Susan Lafferty“This feels like an earthquake.”
Every week brings news of another person, couple, or family leaving. Exiting an area of the world where we live and serve at the time.
They retire early. Or move back home to pursue something new.
It starts large. Shaking hard. Then we feel tremor after tremor.
Enough to unsteady the feet.
And trouble the mind.
Exiles in Babylon.
God’s Word to them felt deeply personal to us. During a particularly violent and unsettling season.
People were leaving our city. Families sent back to their home countries. Anti-American sentiment had ramped up more than ever.
Should we leave?
At one point my dad—who never, ever tried to interfere or direct us in any way—wrote “In my daily Bible study I keep seeing the words, ‘Flee Babylon…flee Babylon.” (Jeremiah 49:30; 50:8,16; 51:6)
In the early 1980s, I was invited to a strategic gathering.
Large group. All different ages. Raised in countries on every continent. Brought together on purpose.
Why? To gain understanding of a term coined by Ruth Hill Useem in the 1950s.
And now found in Webster’s dictionary.
Third culture kid. TCK.
