An expatriate (often shortened to expat) is a person temporarily or permanently residing, as an immigrant, in a country other than that of their citizenship.  – Wikipedia

In 2008, I reluctantly followed my husband thousands of miles from my Florida “home” as he pursued his dream of living internationally.  My brain and logic recognized that our move was a wise decision, at least financially, but my heart and emotions were not convinced.  I was quite satisfied and content with our predictable and routine life, filled with beautiful sunrises over the Atlantic and sunsets over the Gulf, road trips to visit family and Chick-Fil-A whenever I wanted it.  Getting on the plane that December morning was the hardest thing I had ever done.

For years my heart remained firmly established in Florida and I had to check it at the airport departure line every time I returned to our international home.  As we had decided to spend a good portion of our children’s young lives overseas, I began reading about “Third Culture Kids (TCK)” or kids who spend “a significant amount of time in a culture other than that of their parents.”  One concept that stood out to me was that TCKs tend to put roots in people rather than places.  I liked this.  It sounded like a Christian concept to me.  I knew as a Christian that this world is not our home and that we are just here temporarily.  It appealed to me to teach our kids this truth in a very real way, but I still knew that while all of this was true and was a great lesson for our kids and other Christians, I would always consider Florida my home  – at least while I was here on earth.

Without realizing it, my heart subtly began accompanying me back to our overseas home.  My expat friends along with my friends who are citizens in my expat country soon became my family. The food in our country of residence became the food I missed while we were on our annual repatriation trip to Florida.  Our company issued house which has witnessed many dinner parties and game nights, baby showers, book clubs, bridge games, Bible studies and movie nights, as well as the birth of two children in our family, became our home.  It took about six or seven years, but I came to the place where I could honestly say my heart was equally divided between my home in Florida and my home overseas.  I loved being in one home while my heart longed for the other at the same time.

Then on August 3, 2016 I put my twenty month old son down for his afternoon nap.  It was a routine occurrence and we followed our afternoon nap routine – change the diaper, sing a song while cuddling, a kiss on the forehead and on the cheeks and then put down to sleep in the crib.  It never occurred to me that while I was just two rooms away making matching pajama pants for him and his older brother, that Henry would leave his temporary home here on earth and enter his permanent home in Heaven.   At different times throughout the following hour – during my attempt at CPR until the paramedics arrived, during the seemingly unending ambulance ride to the hospital and during the announcement of what I already knew to be true by the emergency department nurse and doctor, it occurred to me numerous times and with shocking clarity that my life would never again be complete.   No matter what happened in the future, no matter where we lived or if we would have more children or not, no matter what wonderful or terrible things we would encounter, my life – my person would ALWAYS be incomplete without sweet Henry.

It wasn’t until a month or two later that I realized that while my incompleteness had become harshly real to me that day in August, it had actually always existed – long before Henry was born and before he died.  The illusion of “home” and routine and settledness in which I had put a lot of my hope and trust, was simply that – an illusion.   We are all literally a breath, a heartbeat away from massive change in our lives.   I have friends who have recently lost their jobs due to large scale company lay-offs.  The tragedy of an expat being laid off is that not only does he lose his income, but he also loses his home, his community, his children’s schools, his physicians, his church, his past-times and daily contact with his friends.   I have friends who have had to go back to their “home” country quickly to say goodby to or bury a loved one.  I also have friends who, like me, have had to pick up and move forward after the tragic loss of a precious child.  And all of this is because we are not home yet.

In the song “Blessings,” Laura Story says,

What if my greatest disappointments
Or the aching of this life
Is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can’t satisfy

The fact is, we are created to be eternal beings and to live in perfect communion with God. Our time on this flawed earth is but a brief encounter in our eternal story.  This world cannot quench our thirst or complete us.  Like my expat country began to feel like home, our expat place on earth often feels like home.  But we cannot forget that we are all expats and that we are far from home.  As children of God and followers of Christ, we are citizens of another Kingdom, simply residing in a foreign land for a brief period of time.  Henry’s time as an expat on earth ended and he is settled in his perfect home.  If you, like me, find yourself feeling complete, feeling settled and safe in your routines, and putting a lot of confidence, faith and sense of happiness in your home on earth- I encourage you to uproot yourselves in some way and remember where your true roots lie.  Remember that you too are an expat.