Resettling in Paris

Being a third culture kid and having grown up in England, Morocco and Sweden, I am used to moving around and enjoy starting afresh in a new place, meeting new people and adapting to a new culture. I recently decided to leave London and move to Paris and spent this past summer working as an aupair for a family in France. I got to discover new places in France, taste things for the first time and I loved it! I am currently settling in Paris and am enjoying getting used to a new city, language and a different way of life even though leaving good friends behind is always hard.

Uprooting has its challenges and like most third culture kids I have had to wrestle with questions of identity and belonging throughout my life. Who we are as individuels is often linked to where we come from, which country we call home and which culture we are shaped by but these are not always easy to pin point. I personally do not identify myself with one country or people group in particular but see myself as a mix. I am shaped by the places I have lived in and the people I have met and this is a process that continues. At times this can feel unsettling and I wish that I had a place to belong to and a culture to call my own and to feel proud of but at other times it is freeing. I am not bound to behave according to a certain culture but have been privileged to experience several different ones and to be influenced by a variety of ways of thinking.

Having grown up as a Christian, my faith in Jesus has been the most consistent aspect of my life and is a great source of security to me. In each place that I have lived God has been the same even if I have changed. As people have come and gone in my life, I at times regret not having many longterm friendships or people who have known me in different stages of my life but God has always been there and he knows me inside out. I believe that I belong to God as this child and that the Christians in my life are called to be my family wherever they might be in the world. My identity can be secure in that belief that wherever I go my life is in God's hands and that it is to his culture that I am primarily called to adapt myself and to belong to.