I’m over at SheLoves Magazine snagging a spot on their Red Couch for a book club discussion of Christina Cleveland’s Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces that Keep Us Apart
As I read, I kept thinking of all the groups, people, cultures that have excluded and marginalized me. Of being a third-culture missionary kid at the throat of the Himalayas. Scraping dahl and rice into my mouth with my tiny hands, squatting to go to the bathroom, and living with the watery sway of rice fields on the horizon, I had no idea that Nepal wasn’t home until we came back to America. But when we came home, our former way of life no longer fit. Our experiences in the American church left us confused, frustrated, and eventually bitter.
I was the girl whose parents had snagged an old run down bargain house in an upper middle class neighborhood where the white neighbor kids wore designer labels and I lurked shame faced in hand-me-downs and Goodwill bargains before grunge was in. I remember “ching chong China girl” being chanted at me on the playground as they pulled their blue eyes into a grotesque slant. I remember being one of the only Asian girls in a sea of white faces, throughout school, in church, at blogging conferences.
They were the white girls in ankle booties and skinny jeans, with their organic almond milk lattes and Instagrams filled with pearly white-teethed children lined artistically and filtered in golden light. They were the ones whose homes looked like Anthropologie and Pottery Barn and all things affluent. They were the vacuous and pretty Christians comfortable in suburbia in their monocultural churches, messing about with tidy theology, a good health plan and a 401K. I couldn’t imagine they would get me at all, or want to.
And I was positive they had nothing to offer me if they did.
Head over to SheLoves Magazine to read the full discussion and join in with your thoughts.
Oh … it’s just so good to see you again, Alia. You’ve made my day. Truly!