On being different to the world

Recently I attended a Christian writing seminar in Switzerland, which was made up of a group of 15 women enjoying a Spirit-led week of teaching and fellowship, sharing heartfelt stories and writing critiques. One uniquely unscheduled afternoon, after the first few days of bonding, I found myself unoccupied and alone. A group of the women had ventured to a nearby town for a visit. As a home-educating mum of four in Scotland, a sun-scorched afternoon, surrounded by new faces in picturesque surroundings, beckoned like food for my soul! Unexpectedly uninvited, I could feel the sting of rejection rise within. Thoughts like: “They didn’t ask you on purpose,” “She was definitely weird with you this morning,” “What have you said or done this time to put people off?” clouded my soul.

Learning who I am

All my life I’ve wrestled with being unlike others. My parents divorced before I can remember, their marriage probably over before I left the womb. Growing up the only child of my mother, I’d travel to my father’s house for regular visits, where I was the youngest of three half-siblings, two of whom were adults by the time I was born. In suburban middle-America with my mother I was often the only black girl in school and in my father’s neighbourhood in Brooklyn I was told I spoke like a white girl, couldn’t go anywhere unchaperoned and was cast as perpetually whiney and annoying.

At first, I was cool with it. I learned to cope with my disconnected identity through healthy distractions. The awful pain of rejection required more severe, even life-threatening coping mechanisms as I entered my teens though. Nearly 30 years later, the tip of the loneliness and rejection iceberg that shipwrecked my life is more universally known. None of us are strangers to it in our post-pandemic society, and now a large cross-section of us is marketed to on the basis of our inability to ‘fit in’. Whether neurodiverse, gender atypical, a protected minority or future cat ladies, nothing’s more normal today than seeming different. 

I recently paid a visit to my GP with concerns of my own neurodiversity. After four decades of masquerading through life, with years spent learning the skills of modelling and acting, I’ve become great at mirroring social normalcy. She led me through the referral questions and, coupled with my laundry list of mental health history, I’m now one of thousands in the UK waiting for official diagnosis through the NHS. The waiting list in my area is at least a year. The lengthiness of time between referral and diagnosis isn’t ideal, but I’m hopeful. I’m still in the process of understanding myself. It will be good to know I’m not an exceptionally frazzled woman, hanging on by the fringes, only just coping over the long haul of life; that the habits and tendencies I perpetually run up against aren’t actually signs of ineptitude but neural processes that can be addressed and helped, given an accurate understanding of my brain. I’m learning to understand that my attempts at doing things over and over again the way others do them, incessantly running into brick walls of failure, don’t make me pathetic but persevering, and different. Being different is OK. Jesus was also very different, but his identity was in his Father’s purpose and calling over him, not in how the world perceived him to be.

Chosen by God

During the time when Jesus walked the earth, he was endlessly construed as different; awkward even. Drawing away regularly for hours of time alone with his Father, he didn’t shy away from socially precarious situations like conversing with the Samaritan woman at the well or driving the money changers out of the temple. Jesus never made a point of fitting in with important leaders or the socially elite. He hung out with the undesirables, fishermen and tax collectors. Early in John’s Gospel, Nicodemus, an esteemed religious teacher, paid Jesus an inconspicuous visit (John 3). Imagine being the Son of God, everything ever created being made through you, and a religious teacher won’t risk being seen with you in daylight! One only has to read Isaiah 53 to get a picture of how the world around Jesus saw and treated him, as despised and rejected.

After four decades of masquerading through life…I’ve become great at mirroring social normalcy

One of my favourite descriptions of Jesus comes from John 13:3. At the Last Supper, it had just been revealed that one of his twelve dearest friends would betray Jesus unto death. The Bible says: “Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God.” Despite what those closest to Jesus thought about him or how he knew they would treat him, his confidence in his own identity and purpose allowed him to do what only God’s love can. From a place of secure identity and strength, he was able to stoop down and demonstrate the greatest humility, washing the feet of his enemy. Peter was also at that dinner. One of his closest friends, he too rejected Jesus. In his own first letter, Peter describes Jesus as “the living cornerstone of God’s temple. He was rejected by people, but he was chosen by God for great honor” (emphasis mine). “The stone that the builders rejected has now become the cornerstone” (1 Peter 2:4,7).

Standing in our true identity

I gathered my thoughts after my wobbly moment in Switzerland. Not the lying, fiery darts of the enemy, but the ones aligning with the truth of scripture. The rejection I’d felt from new friends, real or unintentional, resulted in some of the sweetest fellowship I’ve ever known with the Father. Walking alone with God uphill in the sweltering Swiss sunshine, I knew immediately that it was a divine appointment; he didn’t want me anywhere else but there, receiving the lovingkindness and acceptance only fellowship with him can give. And Jesus’ life was an example of the importance of rooting our identity in the Father’s love, truth and calling upon us. We are not rejected, but accepted, desired, delighted in and known.