Third Culture Thriving

A few months ago, we had the privilege of hosting a dear friend here in our home in Kigali. He also happens to be an extremely talented videographer and media specialists and had come to visit in order to make a mini-documentary about our family to help us fundraise. Cool, right?

A lot of our time together was spent answering questions on camera. Most of them were pretty predictable- when did you fist feel called to work abroad, tell me about your work, how did you feel the Lord leading you into this specific field, what's your long term vision for your ministry. But one discussion we had stopped me in my tracks, and I haven't stopped thinking about it since. The question was this: what would you say your mission is, as a family, here in Rwanda? What unifies all your work and ministry and keeps you here?

My (and everyone's) favorite: what's saving my life! Unfiltered and unedited thoughts about the practices, items, and thoughts that are tipping the scales towards thriving for me right now.

Hi friends. It feels so incredibly good to be back on here with you, after a quite long unplanned hiatus from the podcast. I feel like I owe you some explanations, so, here we go.

I am fresh off of a month of messy travel, and today I want to do a special travel edition of everyone's favorite episode: what's saving my life. Because travel is a big part of our lives as global workers, whether we travel often or we travel infrequently but very long trips, and having some tricks up your sleeve can make or break your time. So, here's some of my favorites.

Today's episode is an intensely practical one: we are going to explore three different techniques you can use to ground yourself when you are feeling overwhelmed or panicky or even just OFF. Of course, this isn't just something that global workers struggle with, these things apply to everyone, but it certainly does seem to come up for us, doesn't it?

Today, I want to take some time to chat a bit about some of the books that have been released in the last few years, specifically targeting global workers. I have read all of these books and they have each blessed me in different ways, and I hope they will bless you, too.

Grit to Stay, Grace to Go (Eenigenburg and Burkholder)

Raising a Family Overseas (Danforth)

The Grief Tower (Wells)

Sacred Siblings (Eenigenburg and Grumelot)

Yet Still We Hope (Hilkemann and Beck)

Liturgies and Laments for the Sojourner (Fallis, Boyce, and Rubinski)

This week, I want to do something a little different than I've done before, and guide you through a time of reflection and processing, in hopes that the next few months can be joyful, intentional, and leave you feeling exactly as you'd like to as the year ends. We'll go through a series of questions and prompts for you to name and think about. You can go at your own pace stopping and starting as needed, or listen all at once and then refer back.

Hey friends, welcome back to Third Culture Thriving. I'm your host, Karli Von Herbulis. I'm a wife and mom living in Kigali Rwanda, where I serve in my local congregation, run this podcast and online ministry, study spiritual direction, and recently was selected to serve as a Regional Director for my sending agency, New International, based in Ft Myers, FL.

But- if you had asked me to write that bio at the beginning of this year and predict what I would be doing for this school year? I would've given you a very different picture of my life.

Back in the pilot episode for this season (episode 101) I alluded to my new positions changing my long term plans for Third Culture Thriving, and I want to get into a bit of that today. But first, I want to ask you: have you ever had a dream or calling or vision you were confident in, only to have it change as time goes on and n ever come to fruition quite the way you thought it would?

I didn't plan to do a sabbatical over the summer, the way that some people plan years in advance when they'll take an intentional season away from certain professional or ministerial duties. No, my idea to take a sabbatical was born out of the depths of trauma and burnout, and it felt like the only path forward. The last year has been an intense one for me personally, wrought with trauma and conflict and change and challenge. By April, I was completely exhausted and couldn't fathom what the next months would look like. So I cleared my schedule the best I could, took as many responsibilities off my plate as possible, and gave myself a lot of permission to rest.

The problem was- I didn't really now what I was doing. I had guidance from my spiritual director and my therapist, and I am grateful for those, but I also was missing one element I have some to believe is key for setting up a meaningful and effective sabbatical: I wasn't coming from a place of solid Sabbath practice. I work for our church, so Sunday's aren't restful for me at all. The weekend is often spent getting ready for Sunday, or doing household chores. I didn't have a weekly day of rest in my life: how was I supposed to pivot into an entire season of rest?