Prayer from a College Dorm Room (again)

School is back again and y’all, it changes nothing for me. Which is weird after so many years of the school years and summers dictating our calendar. But I’m watching my friends send their TCKs (third culture kids) to college and it reminds me of a prayer I wrote a few years ago. It’s on this blog already, but I’m pulling it out of the depths of the website’s basement and dusting it off (and correcting a typo!).

To all my friends whose TCKs are going to college,

To all the TCKs going to college,

Speaking as a TCK who returned to my passport country for college:

I see you! And I know its…complicated.

So here’s the prayer, maybe you can pray it too.

A TCK Perspective of Psalm 139

You see all of me, when others see only the parts I choose.

You know all of my moves when I feel invisible. 

When I’m misunderstood, 

(because my skin color doesn’t match my culture,

Or my accent tells everyone I belong here, but I have no idea what it means to be “here”)

You, Lord, know all my actions and You understand my thoughts when I don’t even understand them.

You see:

Every choice I make during the day and my thoughts and dreams as I drift to sleep… 

When I say inspiring statements from a worldview wider than those around me…

When I trip up on my words and feel like an idiot…

You get me. 

Sometimes I feel alone, like a piece of driftwood in a terrible storm. Will I make it?

In those times, I’ve forgotten that You surround me: in back, in front, Your hand holds me.

I don’t understand it. I can’t wrap my mind around it. It just is.

I left my family and my home far behind.

But I found that You are here as much as You were there.

I look into the sky, the same one I saw in my other world. A million miles away. But nothing feels familiar. 

Except You. You are the same. 

It’s not bad: being here.

Sometimes I’m soaring in the clouds.

When I am, You are there. Smiling. You understand that I’ve never had the chance to do this, to see this; and You know I’ve been looking forward to it, though it’s normal to everyone else.

But sometimes it’s really hard: being here. 

I didn’t know my heart could feel so low.

When it does, You are there. Holding my hand. You understand that I have to cross bridges that others don’t, that I’m a little surprised by it, and it makes me lonely.

And some days I think I’m not going to make it. On the days I want to give up, there You are, holding Your hand out to me.

Then I remember: You formed me before my parents even knew I existed. The same hands that formed Mount Everest, carved the Nile River, flung the stars into space, taught each plant and animal how to survive: 

Those hands made me.

Each day that I spent back at home, and each day I spend here in my new world:

They are all written in Your book and You saw them before the sun rose and set on any of them. 

My thoughts are finite and known well by You. 

Your thoughts are infinite, their depth of meaning too high to grasp. Their number more than the grains of sand in the Sahara.

And this: This God—The One True God—is here…with me…every time I open my eyes to  another day.

Why wouldn’t I be angry when people speak badly about You? When they toss Your name out of their lips like an absurd expletive. Or deny You exist. Or simply ignore You altogether. This makes my blood boil.

I have seen with my physical eyes the world You have made. 

I have seen with my spiritual eyes the work You are doing in the world You made.

So I trust You.

Examine my heart, my thoughts, my ways.

I am a miss-matched mess of cultures who wants to follow You.

Eternally.