What color is the sky?

So I’ve been asked the same question a lot lately. I’m not sure if it is because of the extra tan I have gotten from this past summer or because I just look exotic. But as of, well since about a year ago, all kinds of people have been asking me, “What ethnicity are you?” or my personal favorite “Are you mixed?”

I mentioned this in a conversation with friends the other day. See because I began noticing that only certain people would ask this question of me. Not that I am trying to group people into boxes or be any type of prejudice. But none of the people asking me this question were: white, Caucasian, of Anglo-Saxon decent, or had a small spread out dosage of melanin.

Instead, those that were inquiring were what some people might call minorities, people of color, or culturally diverse. Interesting huh?

Not that I ever mind people asking me my heritage (Which is pretty much the same as if you were to call a dog a mutt, because I have about every type of European background and then add native American on top of that. Although the traits that appear are those of French and Cherokee.) I wouldn’t even mind if I did have some sort of Latino, African American, or Asian decent.

What I wonder about though is, why is it that only those people we sometimes call minorities doing the asking? Just a “hmm” question that I am putting out there and asking for a few ideas back.

*This is my clause however, because you never know who might read your blog or where it might end up. So I want to make myself as understood as possible. I do my best to be culturally minded myself. I make extra effort not to be prejudice and to see all people as equal (yes even celebrities are people and have the same organs working in them as everyone else). To me all of our fundamentals of life are the same so why should I treat someone different just because they appear different by some cultural standard.

Knowing that, I also am curious why the cultural assumptions and standards exist and recognize that they are there. So I am just doing some honest questioning of our own personal views of why we act and react in certain ways to racial visual stimuli.

I have been humbled

God does interesting things with the lives of His children. When we become Christians we lay down our lives to follow Him. Sometimes, though, we forget that our lives are not our own. We forget that He loves us and because we don’t love Him the way we should we don’t trust Him like we should. Manytimes, that love relationship seems so distant that we don’t realize it was because of our own decisions that we don’t hear God beckoning us the way He used to.

I got to experience this and like I’ve always known, God needs to speak loudly to me. That He did, or allowed things in my life to happen that brought me back to Him. He humbled me by taking away the things I thought I needed to be happy: money, jobs, a camera, part of my self perception, and even a close friendship. I could have very easily kept turning away from God, but instead He chose to put me on a path that led me right back to Him. He showed me how I had kept Him at arms reach, and that I did not love Him like I should. I was humbled by my mistakes and asked my Lord for forgiveness. For a lot of things and mostly for not being a very good child to Him and forgetting all that He had done for me. I am still amazed for that way that God forgives His children and lets us walk with Him once again.

This time though, I don’t want to change just myself and my outward actions. I don’t want to do anything, except trust and love Him. I have learned and am reminded that God is the only one who can change us and He changes us from the inside out. The things I do in life I want to be because of Him and not of myself. I don’t want to refrain from something just because it appears “wordly.” Rather, I would not want to do “wordly” things because my love for my Savior, has my life focused on Him. Which, is not exactly easy unless Christ is a part of my daily walk.

So I have been humbled and things will continue to be different in my life, but not because of me. Instead it is because of Him. How amazing is it that God cares so much!