Youth Column: A Vivid Memory

Tuesday November 12 2019

Shanley McConnell, a minister's daughter from the US, reflects on belonging to two countries

I think I am beginning to comprehend what it was I felt that night; the grace of our humanness connecting refugees, immigrants, expats and natives. A whole world of people watching and waiting for a beautiful belonging to emerge from brokenness.

When my family was moving from the United States to Scotland for the second time, we settled for a month on the top flat of an apartment block that overlooked the Marsascala Bay and Mediterranean Sea. I remember lying on the cold tile, staring up into a sky-weeping sunrise.

I had visited Malta years prior with a mission team, arriving with one hand on a suitcase half-filled with English textbooks, the other, closed around the handle of my violin case. No one knew then that my family would make another transatlantic voyage like this one again so soon.

I think back on that night often because it is my most vivid memory from the move. I remember thinking about all the people who had, were and would continue relocating to new places globally. Be it for work, financial stability, economic status, religious freedoms, social justice and safety, the reasons why someone might uproot (or be forced) from their home to find residence in an unfamiliar land seemed to steadily grow.

At the moment, I am studying towards an MSt in Creative Writing. Recently, my course required me to write a memoir-essay. In the essay, I wrote about what it meant for me to adopt the beautiful tension of belonging to two countries. How choosing to recognise that I was a resident of both didn’t lessen my heart for the people who belonged to one or the other.

As Christians, we are called to pursue things that are heavenly — true, honourable, just, excellent and pure. We are to live with our eyes focused on Christ, waiting in prayer for his Kingdom to come. For this is where our permanent residence lies; a place prepared for us by the Maker of both heaven and earth. I pray that we would be men and women who see value in the eternal and finite, choosing to walk with compassion as advocates for those who feel lost and misplaced.

While writing the short-memoir, I was reminded of how our awareness of God’s presence in day-to-day living—from past to present and future—instills within us the desire to pursue unity with his people, to welcome others even in our own arriving. For it does not matter how far we may move (or be moved) from what is familiar, the omnipresent comfort of Christ that follows reassures us that we are not alone.

Let us be people who, in confidence of this, make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through bonds of peace. To welcome and be welcomed into the hope for which we have been called. (Philippians 4:8; 3:20, 2 Timothy 4:8, Ephesians 4:2-6.)

If you are under 30 and involved in the Church of Scotland, and would be interested in writing for this column, please email us on magazine@lifeandwork.org

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