Me: Race, Adoption, and the Small Town

Growing up I felt like a white woman.  I knew my skin was brown but my whole world was surrounded with white people.  My parents are British and most of the people went to school with were white.  I never thought of myself as having a possible different cultural background.  Learning about Bangladesh and actually feeling Bengali were two different things to me.  I owned some native clothing and a doll from India, not even Bangladesh.

My style was very much like most American girls.  I liked to dress fashionable and getting a great hair cut is still something I very much enjoy.  There were so many white actresses I secretly wanted to look like.  Seeing Indian women in shows or movies was unheard of for the most part.  I remember a teacher telling me I looked like someone from "The Young and the Restless" at one point.

All through high school the only times I felt different were when I auditioned for roles in the school musicals.   I knew I would never look the part for an actual speaking role.  In fact, I wanted to be an actress all through high school, but once I realized this would be difficult with my look I gave up.  By the time I went to college I barely thought about auditioning for a play.

When I moved from a world of everyone knowing I was culturally a white girl, to being one of the only people on my college campus with brown skin, I still felt a part of things.  My college was very skilled about making minority students feel accepted.  Once in a while people dared to tell me that I probably only got into the college I went to because I was not white.  This made me angry and question who I was more, but I wanted to fit in and most of the time I did. 

No, I did not start to feel like an actual minority until I graduated college and left the town I went to school.  Even though my family is down the road, I am no longer the brown girl who gets to be white.  People who do not know me, see me as brown.

I often feel like the small brown person who does not get to have a voice or opinion.  The place I feel most alone is the church.  I cannot really explain it much beyond a sense that I have.  When I went to church in Bangladesh on a mission trip, I felt like a normal person instead of a spectacle.  We were singing "Shout to the Lord" and the English speakers sang in English and and the Bengali speakers in their native tongue.   As this was happening a young woman lead the entire room in a spontaneous dance.  It was like a Bollywood film.  All this time I had been the weird girl in the corner dancing alone and never realizing that it was a cultural form of worship God has blessed me with.  The lady leading the dance told me Bengali people are blessed in dance.  In this church service I felted connected to God and the body of Christ in a way I cannot fully explain.  There was freedom and also a sense of place.  I understood more about who I had been created to be.

Now I struggle to keep my body still as worship music plays.  I never want to offend people, but if I am ever going to be me in a church I dance without thinking about it.  It is not a spectacle, but a state of who God made me to be.

There are other times one questions brownness.  When years have gone by in a town, and one still feels alone, it is hard not to question if people stay away because I am not white.  Most of the time I hope this is not the case, but not being white makes that question always come up.  I have other qualities that might turn people away, such as having 5 children.  Invitations disappear when one's family size grows.  I must say that plenty of white women feel lonely in the small town too.

Overall, being adopted gave me a childhood most darker people in America dream about.  Having a very English name helps too.  When one leaves the nest the world is different.  If one ventures to a town that does not know the family, the gap between white and brown gets larger.  Now that my children are mixed race I cannot help but think, they will probably have a childhood and adulthood much like mine.  They have a white dad, English names, and the advantages of probably feeling white.  When and if they leave, people don't see the half white, they see the Bengali.  Most people don't see Bengali, they see dark, not white.  I can only hope and pray that their world will accept them and they will get to be who they are freely.  People say race is invisible, but from what I can tell color is always color.  Denying what is there is not helpful, accepting the other is important.  I am not saying that I do not have freedom to exist, just that people will always see me as different.  Is it possible for different to ever become equal?

Parenting: Just a Cup of Tea

If you are a mom then you know that there is never time to sit down and sip a cup of tea.  At one point I decided it was easier to drink coffee faster, but after being pregnant so much I rarely drink coffee these days.  Bria also will not sleep if I have coffee.  The things we start to give up grow as one becomes a parent.

Just the other day I was remembering what it was like to wake up to an alarm clock.  The great thing about having infants is we do not need or use the alarm anymore.  Even when the baby does not wake up before six, I do in anticipation of that first scream.  I am not sure what is more annoying, a baby cry or a loud beeping sound.  I do know I used to be able to hit snooze on the beeping and the crying does not go away just because I want to sleep more.

I used to have soaps that I carefully picked out.  Now our shower is filled with baby shampoo and not much else.  We all just use the same stuff.  I am not complaining, just remembering.  I used to wash my hair everyday, but to save shampoo and time I wash it every other day.  This ends up being healthier anyway.

Our living room used to be tidy most of the time, but now it is a playroom, sewing room, music room, and office.  How can one possibly expect to keep it clean?  Did I mention books too?  We love books.  They are everywhere.  Yes, we have book shelves, but if one reads several books at a time then they are dotted around the room to spark conversations at all times.

Cleaning up after one meal used to take a few minutes, and now it can easily take thirty minutes.  I would not even say my kitchen looks clean after all this time.  One could mop every day to keep Bria's place clean.  At this point to keep up with a functional home is more important.

And about that cup of tea.  Most days it gets put on the counter while I take kids to the potty.  Maybe I make myself wash the dishes first.  See I view tea as my reward from taking care of everyone and everything.  Since this takes place all day, I easily get a few sips of tea throughout the morning instead of relaxing on the couch and reading something.

Kids open up a world I never expected.  There is always something going on.  A lot of the day is filled with happy noises.  Yes, there is fighting and crying to, but lots of joy.  I don't know what I would do all day if they were not such good entertainment.

The truth is serving my family comes naturally.  I may complain, but I secretly do love it all.  It feels great to finally cook a meal all my kids like.  Making cookies would be no fun if it did not bring smiles to other peoples faces.  Cleaning would be boring if there were not toys and food crumbs everywhere.

So even if it seems like a lot of work now, it is worth enjoying it all.  The return is much greater than I know at this point.  Next time I am in a bad mood I need to reread this post.  :)

Community: Christ's Child

It is strange how very little I knew about churches and church going when I became a Christian.  What lead me to God was not a long winded sermon, or an intellectual debate.  Nope, it took something that does not make sense to most people.  All I needed was a little picture from God that made me know forever that He exists.

For me, I would not say I am in a crisis of faith, because my faith in God will never change.  I have experienced God in such a way, that He has to be real.  However, I do not understand why I cannot figure out how to enjoy church as a mother of small children.

When it was just me at church, worship was always the most meaningful part of a service.  I loved to close my eyes and let everything else disappear.  It was one of the only times I felt as if I could actually be myself and most people would not even notice.  Worship was safe and comforting in a world filled with so many expectations of how people are supposed to be.

Now I have kids and worship barely happens at church.  How can one close their eyes when a two year old might run around the church?  If the kids are in their own programs, often my husband or I is with the little ones.  I really feel like church is fine for the single, childless, and parents of older children.  I imagine my experience with teenagers who do not need me to keep an eye on them.  Maybe I will experience closing my eyes and really being free.

Sermons are different for me.  I am more visual anyway, so unless a sermon is thirty minutes or shorter, I would rather read the notes or read a book.  It is great to hear a live speaker and not completely give up on that, but one must also know how to interpret God's word without just cloning ideas from the opinions from others.  Sharing stories of faith is inspirational, but by itself, not a true relationship with God.  My relationship with God is between God and I.  Church does not define it, other peoples' opinions also do not define it.

I used to think that if one did not attend church every week there was something seriously wrong.  Now I barely go to church and when I do I am praying for it to end because I am trying to keep order or I am not in the service at all.

We will have worship at home sometimes.  My husband plays piano, but when he is not home we use cd's or utube.  The kids and I love to dance as a form of worship.  I pick songs they learn at school, or songs I love.  An hour flies by and we have just had fun.  This is how church used to be for me.  I want my children to know connecting with God is important, but it does not have to be through sitting around.

My husband leads worship through scripture and prayer every night.  He has even been teaching the kids about kneeling during prayer.  We do not believe one has to kneel, but posturing oneself before God is important.  My children all know we are Christian and love Jesus.  The older two talk about Jesus and sing songs constantly.

People are the church.  I really believe this goes outside of the walls of churches, or denominations.  I think that loving each other is a form of worship.  Churches have been very loving this way.  So many wonderful people have tried to help us watch our children.  My older kids have been included in helping take up offering.  Most churches have been supportive of us having most of our kids, if not all of them, in the service.  We have been blessed with meals after the births of all of our children.

There still seems to be a need for some kind of gathering.  I still love to worship with a large group of people.  I miss praying for hours with friends.  My kids need to meet other Christian kids.  I like to hear a sermon from time to time.  I miss church, but long for a way to have a family of small kids and enjoy being in a Christ focused gathering.  Really what I am describing is families coming together and just spending quality time together.  Let's face it, without simple community, there really is no point for larger gatherings.  In high school, church was another place to gather with friends.  Now a bit more isolated from day to day society beyond my own family, I long to see other families and spend time with them, much more than showing up at big gathering where our family is welcomed, but kind of in the way.

God's love can be very tangible if we let it be.  We can love and serve Him from where we are at all times.  Thank you Jesus for always loving us.  Maybe I am not a great church attender, but I still love Jesus. 

Me: 8 Years of Marriage

Most of my posts focus on my kids and the home, but we would have none of this without my spouse.  Twelve years ago I remember coming back from a worship meeting and telling my roommate that I might have met a man I could picture marrying.  I was right!  I did marry him, but it took another couple of years for the romance to begin and within a year of that we were engaged and married.

People often talk about fate, destiny, and meant to be.  I agree and disagree with this statement.  I think that people are attracted to who they love, but there has to be a reason why people are attracted to many people.  If they were not, then dating would not be such an attractive option.  My husband and I met at the right place and the right time, probably.  He and I both liked each other from the beginning.  Our secret stories of how we liked each other correspond as if we wrote the perfect novel.  However, actual love involves a choice.

I could have decided that being with this wonderful man was too challenging for me.  We might have thought putting off dating, courting according to him, could have been a better solution.  However, for some reason, we both felt drawn together, our senior year of college. 

People thought we were crazy for getting married young.  I never pictured myself a freshly graduated college student and a newly wed, but there you have it.  Now I cannot picture my life any other way.

Getting married young does have its difficulties, but the positives far out weight the negatives.  We have gotten to build our life together.  Maybe we are not rich, but if children were more important culturally than money, we would be beyond rich.  I have very much become the person I am because of my husband.

My husband has encouraged me to dream even more than a crazy idealistic person like me has already dreamed.  He has supported my love for writing, cooking, making things, and much more.  I know that without him I would most likely know myself less.  It is as if being married is like waking around with a mirror that always tells you the truth if you are a blessed as me.

I am thankful that my husband and I have decided to love each other more every day.  I am so blessed by his presence in my life.  He is my best friend and a wonderful father to our children.  After eight years I love my husband even more than on our wedding day.