I think the hardest part of being an MK is not fitting in. It
is hard not to fit in in general but when you’re an MK you can’t even try
to fit in it seems. Already I don’t fit in in the country I am currently living
in: Honduras. I’m white, I have blue eyes and blondish hair, and I act “gringa.”
I can’t fit in; I’m constantly stared at because I’m different. I’m constantly
singled out because I walk differently than any Honduran. There is no chance of
me fitting in here! I don’t fit in in the country I was born: the United States.
I may look like an American but I think differently now, I act a tiny bit ‘off’
compared to the average American teenager. I dress differently; when I walk
around and see girls wearing make-up all the time to look 17 when the kids are
like 10 or I see girls wearing shorts that are so short they’re now underwear
or shirts that are basically bras, I definitely don’t fit in. I go back to my
native country and people are constantly on their phones, barely looking up, I
don’t fit in. I may look like them but I’m way different. At my school I don’t
fit in, I’m one of the ones who doesn’t party and get drunk on the weekends, I
go to church on Sundays, I’m not going to have sex until I’m married, I’m not a
total oddball and my friends love me (at least I hope so). School is one of the
places where I fit in the most though, I don’t have to pretend to be someone
else, they don’t care that I’m from the USA and they accept me and my beliefs.
But still some days, when a person will come over to invite two of my closest
friends and my best friend to a party and look right over me, knowing I’ll say
no and be ‘no fun,’ it kind of hurts to not fit in. I think the hardest one is
when I don’t fit in even with other MKs. This one hurts the most because here
are people like me, experiencing similar things and even then I don’t fit in.
We went to a missionary retreat that occurs every year and I was so happy to
see some of the friends I made the year before, when I arrived there were some
new MKs and I was excited to meet some new people. However, that’s not what
happened, the new people all knew each other and had inside jokes and didn’t
include me or my sister. I’m shy but I pushed myself to go and ask to play
cards with them and when we started it wasn’t too fun because there were too
many people so it trickled to a stop. When they stopped, they started telling
stories they all knew and I hated being the outsider so I got up and left. I
didn’t like not fitting in so I went to find someone else to hang out with. I
was
Goodbye, until next time!
Pastor John described it one week like this: If the US is blue and the people blue and Honduras yellow and the people yellow and then a US blue moves to Honduras yellow and picks up some of the color, then the US blue becomes green. The person no longer fits in the US or in Honduras. Do you feel you 'fit' in with your green family?
ReplyDeleteThat's a cool way to look at it! I guess I do fit in with my green family. The one place, other than with God, that I feel like I fit in.
DeleteYou should talk with Elyssa!!! Although she's never been a MK or even a PK she gets the whole "not fitting in" thing...simply because our standards & values were different from others'...even other Christians. She's a kindred who's blazed the trail before you...& she likes to write too. ;)
ReplyDeleteIt's always going to be hard when you're a Christian. Fitting in is hard for any Christian, mainly because it is something humans, including Christians, crave for even if it is utterly impossible. I didn't know she liked to write!
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