I think a place can change you.

I think we can go places and we come back different. Something has changed. Maybe it is us or maybe it is them – whatever it is, something is different now.

The thing about growing up as a third culture kid (TCK), is that we’ve experienced too many cultures to ever just call one place home. I’ve lived in different cities across 3 different countries, I’ve been places, seen things and come back to find that either I have changed or the place I called home has changed. Things are never the same as we remembered it. Peoples lives move on. Time never stands still as much as we can sometimes want it to.

I have a friend who went to a third world country and he came back different. He saw pain, hunger, poverty and suffering with his own eyes. He saw small children die of AIDS. He went to try to do something. When he came back he was not the same anymore. I think it made him realise alot of things that he used to care about in sleepy suburbia seem all of a sudden small and insignificant. That there are more important things in life than finding a parking space in the parking lot. Or getting annoyed that the neighbors dog keeps pooping on your front lawn. We live a very comfortable life here in Perth.

Like I said, a place can change you.

I was talking to my friend as she drove me home tonight about her own experience of leaving the country and then coming back. We both agreed that we come back, after seeing different cultures and people, with different eyes. You come back wondering where or how you fit in this familiar, yet different home. Sometimes I still struggle with this. I wonder how I fit in. Or how people now relate to me and vice versa. Its just about different life experiences.

My best friend went to China and she came back different. She came back changed. It was good and it was part of the journey God had her on. The experience molded and shaped her into the beautiful person she is today. I wouldn’t change a thing about her.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Perth. I love my life, my friends, my church and everything else my life consists of. God’s given me so much and I am really blessed, sometimes more than I think I even realise. But I know that with me leaving this place, this country and culture, when I come back, life here won’t be how I left it.

I guess thats what also makes life exciting, God has us all on a journey. I sometimes get an itch to want to go out and do something. To dig my fingers in the dirt and grass stains on my knees, to experience something that will change me. I think life’s too short to not. I think with God we never really know how the journey will really pan out, but we know and trust that whatever it is, or wherever it is, with Him it will be Good.