Testimony

The ragamuffin there in the middle would be me...

This started out as a short bio, but then I got a bit carried away. So I’m calling it my testimony:

While I call Texas my home now, I was born in Fredrickburg, VA. The youngest of four born of a mulit-generation Virginian father and a Japanese mother new to the United States. Bi-racial couples hardly cause a second glance these days, but back when I was growing up in a small southern town, that wasn’t the case.

My sisters were academically gifted, my brother excelled in sports. And then there was me. Sort of klutzy (okay very klutzy), silly, chatty Kathy. I wasn’t really good at anything, except maybe driving my family crazy with my incessant chattiness. I remember feeling very different. I used to wish that I had blond hair and blue eyes like my cousin, then I would be loved and accepted. Seems silly now, but it was an impossible dream that I constantly yearned for.

I gave up the blond hair/blue eyes dream, but never the dream of fitting in; of being accepted. This empty dream lead me down some very dark paths. Years of self destructive behavior. “Tracks of my Tears” could have been my theme song: “People say I’m the life of the party, Cuz I tell a joke or two”. That was me. The life of the party. Little did anyone know I was dying inside. I never felt good enough, never thought I measured up to anyone else. I talked a good game, but I was on very shaky ground.

Fast forward several years. I find myself married with a newborn son. Sleep deprived, depressed and completely overwhelmed. I realized the firm control I thought I had on my life was an illusion. And a flimsy one at that. I’d been to church growing up; had a few brief conversations with God, but I never really knew Him.

As I lay crouched in a ball on the floor of my room, my newborn son screaming in the background, I cried out to God: “You have to take this from me. I can’t do this on my own! You win! I surrender!”

And He did.

And I did.

And I must continue to surrender every single day. I have a good life, a great life, even. But there is always longing, because we are not meant for this world. We are meant for Paradise.
So we carry on.

We love.

Because He first loved us.