This week, Simeon Harrar takes a look at those who stay behind. Sometimes those are TCKs who are left behind as friends move, as seniors leave for university. Sometimes those are ATCKs who stay and watch parents return to the host countries, or friends going on to do new things. Either way, this post is for those who stay.
There is an unspoken sorrow for those left behind—an unnatural absence for those who don’t get on planes and fly off to new adventures. There is a slow-settling sadness when a space stays the same, but friends disappear. Their ghosts remain to haunt the places you once shared. Only memories are left of a time that has passed by, leaving in its wake echoes and emptiness. Present tense now turned to past tense.
We often acknowledge those who are going. We try to prepare them for the changes ahead. We write cards, recognize their pain, and name the change that is coming. We bless them and release them into the world. But what about those who are left behind, those who are tethered to this space?
We more often forget those left behind with the heartache of unfulfilled dreams and the loss of a future that was meant to be, but won’t. Those who mourn as they watch loved ones and friends head for distant horizons with stars in their eyes and dreams in their pockets. There is a heaviness: from untold jokes and late nights to rites of passage that friends should share. Treasures of friendship are now buried beneath an ocean we cannot cross.
There are hopes that we carried together that were not meant to be carried alone, so they slip and fall away into the great abyss that now separates us. There is a chasm that threatens to overwhelm, and we stand on its edge trying to be strong. But at times our knees buckle and our hearts shudder, and we wonder if anyone sees us and our grief and all that we have lost, even though we have not moved. So for those of you who feel this way now or will feel this way in the weeks and months to come, the prayer below is for you.
Lord, have mercy on those who stay
Those left behind, waving goodbye
Those who look to the sky searching for planes
Those whose hearts ache for the departed
Lord, have mercy on the remainers
Who face transition without ever leaving
Who feel their loss is too small to name
Who freeze in familiar places overcome by grief
Lord, have mercy on those left behind
Who listen for a laugh that will not come
Who look for a face that will not appear
Who hold stories they can no longer share
Lord, have mercy on the rooted
Whose friends are pulled up and transplanted
Whose garden feels strangely empty
Who sense the early onset of a bitter winter
Lord, have mercy on all of us
Those who stay and those who go
Those who cry and those who don’t
Those deeply rooted and those freshly uprooted
Lord have mercy on all of us.
Simeon Harrar grew up as a missionary kid in Papua New Guinea and Senegal. He is an ordained Presbyterian pastor and works as a chaplain in Nairobi, Kenya, at Rosslyn Academy.
You can find Simeon at simeonharrar@substack.com & simeonharrar.com.
Books- Between Worlds: My life as a Missionary Kid. The Long Flight Home. The Dreamer.
