on them for living outside their passport country as children.

I know that I struggle with the fact that they don’t get all of the various opportunities that another child in our passport country might be able to have. First point in the blog GUILT WILL GET YOU NOWHERE. The next point was where is back home, from time to time Jonah might blurt out “I want to go back home to FRANCE.” Thankfully he doesn’t say this very often, but we struggle to make where we are a home where they can feel safe and know that where ever we are sleeping is home. Or wherever there is a trail of blue tape.

So at the dinner table tonight when one of our children asked “what’s a garbage disposal?”, we just smiled and explained that in the USA many people have a machine attached to their sinks where they can put the food that they don’t finish and the machine chops it up into small pieces and down the drain, instead of in a pink compost bucket under the sink like us.

No guilt today, just a little chuckle about a small machine that hasn’t made it to our kitchen in Cameroon. One of these days we will need to explain what a street address is. Not this week though.