The human heart is delicate.

Beyond muscle, chambers and veins; there within lies the dwelling place of our spirit, emotions and will. For this, the heart is a beautiful thing in all it represents.

It is more than a muscle.

It contains the essence of who we are, it is the space that God instills all that we are called to be. And yet something of such great worth is so easily fractured.

Even my own fragility sometimes surprises me.

So here I am again, awake, when I should be asleep.

Tired and bleary eyed, I am sitting here in front of my laptop. Wishing I could write something magnificently insightful that would express the knot of imagery and fragmented commentary that’s been churning inside my belly for the past couple days.

But, I am unable to articulate past the words “I think…“

‘Uniquely Me’ 

I am
a confusion of cultures
Uniquely me.
I think this is good
because I can
understand
the traveller, sojourner, foreigner,
the homesickness
that comes.
I think this is also bad
because I cannot
be understood
by the person who has sown and grown in one place.
They know not
the real meaning of homesickness
that hits me
now and then.
Sometimes I despair of
understanding them.
I am
an island
and
a United Nations.
Who can recognise either in me
but God?

This is a poem by Alex Graham James, an Australian TCK (Third Culture Kid). I first heard this poem at a TCK professional development at school this week and it just struck me. It high lights the paradoxical nature of the TCK experience – the odd sense of being profoundly connected yet at the same time disconnected with people and places around the world.

For someone who has spent her years growing up in three countries, carries two passports and has permanent residence in a third country – What is it about this cross cultural childhood that makes me feel this way?