While I stood at the kitchen counter chopping veggies for a salad, I tapped the icons on my phone to call my mom. She and I often feel lonely at dusk, so I’ve started calling her around suppertime while I prepare dinner. Mom’s voice sounded weary. “Hi, Honey.” I was a little concerned but began with my usual question. “How are you doing today?” “Well, right now I’m feeling depressed. I don’t like that the radio station plays Christmas music…
The dorm Auntie kissed each of us four girls goodnight and turned out the light in my bedroom in the boarding school dorm in Nigeria. “Good night,” my roommate said, a little too loudly for the Auntie’s liking. “Good night. No more talking after your light is out. You’re the last room in the hall, and I don’t want to hear another peep from anyone.” The short, dark-haired lady’s voice was firm. Her skirt swished as she turned, and her…
In July, I posted a short article about the MK/TCK reunion Chris and I attended over the July 4th weekend. It was wonderful to see so many people with whom I had gone to school as a child in Nigeria. The group was made up of MKs, TCKs, Nigerians, expats, and their spouses. (*Terms are explained below.) As in any school reunion, we chatted, got reacquainted, and shared familiar stories of bygone days. On Saturday morning we had a large…
Over the July 4th weekend, approximately 110 missionary kids (MKs) and their spouses gathered for a reunion to explore The DNA of an MK. Every three years we hold a reunion for both of the boarding schools I attended in Nigeria.… and no, the reunions aren’t in Nigeria! The location alternates between Indianapolis and Dallas, the two cities in which the volunteer organizers live. At each reunion, only three or four people from my graduating class attend. However, because they…
Sitting in a women’s Bible study, I looked around the circle at the smiling faces. Am I the only one who has trouble with forgiveness? I wondered. As a six-year-old, my heart shattered when I was sent to boarding school for several years. When I returned home for vacation, I couldn’t express to my parents the homesickness, rejection, and abandonment I experienced. I felt hurt and angry. The many instances of abuse I saw from people who were supposed to…
At the end of my first year at boarding school I was so excited to go home. I’d made a few friends and learned the ropes but hoped I wouldn’t ever return.
On my first night in the dormitory at Kent Academy, the auntie on duty pointed toward the tall bunk bed against the right-hand wall of Room 15. “You’re in the top bunk,” she said. In my unfamiliar bedroom at the end of the first-grade hall, my stomach tightened, and my six-year-old voice squeaked like a mouse. “Do I have to sleep way up there? But how do I get up so high?” I’ve never slept so high off the ground….
Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you; therefore, he will rise up to show you compassion. For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him! Isaiah 30:18 (NIV) The tall, harried woman loomed in our doorway, hands on her hips. “Debbie! What on earth are you doing?” Stretched out on my bed in the dormitory for missionaries’ children in Nigeria, my body stiffened. I knew I was in trouble. Earlier in the…