I’m not from here.

So I recently have sort of reactivated this blog, and I decided to change the name to ‘earthly vagabond’.

Some of this naming stems from the fact that I’m a TCK (Third Culture Kid or Global Nomad or whatever you want to call us wacky, culturally homeless kids. I’ve chosen ‘vagabond’ for myself.) I can call two very different places and cultures equally home, and a third culture forms a deep part of who I am. Now, once again, I’ve moved to a new community, though not an entirely new society. Calling that many places home automatically strips you from being able to call any one place really home. Parts of your heart will always, always be left elsewhere. I’m sure millions of people can identify with this to some degree, whether they’ve culture-hopped throughout their lifetime or not.

But us TCKs, we’re a strange breed. We grow up with a million homes and yet no particular home of our own. Swapping cultures and languages becomes second-nature for us. Sometimes that life can be confusing and hard and a little unbearable, because we do become homeless, in many ways. When I lived in Spain I was American, when I came back to America I was from Spain. You become ‘the outsider’ wherever you go. I’ve watched it play out for many of my TCK friends: Muslims, Evangelicals, Catholics… we come in all shapes and sizes and racial origins.

It’s worth it, absolutely. I wouldn’t trade my culture-filled, vagabond up-bringing for the world. Our live are so ENRICHED and filled and overflowing with worlds of perspective and wisdom – all just handed to us! We’re given so many experiences, and people, and places, and ideas to fill our minds and test our beliefs and make us figure out exactly who we are and what we think. Honestly, the times when being a TCK was really hard feel like a very, very distant past, but there was a time when the hard part was painfully real.

But here’s the thing I’ve learned by growing up in this vagabond life: I’m not from here!

No place on Earth was ever meant to be my home, and no place on Earth ever should become my real home.

I am a citizen of HEAVEN!

Oh glory, hallelujah I belong in Zion! Living a vagabond life feels so right, because earthly homelessness is normal when your citizenry is in glory. 

And so I am thankful for my vagabond life, for the earthly homelessness it has taught me. I’m not from here, I’m just on a really long trip, passing through the earth until I get back to my REAL passport country. That’ll be such a crazy wonderful day, I can’t even imagine! Right now I feel like Abraham, just trudging along in faith, pretty clueless about my homeland, but so so sure that it is mine, that it is wonderful, and that I’m meant to be there!

I claim my earthly vagabond life. So joyfully!