Will The Real Me Please Stand Up!

It’s in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for.

The Message, Ephesians 1:11

crying on the inside?

I am the product of a multicultural upbringing.

My father was Malawian, but was born, grew up and lived in Zambia. My mother is South African. My parents were diplomats, and by the time I was 10 years old, I had lived in 6 different countries on 3 different continents.

When we finally returned ‘home’, I attended an international school where most of the students and all of the teachers were expatriates who traced their origins to other countries, and I was part of the indigenous minority. Outside of school my peers laughed at my stumbling pronunciation of the native tongue, and grown-ups criticized me for not following the customs of the land.

I spent more of my early adult years out of my home country than in it, pursuing further education and training opportunities.

Now, in midlife, I find myself back in the country of which I am a passport holder.

Unsurprisingly, for the larger part of my life I struggled with not quite knowing who I was, and not quite fitting in, no matter where I was.

I could be at ‘home’ in my home country, surrounded by people who outwardly were very similar in appearance to me, but our ways of thinking, our language, and our experiences couldn’t have been more different.

I could be amongst people with whom I shared more in common, in terms of the way I thought, the way I spoke, and the way I viewed life, but from whom I was inescapably separated by external differences in the colour of our skin and the texture of our hair.

However, I have since discovered that I was not unique in this sense of detachment and confusion of identity.

In the company of others like myself, who were brought up wandering around the Diaspora, I discovered a similar sense of confusion, and found a semblance of belonging.

Even amongst those who appeared to have had a more ‘stable’ upbringing, I discovered this uncertainty of self, this yearning to belong.

Everyone has doubts at some point about who they are. We all want to be accepted. We all want to be okay.

We go to great lengths to identify with our peers, our group, our culture.

It’s what draws young people to gangs; fuels fashion trends; forms facebook groups. It’s why every group comes up with its own uniform.

Even those who opt out of mainstream culture tend to do so in groups – Hippies, monks, Goths.

It’s at the heart of every teenage rebellion and each midlife crisis.

Who am I? Where do I belong?

My aha! moment came when I finally realised that my life was not a random series of events.

I learned that ‘[God] saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in [His] book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.’ (The Bible, New Living Translation, Psalm 139:16).

My birth date, my birth place, my family, my nationality – none of it was an accident. Nothing was a mistake. Everything had a purpose. No experience would go to waste. God could use everything as part of His plan. ‘He knows us far better than we know ourselves... That’s why we can be sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.’ (The Message, Romans 8:27, 28).

I finally realised that I was okay. It was okay that I had grown up experiencing a diversity of cultures in a myriad of countries. It was okay that I hadn’t grown up immersed in the languages and traditions of my homeland.

I was not a misfit.

I was an original.

A carefully crafted creation of God.