January is about come and gone. It has been surprising on some extent based strictly on the weather. I expected frigid temperatures, lots of snow and a hunkered down mentality at home. Instead, we've had rain, some windy days and more sun that I imagined. Similarly, the season of my life has been just as erratic. Cold days, a mood swing blows in like the wind, a thought pervades the conscious and hunkers down. And suddenly the light shines and the reluctant soul becomes cleansed once again.
Life Group this past Friday asked several questions that I could blog about alone. One of them was an extension from Luke which reads, "...no prophet is accepted in his hometown." I remember the verse before but really hadn't delved into the essence of what Jesus was saying. All the paragraph before says they were amazed, but questioned, "Isn't this Joseph's son?" And there's the rub. The people within our inner circle, they can sometimes judge one another to the point where you literally don't succeed. Our group facilitator asked us how our surrounding shaped us, and how our hometown sometimes underestimated or overestimated our abilities.
Growing up in my culture meant making it was just graduating high school. People my color didn't always go to college, despite the talk of my parents who always expressed college as a requirement for being allowed to live. College wasn't a choice, it was the next step. I only knew college from football games and Animal House movies. My father had graduated but rarely spoke of it. My mom didn't graduate high school. My step-father played baseball for a few years, but it wasn't until much later that he returned for his teaching degree. My grandparents barely made it out of junior high. We attended high school graduations among the family like they were grand events. Little did I know that for some people like me, it was the closest they were ever going to get to a college degree.
I had my mind set on two colleges; St. Thomas in Houston and Vanderbilt University. Talk about underestimating my abilities! My grades were hardly stellar, but Vanderbilt offered me a dream of being away from home, studying journalism, and far away from the people that I knew. St. Thomas offered the prestige of a private school and a status I craved. I remember being laughed at asking for the application money for Vanderbilt, and a stern lecture linking my lack of discipline to the rigors of living in a dorm rule free. For St. Thomas, I studied the entrance essay like never before. I might have written 3 or 4 copies, but in the end I was accepted. It was a party for one. I didn't even get a chance to light a candle for the cake.
My friends? Not much difference. Most were community college denizens. I flirted with a writer's group and met Delcina at a time in my life when no amount of college was going to get me to a point of success. I underestimated my ability. I settled for the status quo. I fought so hard to be different all through high school, dressing preppy, hanging with the white boys, being the teachers pet, class clown, the newspaper editor. I was different. I didn't speak Spanish and I didn't need to. You sign up for the Marines, I have a future in education. My uncle, who just retired, offered me a job at Southwestern Bell as a confused and bitter 20-something. He said that if school wasn't for me, I'd have to work like everyone else. He offered a life of manual labor, listening to a boss, working all hours. I remember feeling the softness of my hands and thinking I didn't have it in me. I think my uncle's overestimation in me was really his way of telling me to get it together.
So I ran from his house to my dad's, back to my grandmother. I had delusions of grandeur that I would live in an apartment with 2 other girls. My wallet laughed in hysterics. My step-dad's facial expression had said the rest.
When I finally did marry, this is after securing my 2 year degree at previously said community college, we drove up to Toledo to see long lost family. There were a number of younger cousins that were graduating college and enrolling in Toledo U. The times of our family were looking up. Months later, perhaps a year being in school myself, there came news of the Toledo cousins. Dropping out, girlfriends moving in and pregnant, the professor doesn't like me. The cycle of failure once again reminded me that I was brown, different, that I'd never amount to anything. I hadn't really "made it."
Back to the Life Group question. Driving home today, I told my wife if someone were to ask me if I had "made it" in any facet of life, in the ones that mattered--fatherhood, my spirituality, a husband--I'd say "no." Not because I don't have enough confidence, but because I'm like the townspeople amazed at Jesus.
Isn't that Reynaldo, the guy who dropped out of college?
Isn't that the guy who I saw at that strip club back in the day?
Didn't he used to drink alot?
Is that the same teacher who barely passed his entrance exam?
Isn't that his son with the temper problems?
Confidence doesn't come from talks with a mirror, thank goodness. It comes in the form of losing weight (goodbye 28.6 pounds), from the kids who will not leave my side in the hallways at school, from my wife who makes sure my lunch is warmed up, from the security of my share group partners and even from nailing two three pointers in a church gym. I read in Genesis about the tower of Babel. How the men in that time were building a monument not in God's honor, but to show that they were independent, that they could reach the heavens by means alone. So what did God do? He scattered them. Changed their language. And it says, because "....then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them."
You see, God gives us the confidence. It's not the long hours at work, or the number of soccer teams I coach. How will I know that I have "made it"? I wont and that's okay. The mirror can snicker at me, the bastard, but in the end, it's not me I need to impress. Let's break down the tower brick by brick.
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