فصل 19

CHAPTER 19

The Lie

THERE’S ONLY ONE RIGHT WAY TO BE

I grew up in Southern California, but I may as well have been born and raised in West Texas for all the trucks and accents and country music that stretched out along the dusty fields in every direction. Bakersfield is the name of the town that you’d maybe recognize even if you didn’t grow up there—but even that is a long shot. I actually came home from the hospital and found my way into adolescence in a tiny town on the outskirts of the outskirts called Weedpatch.

Weedpatch and the surrounding communities were originally established by migrant farmworkers who traveled to California from Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl. Have you read The Grapes of Wrath, or more likely, did you ever watch the movie during tenth-grade history class?

Well, those are my people.

My people are from Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Kansas. The generations before them are Irish and Scottish—which is to say, we come from a long history of strong, proud people who are deeply ensconced in their religion and the traditions of their culture. When you add to that the fact that my father was a Pentecostal minister and my grandfather was a Pentecostal minister, it would have been nearly impossible for me to come up into this world without some firm ideas about what it meant to be the right way.

The elders in our community didn’t point fingers at others as being wrong, but our community only included people who looked and acted and thought the way we did. We were white, low-income, conservative, and extremely churched, with little experience outside a ten-mile circumference of our town.

I didn’t know that being other was wrong, because I didn’t know that other existed.

When I was in junior high I went to Disneyland to play fourth-chair clarinet with the symphonic band. It was the first time I’d ever left our hometown without a family member, and the opportunity made me feel positively worldly. They say America is a melting pot, but Disneyland was a salad bowl. No one melted together; they all stood out in glorious diversity. I saw every kind of person. I saw families made up of every ethnicity. There were whole groups of friends waiting in line for the teacups, and not one of them was the same race. Two men were holding hands near the Matterhorn, and my eyes nearly popped out of my skull. Even among the people who looked like me, the individual styles were beyond what I could fathom goth, preppy, purple hair, piercings, tattoos—I saw everything! It was my first real exposure to people who were different from me, and I hardly knew what to do with the sight other than to stare at them as if they were exhibits in a zoo.

I suppose that there are plenty of young women whose lives are more closed off, more sheltered than my own, but it’s shocking for me now to write these things down given the diversity of my grown-up life.

It’s been on my mind a lot lately—what I grew up understanding versus what I believe now. It’s been on my heart because we’re walking through a season of people drawing lines in the sand. As much as I hate to admit it, I understand those lines—I was once drawing them. A schoolyard segregated by everything from race to religion to the cost of the jeans you wore made absolute sense to me because that was all I knew. But you cannot claim a child’s ignorance forever. At some point you grow up enough to understand that many people here on earth are different from you; and what you do with that knowledge defines much of your story.

I’ve built a business based on the idea of community with other women, and it’s a digital tapestry of people from all over the world. What I’ve learned over the years is that regardless of how our looks may differ, we are way more alike than we are different. The mamas who follow me in Dubai have a lot of the same concerns for themselves and their families as the mamas in Manila or Dublin or Mexico City. I believe the Lord gave me this platform to be a good shepherd to this diverse and beautiful flock. I also believe I can’t possibly love them well if I first demand that they be like me in order to receive it.

I am a Christian, but I fully love and accept you and want to hang out with you and be friends if you’re Christian or Muslim or Jewish or Buddhist or Jedi or love the opposite sex or love the same sex or love Rick Springfield circa 1983. Not only that I think the ability to seek out community with people who are different from me makes me a stronger, better version of myself. Trying to be in community with people who don’t look or vote or believe like you do, though sometimes uncomfortable, will help you stretch and grow into the best version of yourself.

On Saturday mornings I go to hip-hop dance class. And just so we’re clear, I don’t mean cardio dance at the gym or Zumba—but a real-life, honest to dog, “count of eights as fast as I’ve ever moved in my whole life” dance class.

And I suck.

I thrust when we’re supposed to swerve; I kick when we’re supposed to fall back. Imagine your aunt Mildred trying to negotiate the dance floor after one too many Chardonnays during cousin Crystal’s third wedding. I’m that level of tragic. Because it’s so hard to pick up a dance like that when you have no experience, and because I’m surrounded by young, nubile, professional dancers who all seem to have it figured out when I don’t, I—more than once—have questioned why I’m there at all.

I’ll tell you why I’m there aside from a deep and abiding love for nineties music, I’d actually like to be a better dancer. I’d actually prefer to go through the hard, confusing process of figuring it out and asking questions and seeking guidance than settling for the cushy comfort zone where life isn’t hard, but where I don’t grow. Maya Angelou said, “When you know better, you do better.” I want to know better so I can do better.

I approach my desire for community the same way I approach that dance class.

I’d prefer to make a fool out of myself with the more seasoned professionals because I’m willing to stand alongside them and out myself as an amateur. I’d rather look back a year from now or ten years from now on my uncertainty as I struggled to write this book than to only have written about easy topics because they were safe. My uncertainty is proof that I was trying to grow.

We have to consider if there are areas where we stay safely inside the lines we’ve drawn or those drawn for us by our family of origin. And how can we know the right community to seek out if we’ve never been a part of it before? Will you treat me differently because of one of my beliefs? Will you decide that we can’t be friends if we have a difference of opinion? Ask yourself this question Is it possible that the conversations we might have together, the questions we might wrestle with, the postures we’ll have to adopt in order to engage in a meaningful relationship, would help us grow into better versions of ourselves?

One of my best friends is gay, African American, and Mexican American. Three incredibly powerful narratives have shaped the woman she is, and there is so much strength, history, beauty, confidence, pain, empathy, anger, truth, and courage in her story. What if I’d never heard it? Me, the girl who once stared at a couple in Disneyland years ago as if they were on exhibit. Me, who once often used the phrase “That’s gay” as derogatory. Me, who used to live inside a bubble where I never interacted with girls who weren’t white. What if I had stayed there? What if we hadn’t intentionally looked for a church that was multicultural so our children wouldn’t be raised with the same homogenized worldview that we were?

What if I hadn’t asked my friend to happy hour that first time? What if she hadn’t been unendingly gracious with me when I said things or asked things that I now understand were hurtful? What if we didn’t have the kind of relationship where she could call me out and lovingly explain why that particular phrase was offensive? What if I hadn’t been willing to sit within the discomfort of working through a lifetime of unconscious bias? What would that mean for my work, my children, and what they grow up believing is true? Beyond just what I learned, what about what I received? What about the countless hours we’ve laughed until our sides hurt? What about the nine million memes we’ve tagged each other in? What about the shoulder to cry on for both me and Dave when we walked through our adoption process? What about vacations and movie nights and that one time we saw Britney Spears in concert? It would all be lost. So much love and wisdom and friendship would still be sitting on the other side of that line in the sand.

A few years ago one of Dave’s friends was in town with his family, and they were coming over for dinner. It was the first time I would meet this friend and his wife and the first time our boys would meet their son. Their son is still, without question, the coolest person I know. We don’t get to hang out with him often since they live in another state, but every time we do I’m blown away by how funny and wise and strong he is. That first time I didn’t know much about him; I only knew that he was differently abled. I didn’t know if he had a wheelchair or a walker, and I worried about how to make him feel comfortable in our home. I wondered about how I should prep the boys in advance—my fear being that they would ask inappropriate questions or say something unintentionally offensive to our new friends. Should I talk to them about his differences and explain that they didn’t matter? Should I make sure they understood that friends are friends regardless of how they look or get around? Should I explain everything I could about his abilities so they wouldn’t ask more?

I had so many questions and so much uncertainty as I considered explaining his condition to my boys—but then I realized something. I was about to teach my children to draw a line in the sand. I was about to point out the things that made our new friend different and therefore other. After all, in my own childhood, the invisible, enforced divide between “us” and “them” (intentional or not) made others seem wrong. So that day I chose to say nothing at all except that a new friend was coming over to play. When our buddy arrived on the scene, they thought his walker was the coolest thing ever. They begged him to let them try it out. They ran up and down the hallway testing out all its features. They’d never had a playdate with someone with different abilities, but that day it didn’t occur to them that it was unique. I’ve seen this happen again and again over the years as we’ve met friends with Down syndrome or autism or cerebral palsy. Their circle of friends is made up of every color, religion, and ability, and they come from every kind of family. Different isn’t unique to them; different is their normal. There are no lines in our sandbox.

There isn’t one right way to be a woman. There isn’t one right way to be a daughter, friend, boss, wife, mother, or whatever else you categorize yourself as. There are so many different versions of each and every style on this planet, and beauty lives in that dichotomy.

The kingdom of God is in that dichotomy.

At the end of every one of my hip-hop dance classes, the room breaks into smaller groups so we can watch each other perform. It’s every kind of person from every walk of life and we’re all sweaty and gross, but we sit down beside each other to cheer on the others. Imagine that a large group of people who are committed to doing the hard work together, joining in to simply cheer on a community. You can see the beauty in that, right? And that’s not even the best part. The best part about this time together is the difference in everyone’s interpretation of the beats. We all learned the exact same moves (well, they did, but there’s no telling what I might bust out), but every person’s dance looks different from everyone else’s. The girl who grew up doing ballet has movements that are more fluid and graceful. The guy who knows how to break-dance rocks a style all his own. We’re all practicing the same thing . . . but we do it in different ways.

Our different styles are beautiful to behold.

What if we don’t presume to know the answers? What if we’re always asking questions? What if we don’t settle for the world we feel comfortable with, but push ourselves to seek more? It would mean that we would find true relationship with other women at a soul-deep level instead of a skin-deep perception.

We do not need to change our entire belief system to make this a reality. We can simply adjust our posture to consider a wider, more inclusive community.

If we adjust our posture, it will change the way we speak.

If we adjust our posture, it will change the way we listen.

If we adjust our posture, we will see the person, not the category they fall into.

This is true of race, religion, political affiliation, sexual orientation, socioeconomic background, and any other category we can dream up. Doing life with people who don’t look or think or vote like us is the whole point—it’s our call to arms! Love thy neighbor wasn’t a suggestion; it was a command, you guys. How in the world are you going to love your neighbor if you don’t know your neighbor? I don’t mean waving hello at the grocery store; I mean actually pushing ourselves outside of our comfort zone and doing life with different kinds of people . . . even if we wonder if they’re getting it all wrong. Heck, especially if we think they’re getting it all wrong. We need to be in a wider community not because we’re attempting to sharpen their clarity on a subject but because we’re hoping to soften the edges of our own hearts.

What does your story look like? Is it filled with all the same colors and lines? Do all the characters in your book look and act like each other? Imagine what would happen—imagine how beautiful the same scene might appear, what it would mean for your worldview or your children’s worldviews—if you added different hues, different narratives, different dialogues. What would it mean to challenge your outlook every now and again? What would it mean for your relationship with your own understanding if you had to ask more questions? How would it affect other people’s behavior if they saw your unbiased, open heart welcoming new friends? What could we accomplish in our communities if we took all the energy that we typically spend drawing lines and used it instead to draw our neighbors closer?

Every day you get to choose the way your world looks. Regardless of how you were raised or what you were taught to believe, you get to decide where your story goes from here. Look at the pictures in your book . . . Are they all one color?

Every year you close a new chapter in your story. Please, please, please don’t write the same one seventy-five times and call it a life.

THINGS THAT HELPED ME . . .

1. Changing churches. Dave and I looked up one day and realized that we went to an affluent church in Bel Air and that 99.9 percent of our church family was white. This is not what the body of Christ looks like. The body of Christ is every color and style and background. By seeking out a church that was intentionally multiethnic, multicultural, and intergenerational, we were able to find real community.

2. Acknowledging my position. It’s not easy to admit that you’ve done things or said things or believed things that were hurtful—particularly when you weren’t even aware of them; but if you don’t admit to the problem, how will you ever change? Look around you How much diversity do you see? Are you surrounded by people who are exactly like you? If so, begin to seek new friends and experiences.

3. Asking humble questions. My dear friend Brittany has been an incredible teacher for me in so many ways because she allows me to ask questions about race and white privilege and unconscious bias that could potentially be hurtful in my ignorance. She told me once, “Rachel, I’m never going to be offended if you ask the question. I only get offended if someone who isn’t my race just assumes they know the answer.” So I ask questions . . . and I ask them humbly.