Memoirs of a Foreigner

I am a foreigner. To call someone a foreigner in the U.S., might be rude. It is at least politically incorrect. We call people from other countries, “internationals” or we call them by various labels such as “Latino,” “Asian,” “European,” “Middle Eastern” or “African.” Sometimes the descriptor is correct and sometimes it is not. We don’t seem to notice. But in many places in the world if you do not look like the dominant population, you are deemed a “foreigner.”

As I have lived in India, I have become comfortable with that title because every day I am aware that my surroundings are foreign to me. The feeling of people pushing me each other to get to the front of what I used to thingk should be a line (or Q) to get on a metro train, the smell of masala, onions, and garlic being heating in mustard oil, and the sound of the language I have to strain and guess to understand remind me that I am the foreigner.

When I am in the U.S. there is a sense in which I am still a foreigner. I look an American, I sound like an American, I smell like an American, but I don’t always feel like I fit in. Some things in the U.S. seem foreign to me. Everyone seems to have a car, technological gadgets namely GPS and phones that go online, white babies, houses, and green grass yards. I don’t have any of those things (and I’m not sure I want all of them).

But, the truth is that I have always been a foreigner. I guess that is why, when a little girl who had just moved from Hungary and didn’t know any English joined my third grade class, the teacher sat her next to me and asked me to help her. At that age I had heard the stories about my country, I knew that we were different. I knew I would never fit in.

The country that I heard about was not Korea or Italy or even the “good ‘ol days” of America, that so many evangelical kids are raised hearing about. The country that my parents talked about as the homeland was a far away place. Though I couldn’t remember being there, we were from a place were every child was loved and lived and danced and played—and taught the adults to do the same. In our country we didn’t need a president or congress or anything like that, because Jesus was the King and that met that everything went right. It is a place where everyone was healed and every tear was dried.

And the secret that my parents reminded me of everyday was that that country–that Kingdom that was so different from America was coming–coming to here. In fact that country actually existed in us. And, as we lived that dream of the Kingdom to come–praying for the sick, loving the poor, writing to people in jail we were a part of that invasion.

All these people (the ancient people of the Bible) were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers of earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them. –Hebrews 11:13-17.