High Levels of Hopefulness

"Children with high levels of hopefulness have experience with adversity. They have been given the opportunity to struggle and in doing that they have learned how to believe in themselves."

Brene Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent and Lead

Susanna and Austin, you are precious gifts to me, from God. As your mother, I promise to love you, to care for you, to listen to you, to encourage you, and to advocate for you. I will always be honest with you, and I will do my best to protect you from harm.

When you were babies, although I thought it was hard, protecting you was easy. Life was a cruise and I was your director. I don't sail the ship, but I could keep you from falling overboard while we sailed through with nap schedules, meal plans, and the routine that insulated you from changes ahead. But just as you were growing out of the baby stage, our lives changed course and we moved abroad, changed schools and began our life of too many goodbyes. We did our best to achieve a smooth transition, and you are such trusting, happy, resilient kids. Every year I'm more proud to be your mama.

I want you to know that I know that missionary life is not all a wonderful adventure for you. I know that in our transient life, there is more grief, more loss, and more unknowns. I know that you are missing out on good things in the United States. Good routines, fun celebrations, close relationships.

I promise to be a safe place to process all this loss. I vow to make our life in Spain educational, interesting, and fun. I will do everything in my power to make it so you don't regret the life you lived, even though you didn't choose it.

Because you are not the missionary, you are the missionary's kids, I will involve you in our ministry but I will never force you to do it. We will discuss the future together. I promise to tell you and to show you that you are more important than our work.

I vow to set an example of resilience and service for you. I vow to believe in myself and do hard things, to take care of myself and put on my own oxygen mask first.

In all these ways and more, we will tether ourselves to hope as we live in the tension, the ampersand of good and hard, of your third culture life.

These vows were inspired by a writing prompt, "Tethered to Hope" and the book "Raising a Generation of Healthy Third Culture Kids" by Lauren Wells