Twenty-Two Years in a Paragraph

In 2004, six months into our marriage, my husband heard God’s call to leave his engineering job and do business as mission overseas. We had been praying for the Middle East with a group at church, and one of the leaders asked us to consider moving to Türkiye with him and his family. Three years later, following intense training and a lot of fanfare, we were on a plane headed for our new home. Life and ministry in Türkiye didn’t look anything like I expected, but I muddled through for nearly eight years, working, learning the language, and raising our first two kids. Then, in 2015, we decided to move back to America. We’ve now been back for 11 years. But to understand where we are now, I need to take you back to the beginning.

God Pulls a Fast One

My own relationship with cross-cultural work is long and complicated. I was raised on the mission field by church planters. I absolutely loved my childhood, and any sacrifices that came with missionary kid (MK) life were far outweighed by the benefits of being exposed to so many amazing people, places, and experiences.

In college, being a Third Culture Kid (TCK) was my core identity. Everyone knew I had grown up overseas—I made sure of it. I was proud of my unique upbringing (thanks, Mom and Dad, but I’ll take the credit for that). People often asked me if I planned to go into missions. The adventurer in me was drawn to the possibility that God might one day call me into the “family business,” but the reality was that I didn’t know what I wanted. I was ruled by a deep-seated obsession to please others and win their approval. However, I knew firsthand that a life in missions would require me to sacrifice my comfort and control. I wasn’t ready to say yes to that. Deep down, I resented God’s claim on my life and was terrified of what he might demand of me. In short, I didn’t trust him or his ways.

So, I hedged my bets and made a bargain with God. I told him that if he called me into missions, he absolutely, under no circumstances, could send me to a Muslim country. Those people were weird and they scared me. This arrangement gave me a sense of control, and I felt like it was a fair compromise.

Life quickly unraveled out of my control when my husband, who said he would never to go into missions when we were dating, began talking about moving to Türkiye, a Muslim-majority country! I felt like God had pulled a fast one on me. I could have said no, but that felt silly. Was I really going to be a Jonah and run away from God? Besides, the people-pleasing praise addict in me basked in all the positive attention and accolades that came as part of the deal. On top of that, I had been conditioned all my life to believe that missions is a higher calling, the highest, really. So, despite my fear and hesitation, the TCK in me rose to the challenge. I could handle this. If God was calling us, he would make it all work out and I would come to love this country I had zero desire to live in.

The Struggle Is Real

I’m still surprised by my naïveté those first years in Türkiye. I never expected to feel so foreign in a foreign country. Everything was hard and humbling. While my husband was embracing the culture and thriving in his MBA program, I was homesick, lonely, and depressed. I plowed on, but my refusal to be honest and admit that I was struggling only made it worse.

My pride took a big hit as I labored to learn Turkish. I was humiliated by my growing inventory of cultural faux pas. In short, I was disappointed by my performance. I expected to fall in love with the people and culture. Once again, I bargained with God: Fine, you brought me to a Muslim country, but you must make it comfortable and enjoyable at some point. He never agreed to this, of course, and it finally dawned on me one day that I wanted to love Turks in my own strength. God wanted me to love them in his. I didn’t know how to do this. I did, however, come to terms with the reality that I would not appreciate this country the way I expected, the way so many other foreigners seemed able to do. But ultimately, this is not what God was asking of me. He was after my obedience and a deeper dependence on him, not a superficial enjoyment of my circumstances.

There were, of course, beautifully redeeming qualities of our life there: Diving into the rich culture and history of such a unique region of the world, learning a foreign language, building sweet friendships with Turks and other like-minded workers, overcoming my fear and suspicion of Muslims and seeing them as people. One of the most impactful aspects was our team life. Our family has never had such close-knit and vulnerable community as we did there. The teams we were part of truly lived out the gospel sacrificially, practiced peacemaking, and brimmed with godly wisdom. Doing life with them was a privilege that would change us and our understanding of the Body of Christ forever.

Leaving Behind More Than Furniture

After nearly eight years in Türkiye and all the varied experiences it afforded us, God made it clear to my husband that it was time to return to America. We sold our stuff, packed our bags and said our good-byes. I was a little sad but mostly relieved and so excited to go home. The struggle was over. I could raise our kids around family. I could shed my foreignness. I could be comfortable again. How naïve I was. I would soon discover how inextricably Türkiye had woven its way into our core identity.

As my husband began the arduous and stressful process of trying to re-enter the corporate workforce of America, I got us settled in our home and prepared to have our third child. We were normal, average Americans working and raising kids. On one hand, we embraced the anonymity, relieved to be out of the “fishbowl” where our lives felt on display to friends, neighbors, and even supporters. But it didn’t take long to see that life in America was disorienting on every level.

We had lost the missional purpose and focus that guided us. Everything we did in Türkiye, even the most mundane tasks, felt more intentional because it was all reinforced by our reason for being there: to live out and share the gospel. Nothing about America felt intentional. It was a default location.

Ok then, we would just double down and determine to live intentionally here. We would simply find a new purpose, a new ministry to throw ourselves into. There was no shortage of options. We sought God out for a new calling, anything to fill the void. But he didn’t call us to anything new. He wouldn’t fill the void.

It would take years to unravel all of this, but I believe God was doing a beautiful stripping work in us. He was taking away what we had come to depend on for our identity and worth. He wanted us to understand that simply being his children is enough; abiding in his presence is a worthy calling. The highest calling, really. I began to see God not as a utilitarian deity that demands more and more of his subjects (like forcing them to move to places they don’t want to go), but as a loving, faithful father who chooses to lead his children through deserts to grow their faith and dependence on him. My relationship with God slowly became less transactional and more personal. I stopped bargaining and started believing that he was worthy of my trust.

By not replacing Türkiye with another calling, God was teaching us that ministry is not the goal-oriented, results-driven work we assumed it needed to be. God’s calling is not about where I am or what I do. It’s a moment-by-moment practice of laying down my life and surrendering to his will, whether that’s making dinner, changing a diaper, or having tea with a neighbor. Life is naturally supernatural and every part of it—mundane or magnificent—is consecrated by him and to him.

After 11 years of life in America, we are still grasping what it means to be missional in our average, ordinary lives. We are slowly learning how to cultivate a relationship with Jesus that is less about doing and more about being. It will take the rest of our lives, and that’s something I will happily give him. He is trustworthy.