Missionary Homelessness- When No Place Feels Like Home

Though I was born in Nigeria, my passport says I am an American. I love my country. But I have never felt like a “real” American. Preparing for a trip back to the USA, someone asked me, “Are you going home next week?” That is a hard question to answer. Where is home anyhow? Is it where I now live on the mission field (Asia)? Is it my passport country? They both feel like home. Neither of them feels like home. There is a kind of “homelessness” we missionaries feel.

I Don’t Fit Anywhere!

As a cross-cultural worker, do you ever feel you don’t fit anywhere? You are not fully a part of your new culture. But you are no longer at home in your old culture either.

God wants to use these missionary challenges to draw us closer to Him. He wants to turn these difficulties into a blessing.

A sense of homelessness can lead us toward a deeper discovery of our true identity.

Embrace this journey into a deeper understanding of what it means to be at home in God. We can learn to be at home in Christ no matter where we are. While waiting for the day when we will be forever with Jesus in our new Heavenly home, we can rest with Him now.

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?”

John 14:1-2 NIV

Home Is A Promise of God

In the Old and New Testaments, we read God’s promise to create a home for His people. Finding “home” is part of what it means to experience salvation. In Christ, we finally and fully belong. He says He will both…

1) bring us to, and

2) plant us in, the place of our inheritance. We will have roots going down. We will not be nomads forever! God has prepared a place for us- a place to call home.

Several years ago I struggled deeply with this issue. I had become a new grandma. My heart longed for a place to welcome my children and new grandbaby. We rented homes in India and Nepal, but they were not ours to own. The Lord had even spoken to me saying He would give us a home, more than fifteen years before…but it had never happened.

Will I ever have a place to call my own? I wondered. This unsettled feeling disturbed my heart. Sometimes it affected my marriage, as I unfairly shifted into blaming my husband for not finding a way to provide a home for me.

I needed to go back to God in prayer and find my home in Him again. Only then could I find peace.

3 Ways to Get Through the Sense of Missionary Homelessness

1. Recognize that your true home is in His embrace.

In John 13, there is a beautiful description of John’s intimate friendship with Jesus. It says in that chapter, John reclined on Jesus’ bosom. He was leaning up against him. They were close. They were comfortable together. John felt Jesus there. He was home.

Intimate friendship is like that. We hang out and relax together. This looks different depending on the culture you are in. In Asia, both men and women walk down the street holding hands. Where sports is popular, a soccer team huddles in, to plan for their game, arms around each other. In other cultures, they greet with a kiss on both cheeks. Most cultures have some way to express closeness and intimacy through physical nearness…through touch.

Like John, we can come close to Jesus. He wants to draw us into that place of intimacy and friendship where we are at home. Jesus wants us to lean against Him. Dependent, close, comforted, loved, hanging out with Him. This friendship is ours to have. He calls us to it.

Loneliness on the mission field can drive us to negative things. We feel the shame of not belonging fully. We pursue inappropriate solutions. Food, too much time on the internet, self-condemnation, overworking, and many other things are where we tend to go. When you feel the ache of missionary homelessness, run home to His arms. He is where you fully and forever belong.

2. Remember you are a citizen of a different Kingdom, a Heavenly one.

As we encounter Jesus in that place of intimacy, He shows us once again who we are. We are sons and daughters, members of His family. We are also His chosen ones, royal priests in His Kingdom. Not only do we have a home in His arms, a family in which to belong, but we have a country.  We have a Kingdom of which we are both citizens and ambassadors.

Understanding our Kingdom identity gives us a different worldview. It gives us new values and ways of behaving. Life on the mission field creates an incredible opportunity. In the midst of the trials of transition or feeling homeless, we can learn to deeply embrace our true identity in Jesus.

While we work hard to adapt to our new culture, we also reject some behaviors and ways of thinking we find there. We need to recognize things in the culture around us that are not in line with God’s values and ways. As we discern these, we live out our Kingdom identity. We are in the world but not of it. (John 17:14-15)

Another thing happens as we come to love the ways of those we now live among. Our eyes open to our own culture’s faults. This too is an opportunity to embrace who we are as Kingdom citizens. We don’t reject our home cultures. Discern what is of God’s Kingdom and what is not. Our loneliness, our missionary homelessness, creates in us a longing for the Kingdom to come on earth as in heaven. That’s a good thing.

3. Get help if you need It.

If this feeling becomes severe and affects our ability to function well, we may need to talk to a counselor or member care person about these issues. They can cause great anxiety and distress, particularly among women. God created females with a desire to make a home for our families. Things like COVID-19, visa challenges, or other crises sometimes force us to travel endlessly and prevent us from going home to the “nests” we made around the globe.

If you need to talk to someone and get some debriefing on this issue, do it! You are not going crazy. Living in constant transition wears down emotional strength. What I’ve written in this article is not meant to be an easy fix to a complex problem.

Come Home Today

Ask God to use the challenge of missionary homelessness for good in your life. He is calling, “Come into My arms. Let Me show you where home truly is.”

Won’t you turn to Him even now?

Want to share your story, or ask questions about this very real issue? You can do that on the Missionary Life Facebook group. Or post in the comments below.