Are there certain experiences that shape you for the rest of your life?
Are there people you meet or things that happen that permanently change who you become later in life?
I am not referring to those devastating events or life-changing traumatic things that might happen to a young person, but the seemingly normal routines of life that impact you in such a way that it becomes part of who you are.
Perhaps making a friend in middle school, that invites you to spend time with her family, one very different from yours, and through simple day-to-day interaction, they have a profound effect on your life.
Or maybe you join a club in school, and become part of a particular friend group, and because of those friendships your whole life is impacted and who you are is shaped by that circle of relationships.
One of those time periods for me was moving from South Korea to Warner Robins, Georgia and attending Rumble Junior High in the 7th and 8th grades. Like many military families, we moved every one to three years, and by the time I was 11, I had moved 6 times, lived in two foreign countries, and the only thing that was normal was constant change. I didn’t realize it at the time, but moving from Korea to Georgia, from a small elementary to a large Junior High, and from attending school on-base with other military kids, to attending school in a racially and socio-economically diverse area would lead to formative experiences. It seemed like normal day-to-day life at the time, but looking back, it was full of things that impacted me in permanent and profound ways.
At Rumble Junior High, we had a very racially diverse population made up of a high percentage of African-American students, along with Caucasian, Asian and several other backgrounds represented in the student population. I was kind of a talkative and outgoing person, which allowed me to make friends quickly. I remember many times being sent out of the class for talking too much and having to stand at the doorway as a consequence, or having to move my desk away from those that I like to talk with. I think because of this outgoing nature, I soon became comfortable associating with people from a wide variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds.
For the next two years, I was immersed in a very diverse atmosphere. And in those formative years of 7th and 8th grade, I was in the lunchroom, the classroom, the crowded hallways, the locker room, the band room with friends and classmates who were black, white, and various shades of brown. I don’t recall feeling “different” from people who had a different color of skin. I really didn’t think much about it because it simply was. Like a fish does not think much about the water in which it lives, or the colors of the other fish in the tank.
Junior High School is FULL of things that are different, uncomfortable and new. But being around people of different races was not one of those things for me.
All that being said, there were times where I was in an uncomfortable situation in which the “uncomfortable” part was related to issues of race. I had made a friend through a Computer Club and we were hanging out at his house, writing programs on his TRS-80 computer. In the course of conversation, he said something that seemed casual to him, but shocked me to the core. He was talking about a certain part of town, and he said, “You better lock up your car when you are there, because there are a lot of [N-word] there.”
There was this strange feeling of confusion that overcame me at that moment. “What did he just say?” “Why would he say something like that?” “What is going on here?” All of sudden I was exposed to someone expressing a certain kind of “fear mixed with disdain” that I had never seen in-person before.
I did not know what to say. I had never had a friend who spoke like this before, and I was horrified and confused and even a bit scared of what would happen. It was that day that I realized that there was a way of thinking about other people, related to their race, that I thought had been confined to history books. Perhaps I was very naive. Okay, yes, I am sure I was very naive. Maybe even a bit sheltered? I knew about racism, and somehow I knew what he said was seriously hateful and wrong. But I was completely caught off guard as to how to respond. I knew what racism was, but up to that point, I thought it was kind of a thing of the past. Somewhere along the way, I had learned a definition of racism, but I had no idea how complicated, ingrained, evil, pervasive, and immanent it was in the world in which I lived.
As the years have passed, I have discovered my complete inability to wrap my brain around the issues regarding racism, and the struggle so many people continue to face. There are, however, a few things of which I have become convinced. There are invisible, evil forces at work in the world. They are seeking to destroy us. They spread fear, hatred, and anger. They are always seeking to pit humans against one another. These spiritual forces seek to destroy those who bear the image of God by vandalizing that image in the minds of people. But there are also forces of good in the world.
I have also become convinced that there is One who came to destroy the dividing wall of hostility that constantly threatens to tear us apart and destroy us. This is the One who came to show us a different way to think, a different way to live, and a different way to relate to one another as human people. He disarmed the powers and forces of evil with His sacrificial death, and made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in the cross. He said that His Kingdom was at hand. It is a Kingdom of justice and righteousness. And before He left, He stated that His Father was pleased to give us, His followers, that Kingdom!
Are there experiences in your day-to-day life that have impacted you? Are there things and events that took place in the normal course of growing up, that have made you who you are today? Who are the people that have shaped the course of your life, and who are the ones who influence the person you are becoming, even today?