The Art of Following {guest post}

By Jessica Kumar | Instagram: @invisibleindia

I’ve never been much of a follower. I’ve always spent a significant amount of time in leadership or pursuing leadership. From a young age, people listened to my ideas and often went along with what I said.

In elementary school, I was pegged a leader of the playground. In high school, class president; in college, a resident assistant (leader in the dorm); in my career, a manager. My whole identity was built on being a leader.

In the Western world and all over the world, leadership is pursued, rewarded and compensated. Everyone is taught to build a following, pursue leadership opportunities and be an influencer.

However, in many cultures in the world, there is a high value in being a follower. People find their identity based on whom they follow rather than whom they lead.

I live in India, and there are beautiful things to learn here about following. You see many who are totally devoted to their guru and who will unquestionably do anything they ask or command.  In my community in India many of the women I know seek conformity and submission as success. Leadership is not a main measurement of worth or value.

Here in India, traditional women have roles:

  • follow your husband
  • follow your guru
  • follow your dharma (religion/duty/role in life)

I have learned a lot from being in a community like this. And in 2017 and 2018, I set a goal for myself-

My main goal was to stop leading, and become a follower. 

At this point in my life, I don’t have the expectations of a high pressure career and I have allowed myself to let go of the internalized success measurements that I used to gauge myself against. My identity in the community comes from who I follow and my roles of whom I serve.

“She is HIS wife.”

“She is HIS mother.”

“She is a follower of THAT guru.”

In this, brings an invisibility of self which is normal in Indian society, but begrudged in our Western world. And in this invisibility, I found freedom.

Learning to be a follower can produce beautiful things in our lives, including the freedom to admit that we don’t know everything, aren’t in control, and don’t have to “fix” things around us.

Even outside the Eastern world, the leadership model is being deconstructed. Leaders who are organic in reciprocal relationships are the ones who we want to follow. Effective leaders are the ones who expel their energies and share what they know, but also absorb knowledge and energy from those whom they come into contact with.

In essence, leaders who know how to follow are the ones others want to follow.

About Jessica:

A global nomad from birth, Jessica Kumar currently lives in India where she and her family are involved in economic development work and small business. She and her husband run a podcast, “Invisible India,” where they talk about scrappy travel, interview interesting people and explore the interactions between East and West through the lens of a cross cultural, interracial couple. Find Invisible India on iTunes, SoundCloud and Stitcher as well as on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. She also writes articles related to cross cultural life at www.globalnomadism.com. Follower Jessica on Twitter @JessicaKumar_ (note the underscore.)

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I Am 200 Percent. I Am Chinese-American. {Guest Post}

The Chinese-American Weight of Being 200%

By Kaitlin Ho Givens | Blog

After lunch we played hand games. It was just what we did in kindergarten in the suburbs of New York and so after eating, we’d turn towards each other in pairs on the lunch benches, sing songs and clap our hands together to the beat.

There was one hand game that ended with “Chinese! Japanese! Indian chief!” with corresponding hand motions – pulling your eyes to slant upwards for “Chinese,” downwards slanted eyes for “Japanese,” and crossing your arms against your chest for “Indian chief!” You were supposed to freeze on “Indian Chief,” and the first person who moved, lost.

I hated this game. I tried to avoid it at all costs and so I was a big proponent of “Miss Mary Mac,” whose silver buttons all down her back, back, back were much more pleasant. One of my earliest memories is playing with a girl who refused to play anything besides the one I dreaded most.

What’s wrong with Miss Mary Mac? I thought, irritated.

I reluctantly agreed. I found myself going faster and faster as we played – clap clap clap – so fast we could barely fit the words over the beat. Clap clap clap.

“Chinese! Japanese! Indian chief!” I did the motions in a flurry of movement and purposely “unfroze” myself so I lost and we could move on to another game.

But the girl stopped. She looked at me with a mean grin, and said, “You kind of look like that.”

I feigned confusion. She pulled at her eyes to slant them, and laughed. It was what I dreaded most. Someone had noticed I was different, and it was clearly not a good thing.

I remember lying on the floor eating grapes and asking my mom, “Mom? I’m 100% Chinese, right?”

And she said, “Yes, Daddy and I are both Chinese so you’re 100% Chinese.”

I continued, “And I’m 100% American, right? Because I was born here.”

“Yes, you’re 100% American.”

I paused. “So I’m 200%?”

My mom laughed, “Yes, you’re 200%.”

Much of my life has been feeling the weight of this 200%, and yet somehow, being not enough of either. Not American enough, not Chinese enough. I had the vacillating experience of attending a predominantly white suburban school and going to Chinatown on Sundays for my Chinese church.

In school, I was seen as fairly quiet. At church, I was one of the more outspoken. At school, I was the smallest person on all of my sports teams. At church, I was bigger than most with an athletic build that was unwonted, and I often felt like I had to lose weight.

At school, I would get the “slanty eye” jab from people who were feeling particularly mean-spirited, while at church my eyes were admired for being “so big” because I have double eyelids (a feature that most have, but many Asians do not, and one of the most popular plastic surgeries in Asia).

My white school friends didn’t take their shoes off when they came to my house, and I was horrified. When I asked them to take them off, they laughed and said that was weird. “Nevermind,” I muttered. I vacuumed with vigor after they left.

In Chinatown, Chinese shops involve no lines, actively pushing yourself forward and shouting in Chinese; they are not for the faint of heart. The Chinese bakery women would say things to each other about me in Chinese after my feeble attempts at ordering baos; I didn’t know what they were saying but I knew they were talking about me because “lo fan” means white person, and they used that term to refer to me, the white one.

I couldn’t hide the fact that I wasn’t white at school, especially with a last name “Ho” that would always get snickers, while at church I was called a twinkie: “yellow on the outside, white on the inside.”

In subtle and overt ways, I was continuously told by white Americans that being Chinese was weird, and I was abnormal. And yet I couldn’t change the shape of my eyes or the food we ate and the way my culture shaped me, so I was stuck in shame. And it seemed I could never be Chinese enough to fit into the Chinese community, leaving me exasperated. I was confused, weighed down by the 200% of my Chinese-American self, continually feeling like I was not enough of either.

The cacophony of my hyphenated Chinese-American identity sent me running every which way to find a place where I belonged. By the time I got to college, I was jaded by both the white American community and the Chinese community and found myself seeking acceptance in the black community on the gospel choir and the step team, with the Latino community in their cultural association.

It is good to discover other cultures, but it was at the expense of my own identity. I was ashamed of my Chinese-American identity, trying to deny my own culture, and desperate to hear that I was enough. I was weighed down by the load of trying to carry an identity I didn’t understand. I was running from my own skin, my own self, and ultimately, I was running from the One who made me.

I heard the voice of my Creator through a bumper sticker in the Dominican Republic: “Soy especial, Dios no hace basura.” I am special, God doesn’t make garbage.

Something broke inside me when I saw that bumper sticker. I heard the voice of God say, “Kata, you are enough.”

I heard, “The ignorance and inhospitality of white Americans and even your own race have bent you in shame. That was never my intention; I want to heal you so you can stand tall.” I heard God say that his creation of me as a Chinese-American woman was not a mistake, but profoundly purposeful.

There was beauty to be discovered, brokenness to be exposed and healed, and joy and redemption to come if I would just stop running and heed his call. A call to stop cowering under the weight of my own confusion and shame, receive his words of life, and stand tall. A call to intimacy with the Father and a call to a greater understanding of how he made me; a call to see what it looks like to worship him in the fullness of who I am and invite others to do the same.

From that catalytic bumper sticker moment, I have been on this wonder-filled journey with Jesus where I’m still figuring out what it means to be a third-generation Chinese-American. The journey is long but marked with freedom and curiosity, not avoidance and shame. It has been an exhilarating ride of discovering depths of the Father’s heart in ways I never would have known if I had kept running.

If we deny, dismiss, or push aside our ethnicity and race, we are robbed of opportunities to experience deep healing, to enter into the stories of those who are different from us, and we mistakenly assume that our way is the right way and everything else is weird, which hurts our neighbors and our witness.

The Father declares that he has created us purposely, and well. He invites us to explore our ethnic identity with him. Whether we come from a majority or minority culture, we have an ethnicity worth discovering. May we have courage to trust our Creator and be open to his beckoning. Surely it will bring light and life to us and our communities in ways we might never have expected.

About Kaitlin:

I am Kaitlin Sara Ho Givens, also known as “Kata.” I am a Chinese-American campus minister focusing in planting new movements, empowering leaders, and raising up purposefully multiethnic, reconciling communities that reflect the heart of God. I am pursuing a Masters of Divinity at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary. I hold a Bachelor’s degree in English from Boston University. I speak Spanish and French and Minion proficiently, with Greek and Hebrew up next.

***

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Sign up for the Mid-month Digest and Secret Newsletter Here:

 

Consider joining the Facebook group Be the Bridge to Racial Unity to learn more about how God is moving the church towards racial healing and growth.

If you are a writer, consider using the hashtag #WOCwithpens to showcase the writing of our black and brown sisters of faith every Wednesday specifically, but anytime as well! You can find the explanation for the hashtag here.

The theme for March is “Simplify” and for April is “Books and Writing.” Email me at scrapingraisins@ gmail (dot) com if you have an idea for a guest post!

**This post contains Amazon affiliate links

Much of my life has been feeling the weight of this 200%, and yet somehow, being not enough of either. Not American enough, not Chinese enough.

 

Why Black Panther Matters {by Yabome Gilpin-Jackson}

Black Panther

By Yabome Gilpin-Jackson | Instagram

At age 7 in Grade 2, my son came home from chapel day at his private Christian school and said, “Mummy, I don’t want to be African anymore!”

I stopped and turned to face him.

I felt panic lodge itself in my chest and my heart respond by pumping and flooding blood to my ears.

I blinked – hoping that resetting my vision would rewind and reset the moment.

“Africans are poor,” he continued, and went on to say some more things I will not reprint.

The backstory when I found it out? There had been a presentation and video for a fundraiser to help “poor kids in Africa” in chapel.

In kindergarten at age 5, my daughter came home from school fussing about needing to choose and bring a picture of her favorite princess for a project. She ran through her choices.

“Cinderella, because she worked hard and overcame hard stuff.”

“Ariel … well, because I just like her”

“Pocahontas … because she’s brown and I don’t really like Tiana … well I liked her for my birthday cake, but I don’t really like the story … or I could choose the new British princess because she’s pretty.

I piped up … “Well, if you are going with a real princess instead of a fairy tale one, how about a modern-day African princess? Here, let’s look up Princess of Lesotho, or Princess of Swaziland.”

“What?!!! There are really black princesses? African Princesses???”

These stories are not about my children’s preferences. They are not about difference or diversity or even fundamentally about my daughter choosing a brown-skinned or dark-skinned princess over a lighter-skinned one. These stories are about representations of identity and why I wrote my short story collection – Identities. To me, that’s what Black Panther is about and that’s why it’s a milestone movie. Let me explain.

We, humanity, are storytelling beings. We live in and through the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, which are informed by the stories around us that send us identity signals. Subsequently, we make identity conclusions and live by them.

The majority of the identity signals in the stories about what it means to be a Black African in the world are simplistic, narrow and negative. Just pay attention to the stories about “Africa” and “Africans” that you can recall now and see what’s there…Right – that’s what I mean. Those identity signals you are recalling are the same ones that my daughter and sons receive when they see images of themselves reflected only as poor, dirty, helpless, orphaned, children.

They get these images and the message it sends to them often out of context, with little dignity or compassion and with the same, singular, simplistic storyline – African children and Africans in general are poor and helpless on that “dark continent.”

Of course, I am not saying socio-economic issues faced in countries on the continent are not real or that help isn’t necessary. However, the stories that are told about why and how ‘those people’ come to need help can become complicit reinforcements of the complex systems that created the poverty and adversities in the first place, and can hurt rather than help the changes needed.

In our subsequent exchange, my son told me the identity conclusion the presentation left him with – it is better to be white than black/African, so that you won’t be poor and he doesn’t think he ever wants to go to Africa. Of course, my husband and I did our parental bit to dislodge his narrative from his brain – we reminded him we were from Sierra Leone in West Africa, had lived and grew up there and will for sure take him back. We described and showed him ways in which “Africans” are in fact not helpless but amazingly resourceful, generous and innovative in the face of the challenges we face. We showed him maps and pinpointed the exact country and community his school had fundraised for and how small it was in the vastness of Africa.

Wakanda in Black Panther may be a fictional country in Africa, but the parallel of the beauty and richness of the African continent is real. Wakanda’s vibranium may as well be the tantalum that powers our information tech hardware found in abundance in the Democratic Republic of Congo and its environs; or the Blood Diamonds of Sierra Leone; or Oil in Nigeria or any of the other vast natural resources that continue to quietly and often illegally leave the richest continent in natural resources.

Africa’s resources fuel the world’s economies while “Africa” remains depicted as “uncivilized, at war, and poor and helpless.” This, of course was the exact plight the fictional Wakandans were concerned would occur – it is in fact the reality of what Africa and Africans have faced since her “discovery.”

Superheroines and superheroes have a place in the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, because they stretch our imagination and inspire us to reach for more than what we are now. This – reaching beyond our current comfort zones – has always been the way humanity grows and thrives. Our Supers are simply projections of ourselves – the best parts of us – and for the villain Supers – representations of the worst parts of us. Supers are in effect simply role models – or our role icons that we place on pedestals to reach for. When a culture only projects one people group as Supers, it also says this is the ultimate image we must all aspire to.

Black Panther’s T’Challa and all those powerfully intelligent, strong, relevant and relatable black African women in it, gives my daughter and sons images of super icons they can reach for. My daughter had the opposite issue to her princess selection challenges after watching Black Panther on preview day. She liked and could relate to so many of the black women in it, she kept changing her choice of favorite.

Perhaps the moments in the movie that depict most clearly what I am saying here are the closing scenes. At the end of the movie when T’Challa unveils his plan for the Wakandan Outreach Centre to Shuri, a Wakandan ship lands in the basketball court behind them to underscore the point. After marvelling at it, one of the boys walks over to T’Challa and says: “Hey … this yours? Who are you?”

Black children of African descent living off the continent need this. They need these moments of relatable role models, real and iconic, that they can look up to and hear stories from, so that they too can believe in their ability to reach higher. I am not just saying this theoretically. I lived my formative years in Sierra Leone and understand that the core identity I subconsciously developed by seeing and living among a myriad role models there–in spite of a legacy of colonial education that had me read about lots of non-Black role models–is not as easily accessible to my children as it was for me.

Coincidentally, I attended “A Conversation with Michelle Obama” on her visit to Vancouver, BC the same day as watching Black Panther [what icing on my global African identity cake!]. Michelle Obama’s description of the work her family had done to mentor children on the margins in ways that they can touch, feel and connect to while in the White House made these same points.

In the outtake, T’Challa shares his plan at the UN General Assembly to share Wakanda’s technology with the world and he aptly uses an African proverb often attributed to Nigeria: “In the moment of crisis, the wise build bridges and the foolish build dams.”

So, I say, in a racially divided world, building bridges is our only option. The hour for self-preservation is over. It is time for meaningful reparations, forgiveness, healing, and progress. Let us widen our lenses to truly build open space for the original peoples of these Americas and all us immigrant communities and forced arrivals–Black and White–all made in God’s image – to thrive. Ensuring equal representations of all our peoples is the least of the ways we can do that. Thank you, Marvel.

About Yabome:

Dr. Yabome Gilpin-Jackson considers herself to be a dreamer, doer and storyteller, committed to imagining and leading the futures we want. She is an award-winning scholar, consultant, writer and curator of African identity and leadership stories. She was born in Germany, grew up in Sierra Leone, and completed her studies in Canada and the USA. Yabome was named International African Woman of the Year by UK-based Women4Africa and also won the Emerging Organization Development Practitioner by the US-based Organization Development Network. Yabome, who is married and the mother of 3 children, has also published several journal articles and book chapters and continues to research, write and speak – most recently at Princeton University – on the importance of holding global mindsets and honouring diversity and social inclusion in our locally global world.

Follow Yabome on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, or at her website, www.sldconsulting.org

Buy her book, Identities: A Short Story Collection here.

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How is God calling you to enter the race conversation? 

This month we’re discussing racism, privilege and bridge building. If you’d like to guest post on this topic, please email me at scrapingraisins(dot)gmail(dot)com. Yes, this is awkward and fraught with the potential for missteps, blunders and embarrassing moments, but it’s necessary. Join me?

I’ll go first.

(Consider joining the Facebook group Be the Bridge to Racial Unity to learn more about how God is moving in this sphere.)

If you are a writer, consider using the hashtag #WOCwithpens to showcase the writing of our black and brown sisters of faith every Wednesday specifically, but anytime as well! You can find the explanation for the hashtag here.

If you’re a white person who’s new to all of this, I compiled some resources to start you on your journey (because I’m not much farther ahead):

70+ Race Resources for White People

80+ MORE Race Resources for White people

Black Panther’s T’Challa and all those powerfully intelligent, strong, relevant and relatable black African women in it, gives my daughter and sons images of super icons they can reach for.

**Contains Amazon affiliate links

*image from ETonline

Selling Out by Settling Down? {for The Mudroom}

Like Belle, I never planned to live a provincial life. I, too, wanted “adventure in the great, wide somewhere.” I wanted it more than I could tell.

But today we bought a house.

An ordinary, provincial house with a two-car garage and a Whirlpool dishwasher. As we walked out of the title office, giant trees with fresh green leaves waved gently against the cobalt blue sky. The walk-through had unearthed no new knowledge and was the same sturdy 1977 four bedroom split-level home on 0.20 acres in a mid-sized town in Colorado we saw when we put our offer in. Far from exotic, we will now be six minutes from Target, seven minutes from a grocery store and eight minutes from locally roasted pour-over coffee (a must for my coffee snob husband).

We were so sure this was the right house for us that we made an offer the first time we saw it, standing in the living room with the light slanting across the wood floor, the baby fidgeting against my chest in the baby carrier. We wrote a letter, pleading our case to a family who, based on the Brennan Manning books, Bibles, and Christian bookstore plaques on the walls, were also people of faith. We wanted to raise our children here, open our doors to friends and family, and would respect that sacred, holy life had already been lived here. We acknowledged the grief they must be feeling in parting with their home.

There were nine offers. Three were more than ours and four were cash. But they chose us.

At 38 years old, I have never owned a home, nor did I think I was ever likely to, since my biggest fear has always been living the White Picket Fence Life. Perhaps that is why as an eighth grader, my favorite movie was Beauty and the Beast (the “nerdy princess,” as a friend of mine pointed out). I had no intention of becoming a stay-at-home mom in the suburbs like my mom had been. I was destined for greater things.

Lately my four-year-old has been asking me what I want to be when I grow up. The first time he asked this, I chuckled, “I already grew up,” I said. “I’m doing it—I’m a wife and your mommy. I’m also a writer. And I was a teacher and lived in China before that.”

He nodded, crunching his Cheerios and raisins from the blue plastic bowl. I don’t think he understood. Just like I didn’t understand that my mom was never “just” a stay-at-home mom. That we are never “just” anything. Life is not static. Our identity can never be reduced, only expanded by time and experience. Life breathes into us like a balloon. Yes, I am a wife and mom—in addition to all I was before that. And—God willing—more life will be breathed in even when my children leave home.

In their retirement, my parents moved from sticky, tropical Tampa, Florida to 9,000 feet elevation in the Rockies. Snowshoeing with my mom on their twenty-two acres on a clear winter day, I asked her how she begins new friendships now that she has lived so much life. Doesn’t she want her friends to know her history? How does she feel truly known without them knowing her past? “Where do you start?” I asked.

“I start from now,” she answered. My mom has learned what I am still beginning to grasp.

We are not a chapter or a single experience or identity. We are a composite. All our past experiences intertwine into one exquisite design the longer we live. We begin from now.

We bought a house … Continue reading at The Mudroom

In the Fire {for Faith Notes}

The park ranger peers up, pointing to the tops of the Lodgepole Pines standing like guards at the Rocky Mountain tree line. “See those pinecones at the top?”

I squint, attempting to be mentally present while my body warns me my infant son an hour away will be hungry soon.

“Those are called serotinous cones. They’re covered in resin and store their seeds until triggered by a forest fire.” He continues hiking and I pause a second longer, struck by a rare moment of mental clarity in an otherwise foggy time of life. I reflect on the past five years as a mother to three children, four and under.

At 31, I had given up on love. Living in the middle-of-nowhere China, I refused to forfeit my ambition for a man. In fact, I pitied women who sacrificed their dreams for marriage.

And then I met Adam. He was everything I had hoped for in a man, but was like finding the perfect home in the wrong neighborhood. He felt no pull to live overseas. But I knew we belonged together and within two years I was married, unemployed and pregnant.

Motherhood consumed my identity like a ravenous fire.In pregnancy, skin stretched to obscene proportions. Feet, face and hands swelled. Hormones swung faster than a preschooler on a swing set. “Come back when you think you’re dying,” the midwife said. We thought she was being dramatic. We were wrong. Pain screamed, then new life sang. One life split into two …

 

Continue reading at Faith Notes

(Also featured at The Times Record)

Day 24: A letter to my 13-year-old Self {Guest Post for 31 Days of #WOKE}

 

By Leah Abraham | Twitter: @leahabraham9

 

Dear 13-year-old Leah,

High school is hard, isn’t it? As a freshman in high school, you are more worried about relating to your peers and your changing body than your grades.

Of course you would be. It’s not easy moving from India to America at 13. You’re trying to figure out the simple things, like navigating the grocery store and figuring out how to order coffee from Starbucks. All you want to do is fit in, belong, and not feel so lonely anymore.

But you’ll manage. You’ll figure it out piece by piece. All immigrants do eventually. You won’t call yourself an immigrant for a few years, and you won’t have the time or energy to contemplate the complex race issues of this country just yet. But you will soon.

Right now, you’re learning how to change your accent. Oh yes, it’s hard work. You’re rewiring your brain completely. You’re carefully considering each syllable before it leaves your tongue. You stand in front of the mirror, practicing your speech over and over and over and over again until you can’t remember how to pronounce “February.”

You’re exhausted and embarrassed. But don’t worry. By this time next year, no one will know that you are an immigrant. No one will know your “dirty little secret.” You’ll mask your loneliness with a newfound accent, and you’ll manage to get through high school in one piece.

You just want to fit in. You want to belong, to be loved and to be accepted.

Oh, love, there is no shame in that. You’ll still crave those things years later.

And here’s the thing — in about ten years, you’ll think about the cost of giving up your Indian accent. Remember the concept of leaving home to find home? You’ll start wondering if it’s the same with your accent.

You’ll wonder if by giving up your accent, you were really trying to give up on your people, your heritage, and a part of yourself that you were too young to love.

One day, you’ll wonder if you’ve alienated yourself from other immigrants, people you consider your people.

You see, the current administration isn’t the best. These days, the word “immigrant” bears a new connotation, one that divides and segregates and alienates, and you’ll wonder how much you’re still allowed to call yourself an immigrant.

You’ll have friends who wake up each morning, shaking in fear of being deported. You’ll have friends who feel forced to “act white” and suppress their heritage and culture. You’ll have friends who struggle with racial justice. Heck, you’ll struggle with racial justice.

You’ll be afraid to ask questions that might be “stupid” or “insensitive,” but you’ll do your best to ask them anyway, because you cannot stand the new administration and the hurt it is causing.

You’ll remember your friends who are hurting, your community who’s struggling, and your people who you’ve learned to love over the past decade.

You’ll remember their stories–especially the ones about families emptying their pockets and selling their dreams so they could build a better world for their kids.

You will refuse to look away because you want to be their hope in these dark days.

It always comes down to hope, doesn’t it? Hope for a better tomorrow. Hope for freedom. Hope for belonging and life.

You hoped to be loved and accepted when you lost your accent. When you’re 23, you’ll grieve that loss and hope to forgive yourself one day.

Hey, 13-year-old Leah, practice radical hope. Practice it, not only for yourself, but also for the people you are about to meet. Practice it for the immigrants who hustle daily. Practice it for your friends who fear deportation. Practice it for those who struggle with racial justice. Practice it for those who tire under the new administration.

Practice it until you remember that you don’t have to change yourself to be loved, to be seen or to belong. You are loved, seen and invited to belong just as you are.

 

About Leah:

Leah is a storyteller + writer + journalist + creative + empathizing romantic + pessimistic realist + ISFP + Enneagram type 2 + much more. She lives in the Seattle area where she works as an education reporter and features writer. Bonus facts: She loves the great indoors, hates to floss, and is obsessed with Korean food and her dorky, immigrant family.

Read more of Leah’s writings at SheLoves.

New to the Series? Start HERE (though you can jump in at any point!).

A 31 Day Series Exploring Whiteness and Racial Perspectives

During the month of March, 2017, I will be sharing a series called 31 Days of #Woke. I’ll be doing some personal excavating of views of race I’ve developed through being in schools that were under court order to be integrated, teaching in an all black school as well as in diverse classrooms in Chicago and my experiences of whiteness living in Uganda and China. I’ll also have some people of color share their views and experiences of race in the United States (I still have some open spots, so contact me if you are a person of color who wants to share). So check back and join in the conversation. You are welcome in this space.

Day 6: “What are you?” {Guest Post for 31 Days of #WOKE}

Day 6: "What are you?" {Guest Post for 31 Days of #WOKE}

By Vannae Savig

I am mixed, multiracial, mixed-race, or whatever the new PC term is now. I didn’t realize this until people throughout my life began to remind me of it.

I always wonder if I wouldn’t even think about being mixed as much as I do, if society didn’t remind me of it all the time. People are often curious, and ask me the dreaded question, “What are you?”

Human. I am human.

I know that’s not the answer they want. I know what they mean. Most of the time I comply, but every once in a while, I play dumb. I pretend for a second that they are looking at me for me, and not my skin or my facial features. I pretend for a moment that race isn’t the most important thing.

***

When I was 4, I was playing with my friend, Chrissy. She and I played a game we called “princesses.” The only problem was Chrissy kept telling me that I wasn’t allowed to be the princess, I had to be the maid. Of course I was upset, and reminded her that every girl is a princess, and that it was my house, my rules. “Well, it’s because you’re black. Everyone knows black people are slaves, or maids.” She replied with so much confidence, I believed her for a moment. I knew then that I was black.

In third grade there was a girl named Natalie. She forever called me names like “oreo” or “white.” She told me I thought I was better than everyone else. She said because I was mixed I couldn’t play with her and her friends, who were black. She threatened to beat me up often. Thank goodness they were empty threats. Finally, I asked her what her problem was with me. She simply replied, “You’re white. Not black.” I was shocked. I looked down at my brown skin, confused. I went home and told my parents. They told me that yes, I had European heritage. I knew then that I was white.

In elementary school we learned about Native Americans. I was so excited about this because I knew my great grandfather was from the Blackfeet tribe, and my grandmother was mixed with the Choctaw tribe. I quickly raised my hand and announced this to the class. For the rest of the day some classmates raised their hands up next to their faces and said, “HOWGH” to me. Then some of the boys even chased me around at recess calling me Pocahontas. I knew then that I was Native American.

In high school, I was a part of my church’s youth group. The kids in youth group often made fun of my Mexican heritage. One boy repeatedly said, “Vannae are you a MexiCAN or a MexiCANT?” I remember some kids asked if my grandfather “jumped the border.” Or asked me if I was a U.S citizen. I knew then that I was Mexican.

***

These stories are my reality. In America, race is important. In America, labels are important. Being able to put labels on people, being able to put people in boxes, is the American way. If a person doesn’t fit into the boxes that are created, then they have no place to fit in.

None of these labels make me who I am; I know that. But they are constant reminders of how people see me. They are a constant reminder that I belong everywhere and nowhere.

If I choose one of the things I’m mixed with, I feel like I’m forgetting the rest of me. Like I’m denying the truth. Like I’m pretending to be something that I’m not.

When I’ve answered the dreaded question of “What are you?” with “I am black,” people respond with, “Yes and what else?” People want the full story.

Or sometimes the opposite happens. Once people hear that I have African American heritage, that’s enough for them. It’s as if the “one drop” rule still exists. They only see my skin color. That’s all they see in me. 

As a multiracial woman, I am slowly but surely becoming more proud of who I am. I am becoming more and more comfortable with not fitting in a box.

I am black and white.

I am mixed and multiracial.

I am Mexican and Native American.

I am human.

I am me.

 

Day 6: "What are you?" {Guest Post for 31 Days of #WOKE}Vannae is pastor and lives with her hubby and daughter in Colorado. She is passionate about justice and loves to help the voiceless find their voice. Vannae enjoys spending her time creating, and can often be found writing, or creating new recipes in her kitchen.

 

 

New to the Series? Start HERE (though you can jump in at any point!).

A 31 Day Series Exploring Whiteness and Racial Perspectives

During the month of March, 2017, I will be sharing a series called 31 Days of #Woke. I’ll be doing some personal excavating of views of race I’ve developed through being in schools that were under court order to be integrated, teaching in an all black school as well as in diverse classrooms in Chicago and my experiences of whiteness living in Uganda and China. I’ll also have some people of color share their views and experiences of race in the United States (I still have some open spots, so contact me if you are a person of color who wants to share). So check back and join in the conversation. You are welcome in this space.

 

 

Falling Off the Missionary Pedestal {for SheLoves}

I was privileged to share this at SheLoves last week!  Things have been a bit, eh, busy around here since we had our baby on September 10th, so I’m just now getting around to sharing it on Scraping Raisins.  


 
As a twenty-something single missionary home for the summer, I sat quietly judging the other girls in the room who were laughing and talking about which color Kitchen Aid Mixer they had registered for at their bridal showers. I thought about my own home—a 300 square foot cinderblock apartment in China with one sink in the kitchen that looked like it belonged to an auto mechanic and a “shoilet”—a toilet that got wet when you showered because the shower was in the same tiny space.

As I listened to those girls, rather than feeling envy, I felt smug. I was doing the Hard Thing: purposely living a life of discomfort for the sake of the gospel. I had climbed the evangelical Christian ladder right up to the top, perching on the pedestal the church reserves for missionaries. I wasn’t going to waste my life like these other girls who could guiltlessly own a $300 appliance that would collect dust on their kitchen counters.

I had this “living for Jesus” thing all figured out. Hard always equaled holy, I believed. Discomfort was always best. And poverty was external and had nothing to do with the poverty of my own soul.
But have you ever strode confidently into what you wholeheartedly believed was the direction you were meant to go when out of nowhere a giant shepherd’s rod slips around your waist and yanks you backward … hard?

That was how my five-year missionary tale ended—abruptly and with little explanation from that “still small voice.” Before I knew it, I was back in America with the Kitchen Aid Girls, drinking La Croix and chatting about recipes we found on Pinterest.

And I was miserable.

***

That was six years ago.

Since living in China, life has gone from multiple roads, all wide open with glorious possibility, to an ever-narrowing path where I can only see enough of the way ahead to put one foot in front of the other. Getting married “late,” we were on the fast track and had three kids in four years. Sometimes I wake up stunned, wondering what happened to my life.

As a missionary, I had been a superstar, both in China and back home...continue reading at SheLoves.

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Previous Post: The New Normal 

Next Post: The Best Years of Our Lives {for The Mudroom}

Goodbye to the Other Leslies

I really thought my life as a nearly 37-year-old would look very different from the way it actually looks today.  

As a 20-year-old, let’s say, I envisioned my future self as living in another country, speaking another language and having a family with bi (or tri)-lingual children.  I planned on raising them to love other cultures, attend local schools, eat ethnic foods and travel the world.  We would possibly even live without plumbing.  And my husband would be right there beside me–leading people to Christ and possibly even preaching or teaching in other languages.  That’s how it was supposed to go.

And if I stayed single? (my plan B) I’d get my PhD and have lots of disciple “children” in another country, like Amy Carmichael, who was a single missionary in an orphanage in India for over 50 years.

Oh how God has a sense of humor.

Though I was on that very path, God U-turned my life six years ago to bring me back exactly where I started (or so I thought).  And I found myself living a life I never dreamed I’d live:  an “ordinary” one.


The crossroads of life have a catch.  Once you pass them, you can never go back. 

I recently listened to a podcast called Sorta Awesome that talked about saying goodbye to all of your potential yous that never came into existence.  And I feel it’s time that I bid those other Leslies adieu.

I really thought my life as a nearly 37-year-old would look very different from the way it actually looks today.

 
Goodbye to the single Leslie who would change the world.

Goodbye to the Leslie who would marry someone of another race and have gorgeous bi-racial children.

Goodbye to the Leslie who would marry someone in full-time ministry.

Goodbye to the Leslie who would get a PhD studying an ethnic minority in northwest China.

Goodbye to the Leslie who would be a social worker (my first major).

Goodbye to the Leslie who would transform the inner city of Chicago through her badass teaching methods…think Dangerous Minds (I tried that, actually, and that Leslie didn’t materialize).

Goodbye to the Leslie with 6, 8 or 10 children (probably not biologically possible for me anymore), or the Leslie who would be the “mom of boys” or “mom of girls” (I have a boy and a girl).

Goodbye to the Leslie who would be a nurse (I got accepted to nursing school, but didn’t go).

Goodbye to what could have been.

Hello and welcome to what is.  To what God has done, is doing and will do.   

Thank God for the roads taken and the roads not taken.  Because at every crossroads, He was there.  He was pointing, guiding, urging, leading and holding my hand, whether I knew it or not.  

Goodbye, fair Leslies.  Those would have been good lives, too, were they what God had planned for me.  It turns out He wanted me to be a teacher, live for a time in China, be single for a season, finally marry an actor in Chicago, have two adorable stinkers, move to Colorado and begin a little blog

And “ordinary” is relative, after all.  This Saturday night, I cooked dinner to James Taylor in the background, with my one-year-old daughter on my hip, helping me deliver cardamom, cumin, coriander and turmeric to the counter to make chickpea curry.  Meanwhile, my sick husband was curled up with tea, a cozy blanket and a book at the kitchen table.  

In the other room, our son played with our former Saudi Arabian exchange student, laughing and making trucks talk back and forth.  My daughter got bored “cooking” and dove into the cardboard box in the living room that is our best new toy.  

Earlier in the day, we all squashed into our Corolla to drive 45 minutes up into the snow-covered mountains to Rocky Mountain National Park, pausing on turn-outs for breath-catching views.  We put the kids to bed after dinner and conversations about the intersections of Muslim and Christian theology and melted into the couch to watch a new British murder mystery T.V. series. 

Yes, our life is ordinary.  But ordinary is the way your foot eventually molds grooves into stiff shoes.  It is the way a gorgeous new dress gradually becomes “you” and a natural part of your wardrobe.  “Ordinary” for us does not look like “ordinary” for others.  In fact, your “ordinary” may be very exotic to me, and vice versa.  Ordinary is no longer a bad word to me.

Though I am not changing the world at a macro level, love, cultures, food, friends, laughter and challenges are happening at a micro level under my roof just as they would have had I found myself on another path.  This is the Leslie that God intended to be.  So I will stop turning to look back at those other Leslies that could have been and allow them to fade into the distance, granting them a fond, but firm farewell.  I do not regret a single road taken.  Though life is not as I expected, it is still pretty spectacular, even in all its ordinary-ness. 


What about you?  How does your life look different (so far) from what you had planned for yourself?  How have you seen the grace in that?  I’d love to read your stories in the comments!

Previous Post~Personal Discoveries in 2015: Friendships, Spirituality & Writing

Next Post~Art & the Alabaster Jar

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Linking up with #Wholemama and Me, Coffee, and Jesus and Grace and Truth  and Velvet Ashes 
 

I really thought my life as a nearly 37-year-old would look very different from the way it actually looks today.

Writing is Narcissistic (And Four Other Reasons Not to Write)


As a little girl, I dreamed of being a writer like Anne of Green Gables and Jo from Little Women, but I have been reluctant to write for the following reasons:

1. What if I write and no one reads it, or worse, they read it and hate it?
2. I’d rather live my life than write about my life.
3. Blogging is narcissistic (someone told me that once)–why would I want people to think I only want to talk about myself?
4. I don’t have time.
5. It’s all already been said before, probably much more eloquently than I could ever say it.

As I joined over 1,000 writers over the past month in the challenge to write for 31 days, I have done battle with the above demons that whispered to me that I was wasting my time.  Here is how I have sought to slay them: 

1. What if I write and no one reads it, or worse, they read it and hate it?

Adah in The Poisonwood Bible puts her writing compulsion in this way:  “I go home by myself and write poems at my kitchen table…all the noise in my brain.  I clamp it to the page so it will be still” (p. 532). 

I have always called my journal my personal counselor.  Writing in and of itself is therapy to me, though until now it has always been private.  But the past month of writing about my journey back home after living in China has been a healing process and has brought me closure on many levels. 

I have had to stop worrying about an audience and just write for myself and out of obedience to God.  It has been my way of working out what God is working in me (Phil. 2:12-13). 

And as for the fear that what I’m writing is terrible? The way I’ve comforted myself in that regard is to remember that I can still grow, improve and deepen as a writer. 

Just as I may have to take 1,000 digital pictures to get one good shot, I may need to write 1,000 posts to have one that could be considered outstanding. 

Writing is a process, a journey.

2. I’d rather live my life than write about my life.

I’ve always been afraid that writing would take time out of living itself, but now I know that it enhances and adds to life rather than subtracting from it.  Now, I approach my days with anticipation, searching for meaning and beauty to share with others instead of allowing those moments to sneak by without comment. 

Writing is changing my perspective on living.

3. Blogging is narcissistic (someone told me that once)–why would I want people to think I only want to talk about myself?

All art is narcissistic.  Writers believe they have something to communicate that should be shared.  One of the writers this month mentioned that she has to remember that she may be writing for “just one”–just one person that may need to read that message that day.  In this way, writing is not narcissistic, but self-giving. 

The first time I shared a post publicly on Facebook, I felt like I was standing naked in a crowded room for others to snicker at and criticize.  But what if one person was encouraged by seeing my flaws?  Maybe they, too, have a dimple or a blemish in a similar spot and finally stopped feeling so alone?  In this way, writing is selfless. 

Writing is being naked. 

If you are doing it right, the clothes come off and you are left standing completely exposed and vulnerable.  It can be terrifying. But it can also be liberating. 

Like with a lover, the first time the clothes come off is the hardest, but soon you may even begin to experience the freedom from shame that comes from being loved in spite of–or even because of–your nakedness.

So, no, writing is not narcissistic.

If the writer steps into the light of complete vulnerability and shares his or her story so that others might also be freed from shame, writing is a sacrificial and selfless act.

4. I don’t have time.

We always have enough time to do what we prioritize.  I am a runner, so this has forced me to treat my time like a puzzle at times in order to keep running.  It, like writing, may mean early mornings, late nights, a dirty house, left-overs or take-out, creativity in scheduling and less time for personal hygiene (just kidding…kind of).  And if it is truly a calling, it will become strangely addicting, so you may find yourself trying to sneak in even more writing than you had planned. 

5. It’s all already been said before, probably much more eloquently than I could ever say it.

One of my favorite books on art is Walking on Water, by Madeleine L’Engle.  In it, she says “If the work comes to the artist and says, ‘Here I am, serve me,’ then the job of the artist, great or small, is to serve.  The amount of the artist’s talent is not what it is about.  Jean Rhys said to an interviewer in the Paris Review, ‘Listen to me.  All of writing is a huge lake.  There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.  And there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys.  All that matters is feeding the lake.  I don’t matter.  The lake matters.  You must keep feeding the lake'” (p. 23).

Feed the lake. 

Never before has the cliché “You have to start somewhere” meant more to me than it has in the past month.  My contribution to The Lake might only be a small thimble of water.  That is not my concern.  I am called to be faithful to pour out what God has poured into me as an offering to Him and Him alone (Col. 3:23).  I am to “serve the work.”

At the beginning of the challenge, the organizer, Crystal Stine, reminded us that it wasn’t important to pick a topic that had never been written about before, because most likely it had been.  Instead, I was to pick a topic that I cared about because though someone may have written about it, I have never written about it.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the first step in calling is willingness. 

Am I willing to take a risk and write?

Runners run, bikers bike, climbers climb, writers write.  I have never called myself a writer before, but I think I may have just convinced myself that I am, in fact, a writer.

I am a writer.

I am a WRITER.

I AM a writer.

…and the last garment falls to the floor.


How have you “fed the lake” in the last month? If you are a writer, would you add any other reasons to this list?

Linking up with: Literacy Musing Mondays
and Crystal Stine

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