Where are you from?

Sometimes in life the most simple of things are the toughest of things.  When growing up as a military child, you were always the new kid in school or neighborhood. As the new kid, you were always asked a bunch of questions; what’s your name, how old are you, what do you like to do, where are you from? In my opinion, “where are you from?” was the toughest question to answer for me as military child.  The question was loaded; a military child isn't from one place. Most move every two and a half years.  The question becomes another constant reminder that they are different from the other kids. 

How does one normally answer the question, “where are you from?”  When asking people, the normal response is “I’m from... a place they have known their entire life.”  For a military child, they don’t have the luxury of saying “I’m from…” They have many choices on how to answer: Do I tell them where I was born or do I tell them the last place I was or do I tell them I’m a military brat or do I tell them I’m not from anywhere?  For a child to have to figure this out as well as developing who they are can be tough.  It makes you feel disconnected, never having a definite place to call home.    

For me, being asked “where I was from” always turned into a more in-depth conversation.  I always liked to talk as a kid, so I would tell them that I was from nowhere.   This type of response always made people ask, “What do you mean nowhere?” and it made me laugh.  I would tell them that I moved every 2 ½ years because my dad was in military.  Most people would say “oh, that’s cool, where have you been?” I would tell them that I had lived in Oklahoma, Germany, Texas, Hawaii, Washington (state), Germany, New York, and Maryland. Most people would say “oo, that’s awesome! When I was a kid, I would agree by saying “yea, it’s pretty cool!” always wondering to myself what it would be like if I had the same friends, the same school, and the same house.  I was always curious about what it felt like to be in the same place your entire life. It was a foreign concept to me.  As I grew up, I asked people what that felt like, most didn't have an answer; they would shrug their shoulders and say I don’t know.  Others would say it felt normal because it was the only thing they had ever known.  After hearing that from a few different people, I came to the realization that moving around for me was normal; it was all I had known.  

Now that I am older, I began to wonder why God put me in the lifestyle of a military brat. I believe it is so I can show God’s love to as many people as possible.  He has given me a heart to love people. My hope is that I have done that and I can continue to do so.