They don't get it (or you)

and that's has to be okay.

I don’t know about you, but I really dislike being misunderstood. (I almost wrote “hate” but you know, as Christians we aren’t supposed to use that word, but that’s how strongly I feel about the idea of being misunderstood.)

When I try to think back to where this loathing of feeling/ being misunderstood came from, it all goes back to childhood (like everything seems to do). I’ve written about my childhood before but here’s a quick recap:

1. I grew up in a small suburban, overwhelmingly white town in central Florida.

2. I attended a predominately white private elementary and middle school.

3. In the background of this Monday through Friday, sticking-out-like-a-sore-thumb reality, on the weekends, I was a member of a golf program geared toward black inner-city youth.

4. My reality was giving: “too white” for the black kids on the weekends and “too black” for the white kids during the week, but my saving grace was that the “black kids” in my golf program, after getting past the fact that I did not know the cool Nelly songs or know what “J’s” were, not only accepted me but really loved me and I loved them back. To this day, I keep in touch with them.

5. I digress, but you get the picture— growing up, I felt like a walking billboard of being misunderstood.

Upon graduating from college (happy to report that I felt a lot less misunderstood during this time in my life), I boarded a plane to South Korea with a one-way ticket in tow to begin a new journey of adventure and travel and also, being utterly and most fundamentally misunderstood on a dang-near cellular level.

When I moved to South Korea at 23 years old, I did not get to choose what city I would be placed in. It was all up to the Korean government and on a macro-level, God and He did His thing. I called the small (by Korean standards) town of Yeongju home for 2 years and was 1 of 25 foreigners living in the town and of those 25 foreigners, I was 1 of 2 black women— there were no black men.

my sweet middle school students!! They taught me all the cute poses & latest K-pop songs.

I was forced to live, breathe, and confront my discomfort of being misunderstood and because of the language barrier, I couldn’t over explain myself out of this one. I was gawked at in the market because of my natural hair, stared at (very unapologetically) by kids and adults on the bus, and to say it felt like my existence befuddled them is not an understatement.