Fighting For Space

“The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”

—1 Samuel 16:7

During my college years, all I could see about faith were the things that offended me, the things I couldn’t connect with, the things that had embarrassed me in high school. But there was this tiny hope inside me, not like a flame, more like a lighter that’s almost out of juice, misfiring, catching for just a second, this tiny hope that maybe there was a way of living this faith that I just hadn’t found yet. I thought about God, even though I didn’t talk about him. It wasn’t really about God, for me. I didn’t have big questions about theology. Essentially, I wanted to know if there was room in the Christian world for someone like me. Because it didn’t always seem like there was.

There’s a lot of pressure on pastors to coerce their kids into looking the part, or to distance themselves from kids whose mistakes reflect poorly on their churches. My parents did just the opposite: they flew across the country several times a year to be with me, to demonstrate that no matter how ferociously I fought for space in a world that felt like it had no room for me, they would be right next to me, helping me fight and helping me make peace.