WOMEN AT THE WELL WEDNESDAYS

Hey Journeyers! It is with great pleasure that today I share an article written by my best friend Hannah.  Hannah is currently a seminary student in Portland, Oregon.  I pray her article will bless you as much as it did me.  Be blessed wildly, Wendy xo

My name is Hannah Marie Adams and I am the second man. I grew up towing the line. Between black and white, between fear and faith. Two worlds, two struggles, two faces, one mask. One mask is all I needed. It’s covering was thick and that was enough to get by.

Struggle 1: I grew up in the church – a relatively multicultural, Presbyterian church. My dad was an elder in the church. A charismatic, well respected, gregarious, and kind man… To everyone but his own family. My dad was also an angry, bigoted, and abusive alcoholic. From him I learned how to “smile pretty” in public and how to weep and destroy in private. Pretending was the acceptable and preferred way of life. Coming home every day was a guessing game: which daddy will I get today? I always hoped it would be the one that loved me, but it hardly ever was. And if there was “love” involved, it wasn’t in the way I was hoping to know it. But I was determined. If I worked hard enough, I would figure it out. I was the perfect Sunday school kid. I knew every answer my teacher asked, every verse and every line of every chorus and I could sing a mean “Father Abraham”. I was the peak performer; performance and I knew each other very well. But what I didn’t know was a father’s love. No matter how hard I tried, I still wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t lovely or loveable. I was only good for a few things and those were against my will. This was the core of who I was. It defined everything; it was the place I lived out of. Constant guessing and paranoia, constant doubt, constant fear, pain, confusion – everyday I told myself to just survive. What was true? Was I lovable? That question sent me on a wild goose chase for 23 years of my life.

Scenario 2: I grew up in in the heart of Washington DC, 10 minutes away from the capitol building, surrounded by urban black culture. I enjoyed falling asleep to the sound of sirens at night. But in the morning I would wake up and drive out to my private, white Christian school. My dad who was born in Dallas, Texas in 1941 decided he wanted his kids to have the best education possible. He didn’t want us to perpetuate his experience and he would do what he had to do to guarantee that. Urban schools were out; suburban schools were in. I didn’t always notice the contrast. Perhaps my heart did when I would play with my best friend’s long, smooth, beautiful blonde hair. My heart would skip a subconscious beat: Why didn’t mine do that? Eh, but I was okay. It didn’t matter… well, not until the fourth grade. I have to confess I was a huge tomboy. I loved playing football with the boys. My dad played football. Maybe I thought if I played too, he would love me. But if he did love me for it, then he was the only one.  I was a little too tenacious for my own good. I tackled one of my classmates one day; that was the wrong thing to do. He got really upset. He turned to me and told me that I was dirt. I just stared back at him blankly. But he repeated himself as though I were deaf: “Your skin, it’s like dirt.” I remember dropping the football and walking away. I went back to my desk and put my head down and cried. My best friend at the time was this little blonde boy. He came over and asked me what was wrong: I told him what Richard had said. He confronted Richard and made him apologize to me. And though he did, I was never the same. Now it mattered. For the rest of my life I struggled with how much it mattered, not only to me but to the people around me. And attending college in the south, I quickly discovered that the line was drawn very clearly in the sand; I had to choose which side I was on – black or white. It was us versus them and if it was “us”, then I would have to change a lot about myself to fit in, such as the way I spoke – it was “white” and I needed to stop that if I was to fit in certain circles. I was drafted into a war of assimilation and I never agreed with the fight in the first place. What about being who I was? What about just being comfortable with everybody? What was wrong with the way I spoke? I simply spoke the way I was educated. But that answer wasn’t good enough. Yet again… I wasn’t good enough.

These two life scenarios defined me. It seemed as though I wasn’t good enough for anybody. Not my dad and not my culture. If I didn’t belong to the two arenas that should have been natural to me – the two places where we as individuals innately are meant to find acceptance – then where did I belong? And who did I belong to? The first 23 years of my life are sordid tale describing my desperate journey to answer these questions and so many others. As the classic song describes, I looked for love in all the wrong places…

But let’s go back to Richard, to the most essential part of the story. I remember coming home that same day and my mom asked me how school was (though she already knew; my mom worked at my school). I mumbled some fake answer under my breath.  But my mom knew me and she asked me again, this time catching my eye. I poured out my little fourth grade broken heart, tears streaming down my face. She sat me down and told me something that changed my life. She told me I was made in the image of God and that my number one identity was in Him. Christ first, culture second. Christ’s love first and all other’s love second. He was enough. He covered culture and he covered the offense of others. He was enough. I sat there and listened, and though I struggled for the rest of my life to understand that truth lived out, it still cemented in me that day. A seed was planted deep in my heart that never left. And through all of my ups and downs, the Lord steadily watered it. No matter how hard I tried to avoid that truth, it never left me.

This was a defining moment. And God has grown this tiny seed into a massive tree within my heart. I determined as a little girl to look at others with that lens my mother gave me that day – regardless of their background, heritage, etc. It has taken me longer to look at myself that way, but God is relentlessly healing that as well. What is culture? And why do we cling to it so tightly… especially as believers when Christ is our culture. When He is first and Lord above it all. In my life, I have felt a tighter bond to those who have shared in extreme fear and pain, than I do to those who share the same ethnic background. Pain goes much deeper than the common exterior cultural things. Pain is the human experience – it’s not relative to one group or one type of person. We all know it. We are fools to think that God looks at things so black and white. He is not limited like we are. His word reveals that he cares nothing about the outward appearance, but only the heart…Pain touches the heart and God uses pain.

All of my life experiences are subject to Christ and I bring them under His authority to will and to do what He would with them. He has created me uniquely within a certain culture, but I am not limited to that. He has given my certain life experiences but they no longer define me. He alone defines me. His love alone defines me. I am the second man and my life is for Christ.

-Hannah Adams