Tag: identity

The City Within My Chest

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Yesterday, my friend Robynn shared a compelling video with me. The video was of Enrique Garcia Naranjo retelling a story about being stopped by border patrol. Before he gets into the actual story, he set the stage of where he was prior to the incident. He was speaking to a group of high school students in Douglas, Arizona, reciting a poem he had written about his life, describing his “barrio, the holiness of tacos, and the unrelenting spirit of Mexican grandmothers.” He describes the students as people between languages and cultures, as people of the border. At the end of his poem, he told them to get out pens, pencils, and paper and gave them a prompt. He asked them to write about “the city within my chest.”

The prompt deeply resonated with me, and I began pondering the physical missing of places, how sometimes it feels like they literally live within our chests. There is a heaviness to missing places and people, a heaviness of homesickness, a burden defying description. The weight of absence moves from our chests upward, constricting our throats, upward again to a burning in our eyes. Tears come unchecked, seemingly out of nowhere. Such is the power of place.

What city is within your chest? What place is within your chest?

Is it a city from your childhood, a place you’ve never been able to return? Is it the place where you first felt the security of belonging and love? Is it a farm where long summer days had you in bare feet, grass tickling your toes as you ate watermelon without a thought to the privilege and burden of belonging? Is it a beach town where you woke to the sound of the ocean crashing on the shore? Is it a town that kept you safe and secure in the knowledge that you held an undefinable “membership” that wasn’t because of anything you did or didn’t do, but just because you existed?

If you were to write about these places, how would you describe them? What would you choose to bring people into your memory of food and grandmothers? Would it be the pure joy of curry and chapatis as you break out in a sweat from the spices? Would you describe the resilience of boarding school people? Would it be about the grandmother who took your hand when you were young, and prayed you through life when you were older? Would it be about the rushing glory of rivers and forests and the massive snow-capped mountains in the distance, or the crowded spaces of public buses as you join a community of escapees from the cold winter days in a city, the bus driver smiling in empathy as you hop on? Would it be a park where you watch the seasons come and go? Would it be about mountains calling you and long hikes on crisp spring days?

On Sunday afternoons, I carry places and people within my chest. The morning’s liturgical joy gives way to a deep melancholy, particularly when the sky is grey. Staying fully present and focused is a struggle and it is easy to have my mind travel to places far away where I hung my heart, places that are now carried within my chest. My mind goes to Cairo and Karachi, Erbil and Ranya. I carry the sights and sounds of places that will never leave me, the call to prayer, the street vendors selling molasses and bananas on the road below my fourth-floor apartment, the smell of bread baking at dusk, the sunset’s burnished gold and deep pink- benedictions to my days, and the people still there that continue to mark these places on my heart.

In truth, I’ve come to be grateful for these times. They are reminders of the richness of my life, reminders of the gifts that these cities and places gave me. As I surrender to the melancholy, I find comfort. Surrender comes easier with chocolate and a cup of strong, sweet, milky tea. Revisiting memories through photographs that remind me of these lives I lived before are also gifts to accepting the pensive sadness of missing. I’ve learned that surrender can make me stronger, resolute in my desire to make each place count and committed to living well in the present.

To all of us border people, living between the here and there, the now and not yet, the familiar and the foreign, may we carry our places within our hearts and be the richer for it.

“Always border people – caught between citizen and alien, silence and disruption, here and there.”

Enrique Garcia Naranjo

Baby Showers and Belonging

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My younger daughter is having a baby! We have known for months, but as is usual in this space, I don’t often share specifics about my children. As people who were initially formed in my womb, I don’t go a day without thinking and praying for my adult children multiple times, but I created an unwritten rule for myself a while ago that I would not share my children’s stories. Some of them involve me, some don’t, but either way, there is a sweet, humbling, and critical connection with adult children that must not be severed by any writing ego.

But today’s thoughts are bigger than Stefanie or me, or the beautiful new life that is every day changing inside her.

Yesterday I had the honor of hosting her baby shower. The walls of our small city house expanded to fit two distinct generations of women – my generation and Stefanie’s generation. It was a brilliant, beautiful mix of wisdom and exuberance, of sweet naivete and humorous reality, of skin free of wrinkles and age spots and skin that is marked by time, of bodies that have set into older maturity even as we try to cajole them into something less squishy and young bodies that bounce back from childbirth like Winnie the Pooh’s Tigger.

Because we know her baby is a girl, every one of us opted to go against the trend of genderless beings by reveling in ruffles and pink, bows and the sweetest little socks and shoes imaginable. Why are little girls’ clothes so much cuter than little boys, I ask you?

The food was a an equally beautiful mixture of savory and sweet with chicken salad, hummus, cheeses and dips sharing space with thick, chewy brownies made by Stef’s husband Will’s Aunt Carol, and the most beautiful lemon, raspberry layer cake with the inscription “April showers for a May Flower.”

Beyond the surface was a reality for Stef and Will: they are deeply loved. They have people who surround them with love and appreciation for who they are and what they will bring to this little baby’s life. Over and over, friends and family spoke of the combination of exuberance, kindness, love of life and love of sports that they will bring to their little girl. I loved reconnecting with, as well as meeting for the first time some of Stef’s girlfriends as they surrounded her with beauty and love, as well as a good deal of laughter for her sense of drama and her husband’s calm. They are in the delightful stages of early marriage, pregnancy and forming families of their own. There was an unspoken sense of belonging and security that I could see in my girl, belonging and security that she will be tasked with bringing to the baby that is coming.

Like so many of us third culture kid mamas, I often feel guilt and sadness for the way I have moved my children from the proverbial “pillar to post.” They have picked up and moved multiple times, leaving behind the tangible in dolls, books, dollhouses, Playmobil, friends, schools and more, as well as the intangible gifts of belonging and security that we get when we love a place and people within that place. We moved Stefanie to this area in the middle of her sophomore year of high school. She exchanged the sun of Arizona for the worst winter the Northeast had seen in five years. Thinking back, I feel a bit ambiguous about that decision. But then I think about yesterday and the circle of love that surrounded this couple. Had we not moved, yesterday’s event would not have taken place. I felt the goodness of God in the land of the living, the goodness of God in giving Stef, Will, and their baby a place to come home to and place to share with others.

The cynical may push away the idea of things like baby showers, opting instead for Amazon deliveries to bring the essentials to our doors, but these events are perhaps more important than we realize. In life we need markers and milestones, times of stepping back to welcome a new stage or event, times of being surrounded with belonging and realizing what we have. In a fractured world, it becomes even more important to know that there are places where we belong. Perhaps baby showers are one place that can be, not about gifts or cake, savory and sweet, but about publicly announcing that a new stage of life is coming and that a baby is entering a world where she belongs.

Something is Always Leading Us Home

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The window of our plane showed a grey sky and light rain, leading me to sigh inwardly. We had just arrived in Boston after six days in Savannah, Georgia. The weather in Savannah could be described as – well, perfect. Light breeze, no humidity, and between 65 and 70 degrees every day. The old oak trees that are quintessential Savannah were magnificent, their Spanish moss (which we found out was neither Spanish nor moss) gracefully draped across branches.

Coming home to a place where your body and soul don’t always feel like they belong can be a challenge. When I look out the window as I fly into Boston’s Logan International Airport, I think ‘why are there so many trees?’ It is a disconcerting feeling, a sense of alienation instead of belonging. As I make my way through the airport to ground transportation, I go into another space between – that space between the airport and the home we have made in Boston. I walk through the chain-link gate of our small city house and through the door. I know from experience that I have to immediately do something tangible, something concrete that says to me “You’re home. Rest. Breathe.” Sometimes it’s arranging flowers, other times it’s baking bread, still other times it is just getting unpacked as quickly as possible and removing suitcases from view. Once I have done that, my soul begins to settle – at least for a time.

What I have come to know is that my struggle for home is not unique. I have also come to a greater understanding of a spiritual reality that I have known since I was a small child, but that has grown in its theological significance through the years. And that is that no matter what home I have or find here on this earth, there will always be something leading me farther up and farther in, something always leading me to my true home.

Heimat is a German word with no English equivalent. It is described as “the first ‘territory’ that can offer identity, stimulation and safety for one’s own existence” and can only be found “within the trinity of community, space and tradition; because only there human desires for identity, safety and an active designing of life can be pleased.” I think that the only humans who ever truly experienced heimat are Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, that perfect place designed by God for his creation. Only in that space was a perfect trinity possible. In a broken world something always disrupts the trinity of community, space and tradition.

Our entire lives can be taken up with the quest for home, the longing for home. And yet, once we think we have found it, something interferes with the perfect trinity we think we have and we find there is something more.

Something is always leading us home. I thought about this as I watched my mom enter her final journey this past fall. Her yearning for home was both spoken and unspoken, a longing fulfilled on a cold November night as her breath stopped, and she entered eternity.

My mom’s longings find an echo in my own heart and soul, a poignant reminder that throughout life’s transitions, moves, stages, and travels something perennially leads us home, not to a physical shelter but to a place of secure identity and complete belonging. My inward sigh is replaced by the deep comfort of knowing that this longing is woven throughout the human story, ultimately guiding us toward that place where the trinity of community, space, and tradition are perfectly restored in the presence of God.

To my Younger Friends

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I’ve been thinking a lot about my younger years as a new mom and wife. I shake my head a lot as I remember, wondering sometimes how I survived. But I know how. I survived because I had both friends my own age as well as older friends. My peers offered empathy, humor, and a safe place to sound off. My older friends offered wisdom and solace, a steady voice that was not competitive but understanding, that gave me hope beyond my current stage of life.

It is with this in mind that I write this to my younger friends. You are navigating life during hard times, raising your kids amidst a crazy online world, handling motherhood, working, and trying to keep sanity and common sense – and all in the era of curated lives. It’s a lot!

So, this one is for you. Keep what is worth keeping and as the old saying goes, blow the rest away.

Life doesn’t get easier. It’s just that you no longer expect it to be easy so the hard doesn’t surprise or paralyze you in the way it sometimes does when you are younger. Don’t make the mistake of wondering if anything else can possibly go wrong. Because yes – yes it can, and sometimes it does.

Loving our bodies takes a lifetime, and I don’t suppose we will ever get to a place where we are completely satisfied. But we do get to places where we can laugh about what used to make us cry. I mean…. trying on bathing suits? There’s a reason why women wore bloomers and sailor suits to swim.

Don’t believe everything that you think you see in the mirror. Mirrors lie and reveal things that don’t matter. You are so much more than that dim reflection.

Forgive early and often. Lack of forgiveness and harboring bitterness will create wrinkles that no face cream or makeup will ever conceal.

Save your anger for things that really matter. There is a lot to be angry about and there is an anger toward evil and injustice that is necessary and foundational to caring for a broken world. But don’t let others dictate what you should be angry about. Don’t get sucked into popular outrage that can be more self-righteous than righteous. Choose wisely those things that might keep you awake at night.

A curated life is no life at all. You are so much more than the facade of your social media handles. You are flesh and blood, emotions and feelings, a person who can love and be loved in return. You are three-dimensional in a world that tries to trick you into being one-dimensional. Don’t settle for a one-dimensional life.

Preventive health is critically important. We women who have children tend to take care of ourselves during pregnancy and then between babies and after babies we care for everyone else, leaving ourselves last. But to be able to continue our care for others we have to make that appointment for a physical or that counseling appointment. No one else will do it for us.

Grief and joy go hand in hand, measure for measure, and grace is the mantle that covers them. Accept the mantle of grace and keep joy close. Otherwise, life will be unlivable.

Envy truly does rot the soul. When your heart is bending toward envy, bless the person that you are bent toward. Thank God for their success, congratulate them with gladness and integrity. And then, if envy persists, unfollow them. Not out of malice, but for your sanity and soul.

Laugh at yourself. Laugh at things that are funny. Laugh at the pitfalls and problems of parenthood. Laugh at the days to come. Even in the midst of grief, laughter is possible. I know this deep in my soul. Laughter and joy don’t contradict what is hard. They simply help make it more bearable.

Loving your neighbor and the person next to you at church, loving the family member you despise – those are the first steps toward world peace and the only ones that we have any control over.

Don’t give away pieces of your precious heart to those things that are not worthy. We only have one heart and, while its capacity for loving is a mystery beyond our understanding, it is also to be guarded and nurtured.

Live life out of abundance not out of scarcity. Scarcity will aggressively tell you that there is never enough money or success or love or friendship or fill in the blank. Abundance will gently remind you that what God has given you is enough.

Loving God and loving people well are the two most important things that we can do in this world. If every day, an army of women worked toward loving a little more and judging a little less, our world would change.

In closing, thank you for your friendship. Thank you for inviting me into your lives. Thank you for making the world a brighter and better place.

When I’m 64

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Would you indulge me as I reflect and cry a little in this space?

I turn 64 tomorrow. Depending on where you live in the world, it means I’ve either far exceeded the life expectancy, or I have many years to go. Either way, I’m feeling and thinking about many things.

I think it began this morning as I listened to beloved children’s musician Raffi sing “Everything Grows and Grows.” 

Everything grows and grows
Babies do, animals too
Everything grows
Everything grows and grows
Sisters do, brothers too
Everything grows

This song is one of my favorites and as I was listening to it the tears came unbidden, and I let them. I had just finished scheduling some medical appointments online and my body’s frailty despite fairly good health was on my mind. We are immortal beings living in mortal bodies – bodies that face all sorts of indecencies and difficulties. From ingrown toenails to brain tumors, we groan and sometimes lose hope. At 64, the “to do” list on our electronic medical charts gets longer and makes us face reality – our bodies are aging. With this, we know we have some decisions to make, and a number of those have to do with acceptance and attitude. I don’t want to be someone who gives everyone around me an “organ recital” as I age. I don’t want to hate my body or blame the God who created me, and yet I see how easily it may be to go down that dangerous path.

I want to accept my 64 years and what they have brought and taught me with joy, gratitude, and a healthy dose of humor. Because let’s face it – the aging body and process can be funny. Perhaps the funniest is that you see yourself as 24 and all your 64-year-old friends as – well, maybe 84. You can’t believe how much they’ve aged! You pat yourself on the back and then you catch a reflected version of yourself in the blackout windows of the car and you clutch your heart thinking “I thought Grandma K was dead! What’s she doing in my car?!” You think about how you should maybe take an exercise class, get rid of some of those unsightly bulges – and then you think “Nah! I look pretty good. Pass the cinnamon roll.”

Getting older is almost like changing species, from cute middle-aged, white-tailed deer, to yak. We are both grass eaters, but that’s about the only similarity. At the Safeway sushi bar during lunchtime, I look at the teenage girls in their crop tops with their stupid flat tummies and I feel bad about what lies beneath my big, forgiving shirts but — and this is one of the blessings of aging — not for long.

Ann Lamott as quoted in The Washington Post

The physical piece is just the beginning. The harder piece is emotional, for in a society that loves beauty and youth, it is easy to feel irrelevant. It comes through subtly and consistently. Unless you’re famous, like Ann Lamott, your life experience, earned fact as it were, is not seen as important or relevant to our fast-paced world. When at a public event, you can see the eyes of younger people look over or through you. There are surely more interesting people in the room to talk to. You want to connect with people, but do they want to connect with you?

Ready to inhale a massive dose of self-pity, you suddenly stop yourself and think: Hold on! It isn’t about me. Life just isn’t. It’s about something so much bigger, better, and more lasting. It’s about loving well the generations that will follow me. It’s about making sure they know that they are beloved, that they are precious. It’s about showing grace even when faced with those who are not gracious. It is about forgiving when you feel misunderstood and hurt, about forgiving when you are not being forgiven.

What do I want 64 to look like beyond medical appointments and fear? Beyond irrelevance and unsightly bulges?

I want it to be a year of peace and joy, of smiling at the future. I want to invest in my kids and my grandkids – another coming our way in May. I want to love them with abandon. I want to see more of my girlfriends, to go out to breakfast and right the world. At our age, we should be able to. I want to learn how to decorate cakes and become a better communicator. I want to write words that are full of life and grace, that point the reader to something bigger and better than me. I want to walk through crowded bazaars in places I love and drink coffee in unexpected coffee shops. I want to go to a Bollywood exercise class and laugh at my mistakes. I want to love others well. I want to grow more compassionate and meet the unexpected hard things without fear. I want to honor the struggle – mine and others. Most of all, I want others to see the God I love, to witness his work and love his world.

64. It’s a lot of me and a lot of life. Will you journey with me on this? I sure hope so!

Faraway Family

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Boston is cold. This is the first thing I think as I step out of Logan International Airport, arms heavy with bags and suitcases, and head toward ground transport. The airport is busy as travelers, eager to get on their way with weekend plans, rush or amble to airport gates with their coffee, bags and kids in tow.

This morning we left sunny California where we had 10 beautiful days with three of our children and their growing families. A grandson who is definitely cuter than your grandsons (insert laugh emoji) was part of the package and the soft feel of his body falling asleep on my chest will not easily leave me. How amazing is it to witness a future generation growing? To be welcomed as a part of his life? Though I love words, they fail me as I think about this.

We left as a beautiful sunrise made its way across the western sky, flaming colors transforming an airport into a blaze of otherworldly beauty and light. We left and an ache settled into my heart and body.

Ten days does not feel like enough. I felt the same when I left my oldest daughter and her family in early December. Those grandchildren are older but still young enough that they are wide-eyed with wonder, challenging any cynical or weary adults. Life is a daily adventure of exoskeletons, seeing the stars with their naked eyes, and digging down to the water table (these are their words, and they are way, way too smart for me.)

And I think about how Boston is cold, and Boston feels lonely. I ask myself as I’ve done so many times before – are families really supposed to live so far away from each other?

I come from a long line of movers. My paternal grandmother and maternal grandfather both arrived as immigrants in the United States – one from Leeds, England and the other from St. Petersburg, Russia. They were both children and they left extended family in their countries of origin. My mom and dad were first generation Americans, born and raised in Massachusetts. Unlike their parents, they left Massachusetts as adults, a young married couple with one baby. They traveled eight thousand miles, entering into a completely different way of living than either of their parents, raising their children far from extended family.

Yet, the people who stepped in as proxy uncles and aunts were as much a part of my life as any relative could ever be. Dr. Mary, Auntie Hannah, Auntie Bettie….the list goes on. I think about them every day. They reflected grace, love, humor, and care to me and my brothers. It is hard to find that same dynamic in the United States. As much as I want to say that a church, faith community, or a chosen family fills in those gaps, I have to search hard to see it reflected in the same way. I don’t see people dropping everything to cuddle a baby or make a meal. I witness more apologetic requests, asking for help with hesitancy and a side order of guilt. Guilt that we can’t cope on our own, guilt that we are needy, guilt – dare I say it – that we need people to step in when we are sick, or sad, or have a baby, or just because. We are created for community, created for more than a solitary life. Monks give up the world to live apart and pray for the world, but they know the importance of community and they live it every day.

Are families really supposed to live so far away? I pose the question to a few friends and the responses are quick. No. No – they aren’t. My friend Brit adds to that “I think no, but also it is just a part of the brokenness of the modern world.” There is much truth to that statement.

Faraway family has become normal in a world of displacement. There are those of us who have chosen to move, and those who are displaced through force, not by choice. I think of the massive displacement and death that Palestinians are facing daily and my heart settles into a dull and constant ache for these faraway families. I think of those still held in captivity, taken now months ago and feel an equal ache.

Despite seeing more of this in the modern world, my faith tradition tells me that none of this is new. Families have been torn apart for centuries, some by force, some by choices both good and harmful, and others following a God whose ways are mysterious, whose purposes often show up in future generations not in the generation that makes the move. I think of Jesus, whose birth Western Christians have celebrated, and Eastern Christians celebrate tomorrow. His birth was a transition from one home to another. He left a home where he was one with God the Father and entered a place where he would be both worshipped and mocked; adored and rejected; believed and killed because of disbelief.

He knows what it is to have faraway family, to feel forsaken and alone, to long for the day when he would be reunited. And somehow, he will continue to use faraway family and those close by to remind us of who he is, and who we are; to remind us that we belong, and that family is bigger than we can imagine; to remind us that we are not alone and that our griefs and joys matter; to continue to work out the miracle and mystery of salvation and redemption.

As we move into our Orthodox celebration, we will sing a Nativity hymn “Today the Virgin gives birth to the Transcendent One, and the earth offers a cave to the Unapproachable One! Angels, with shepherds, glorify Him! The wise men journey with the star! Since for our sake the Eternal God is born as a little child.” And in singing, I will remember this journey from heaven to earth, so that family and all of creation could be redeemed and healed to the glory of God.

Identity as Performance or Participation

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September in the Northeast is a month of warm days, cooler nights, and the lingering magic of summer. The last several evenings we have spent at the ocean, taking long walks during low tide, reveling in the wide-open expanse of beach where those of us fortunate enough, get to stay far longer and later than tourists who have left for homes farther away. It is glorious. There is no other word for the beauty, the rhythmic sound of waves against the rocks and sand, and the light and shadows dancing across the ocean front. “We are so fortunate,” we keep on saying to each other and to strangers with whom we exchange a few words before continuing on our way.

During these last restful, stress-free days I’ve thought a lot about identity. This is not something that would surprise any of you who are familiar with my writing. Identity and belonging and processing those two big ideas and concepts and how they work themselves out in our everyday lives have been a huge part of my child and adulthood. The lonely privilege of living between creates an identity crisis at different points in life, where you struggle to know who you are, and to where and whom you belong. As I’ve written publicly, I have met many others who are on the same journey. Since early in life, many of us have been exposed to diverse cultures and languages; to many different patterns of living and ways of being in the world. Along with this, we live in a world where it is possible to spend a large amount of time curating and cultivating an image for public consumption – performing for a crowd of strangers as it were.

I was recently listening to a talk given by Jonathan Pageau called The Role of Art in Identity. The talk was given at Princeton Theological Seminary for a conference hosted by the Scala Foundation. If you are not familiar with either Pageau or with the Scala Foundation, they are well worth checking out through following the links. They are not, however, the focus of my thoughts here, rather they are the inspiration for wanting to think about identity in this way.

There were many points made by Pageau in the talk, but what stood out to me in particular was the idea that identity and art can be either about performance or participation. This point hit me deeply and I’m searching to figure out why. As I search, I think I am finding some answers. As I listened to the talk, for the first time I felt I had words to describe my discomfort in curating a public image in the way that social media pressures us to do. Too often it is all about performance. Instead of being able to participate in connection and conversation, there is a pressure to perform with the performance directed at people who are strangers, people I don’t know who I subconsciously want to impress. When I fall prey to this, I act and write in ways that are inconsistent with who I profess to be, inconsistent with the loves I have and the values I claim to hold dear. Just writing it makes me see the craziness of it, and yet I don’t think I’m alone in this identity as performance problem.

As I contrast different forms of social media and the pressure I may feel to conform to them, I also search for places where I know my identity is not about performance. One such place is in my Orthodox community where the focus is on the Eucharist and our striving towards Christ and another is here, on this blog.

Early on I think I had conflicting motivations about writing. On the one hand I wanted to become a better writer and to participate in life with others through my words. On the other hand, I found myself drawn to performance, drawn to getting attention through this medium. But at some point, my writing changed. It changed slowly, imperceptibly, but profoundly. It became about the connections I was making. It became about the emails that I received from strangers and friends telling me that they knew exactly what I was talking about. That I had put into words that which they were feeling.

What a profound privilege! Almost every time I wrote, I would hear from someone whose heart resonated with what I was writing. The words and descriptions that I used to convey what I was thinking and feeling became avenues of connection.

This has continued through my writing process. Instead of being left with the hollow reward of likes and shares, I am continually offered an invitation to hear the heart of someone who has read and relates with my words. I contrast that beautiful sense of connection to other times when I am glued to social media and envy floods my soul because someone (often a stranger) I follow is performing better than I am. Someone got a book deal that has me filled with jealousy. Someone is gaining followers and accolades, and I am left wanting. And this I know: Performance will always leave me wanting.

Identity then can be a way of experiencing continuity and community, or it can be fragmented, exposed and vulnerable to whatever performance is popular at the moment. If my identity is about performance, then it changes by the day, sometimes by the minute, depending on who I want to please and on what I desire. The opposite of that comes when I see my identity connected to my interactions with others and my participation within a community. In other words – identity as participation.

Maybe that is why so many third culture kids who are raised in cultures where value is placed on community and collectivist thinking find it difficult to adjust to their passport countries where their identities are suddenly reduced to something as boring as their individual likes and dislikes, desires and wants. But that loaded topic is for another day!

I know I will be thinking (and perhaps writing) more about identity as participation, but for now I am grateful to be in a place where I know what performance looks like because I have experienced the opposite. For I have discovered great peace through writing, and through connection to my faith community and my Creator. I am growing to love the author of my story far more than the story itself, and that is making all the difference.

What about you? Have you ever thought of identity as being about performance or participation? I would love to hear from you in this space or through messages!

Longing for Places Beyond

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Ahwatukee is an area of Phoenix that backs up to South Mountain. Some jokingly call it the “world’s largest cul-de-sac,” and they aren’t wrong. If you get lost in the depths of Ahwatukee on a street with the word “desert” in the name, you could drive around for hours. Large cul-de-sac aside, it is a beautiful area of Phoenix. Rose and clay-colored homes back up to hillsides and large bushes of fuchsia, coral, and red bougainvillea provide bright pops of color.

We lived in Ahwatukee during our years in Phoenix and it was a good place for us. We left the cold of the Northeast behind us for a few years, trading hot tea in winter months for cold smoothies, and boots for sandals most of the year.

One way of getting to our house was by way of a hill. The top of the hill provided breathtaking views of the valley below. While daytime views were beautiful, it was that time of twilight, when the sun is setting and all the world is magic, that offered beyond this world beauty. It was indescribable. Fiery shades of coral, purple, red, blue, green, and yellow brought colors of an ever-present Phoenix sun going down and making its way to the other side of the world. I would always hope that a car was not behind me while I was driving so that I could take extra minutes to inhale the view and all the feelings it evoked. I longed for that feeling to continue as I drove away, even as I knew it couldn’t, knew that all would grow dim as darkness consumed the fiery beauty.

While longing is a good adjective for what I felt during those moments, it didn’t, and it doesn’t describe the depth of my feeling. It was this week that I discovered a word that gives an explosion to the longing I would feel in those moments. It’s a much-needed word in a world where our own language so often fails us. The word is “sehnsucht” – a German noun loosely translated as longing, desire, yearning or craving. One writer described it as an “inconsolable yearning or wistful longing for something one cannot explain or does not know.” The word is also used to mean thoughts and feelings about life or experiences that are incomplete while what is longed for is an experience that one can hold on to, one that will last forever. This, then, is what I experienced during those moments on the hilltop.

As often happens when I discover a word, I began to see this word everywhere. From articles to books, I found others who wrote about and experienced this reality.

If saudade is one of the perfect words for third culture kids to give voice to their experiences and longings, then sehnsucht is another. Saudade emphasizes the longing for what no longer exists. We experienced something and long for it, even as we know it doesn’t and cannot still exist. The people are gone, and the places have changed. Nostalgia is another word where the Greek words of return and suffering combine to create a word that has the essence of suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return. As we come to peace with our saudade and our nostalgia, sehnsucht emerges as a word that brings life to the indescribable longing that we feel within and outside of our passport countries, a yearning for places beyond our current reality, for places we’ve actually never been and that don’t exist on this earth.

Author CS Lewis seems to understand this when he writes “Apparently, then, our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fancy, but the truest index of our real situation. And to be at last summoned inside would be both glory and honour beyond all our merits and also the healing of that old ache.” [The Weight of Glory]

Many might feel sadness that “inconsolable yearning” is at the heart of this word. I do not. I see this as a window to my faith; an understanding that the only thing that will ever console my ultimate longing is eternity. Of all the beautiful sunsets I will ever see or experience, an eternity with the creator of the sunsets is the only thing that can satisfy this yearning.

These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never visited.”

CS Lewis in The Weight of Glory

I have decided that far worse than the longing or the sehnsucht would be its absence. Indeed, its absence would be a type of hell, breaking us off from contact with an ever-present God who delights to surprise his children with glimpses of glory, embedding in us a longing that can only be satisfied in an eternity beyond.