Missed Opportunities

There are a lot of sacrifices a TCK makes when they live somewhere other than their so-called home country. 

There’s no sugar-coating this: it’s difficult. Giving up anything is difficult, but there’s something truly depressing when the thing that we give up is an opportunity. When you give up something material– like your things or your house– you know exactly what you’ve lost. You can  stil remember the life you had with these things, and lament that they’re gone. A missed opportunity is different, because you never experienced it, and you never will. 

In my life as a TCK (that is, my entire life since I was a baby when we moved), I have seen so many opportunities that I could never have. I live in Central Asia, so my life as a girl has been severely limited. There was no actual school (just a computer and my mom), there were no people to choose my friends from, no clubs or sports or activities, there was no getting a job or driving a car, no exploring my town or “going out” with my friends. Most of my life was spent inside the walls that surround our property. 

When we would visit America, I would see all of my friends’ lives, and I would get very jealous. They could go to sleepovers, have study groups, they had a youth group they went to every Wednesday night, participated in sports and clubs, they could wear whatever they wanted, get jobs and drive cars. To me, their lives were amazing. 

All I saw were the opportunities that I missed, and I was sad. It’s strange to be sad about something you never had, about a person you could never be. Who knows, maybe I could’ve been popular, maybe I could’ve been a genius, maybe I could’ve been a prodigy. But I’ll  never find out, and  that made me sad. 

I thought that I would never really get to live my life with all of the things I wanted to do, but then I had a revelation. Now that I’m older, I realize that just because I’m not living everyone else’s life, doesn’t mean that I’m not living my life. Every time I missed an opportunity, I also gained one. I hadn’t realized that my life was filled with opportunities that were different from other peoples’, but that were incredible. 

Not many people can say that they’ve seen the giant Dubai aquarium,  been to the night market in Thailand, seen replicas of the Santa Maria in Spain,  seen ancient temples in Greece, or stood under a waterfall in the Swiss Alps. There are very few people who know what it’s like to sit with a group of women while wearing a headscarf and talking and laughing while making food for the family. 

I may have never been able to have the freedom to leave my house, but God has provided me with other incredible opportunities that I just had to open my eyes and see. Missing opportunities is hard, but you can’t focus on the things you’ll never have. Focus on what God gives you, and live your life.